Edgar Guest and John Doremus on Fatherhood

What Are Fathers? by John Doremus

What are fathers made of anyway? A father is a thing that is forced to endure childbirth without an anesthetic. A father growls when he feels good and laughs very loud when he is scared half to death. A father is sometimes accused of giving too much time to his business while the little ones are growing up. Well, that is partly fear too.

Fathers are much more easily frightened than mothers. A father never feels entirely worthy of the worship in his child's eyes. He is never the hero his daughter thinks he is, never quite the man his son believes him to be, and this worries him sometimes too. And so he works too hard to try and smooth the rough places in the road for those of his own that will follow him.

A father is a thing that gets very angry when the first school grades aren't as good as he thinks they should be. He scolds his son, though he knows it's the teachers fault.

A father is thing that goes away to war sometimes and learns to shoot, and swear, and spit through his teeth, and would run the other way except that this war is part of his only important job in life, which is making the world better for his child than its been for him.

Fathers grow older faster than people because they have in other wars have had to stand at the train station and wave goodbye to the uniform that climbs aboard; and while mothers can cry where it shows, fathers have to stand there and beam outside and die inside.

Fathers have very styled hearts, so they have to be broken sometimes or no one would know what's inside. Fathers are what give daughters away to other men that are not nearly good enough, so they can have grandchildren that are smarter than anybody's.

Fathers fight dragons almost daily. They hurry away from the breakfast table off to the arena which is sometimes called an office or a workshop; and there with calloused practiced hands they tackle the dragon with three heads: worry, work, and monotony. They never quite win the fight, but they never give up. Knights in shining armor, fathers in shiny trousers, there is little difference as they march away to work each day.

Fathers make bets with insurance companies about who will live the longest. Although they know the odds, they keep right on betting and even as the odds get higher and higher they keep right on betting more and more and then one day they lose.

Fathers enjoy an earthly immortality and the bets paid off to the part of him that he leaves behind. I don't know where fathers go when they die, but I have an idea that after a good rest, where ever it is, he won't be happy unless there is work to do. He won't just sit on a cloud and wait for the girl he has loved and the children she bore. He will be busy there too, repairing the steps, oiling the gate, improving the streets and smoothing the way. And that is a father.

Only a Dad

By Edgar Albert Guest

Only a dad, with a tired face,

Coming home from the daily race,

Bringing little of gold or fame,

To show how well he has played the game,

But glad in his heart that his own rejoice

To see him come, and to hear his voice.

Only a dad, with a brood of four,

One of ten million men or more.

Plodding along in the daily strife,

Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,

With never a whimper of pain or hate,

For the sake of those who at home await.

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,

Merely one of the surging crowd

Toiling, striving from day to day,

Facing whatever may come his way,

Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,

And bearing it all for the love of them.

Only a dad, but he gives his all

To smooth the way for his children small,

Doing, with courage stern and grim,

The deeds that his father did for him.

This is the line that for him I pen,

Only a dad, but the best of men.