Looking forward and back on Father's Day
Children and grandchildren keep you grounded and remind you of what's really important in life. Credit: Newsday/John Meore
One reflects on a day such as this. On Father's Day, some of us look forward and back.
Our family, part of it anyway, will be together and I know I'll be thinking of my father, no longer with us in the flesh but very much present in spirit, and my father-in-law, gone longer still but still just as much a part of us as ever.
Wise words will be remembered, as will actions that spoke louder. Tears and laughter will mingle in the measure of their lives.
My own measure is incomplete. But I will be taking it anyway, reflecting on my own three children and on my three — so far — grandchildren, even while understanding that the true measure of me will be taken later by them.
I know what they mean to me. You hope you mean the same to them.
There is a temptation to say blithely that your children — and especially, at my stage in life, grandchildren — keep you grounded and remind you of what's really important in life. And they do help one put things in some kind of proper perspective. Spend an hour with a grandchild and the world melts away.
The truth, of course, is that there is a lot in life that is really important. And all of it matters.
The look in your grandchildren's eyes doesn't diminish the awfulness of people attempting to erode our democracy.
Their lovable impishness as they get older doesn't lessen the horrors of the war in Ukraine or the many unjust persecutions perpetrated elsewhere in the world.
Their instant smiles of recognition bathe your heart with unconditional love, but it doesn't mean that one doesn't have to worry about the ways a changing climate is reshaping life on Earth.
On the contrary, those other things strengthen your desire to leave this Earth a better place for them. With grandchildren, I feel that desire ever more strongly. My own children are all adults now. The future I wanted to be better for them is now their present, and they can — and must — play their own part in shaping the world.
But the grandchildren?
Statistically speaking, they'll probably be here in 2100. And their grandchildren will be around until close to 2200. That's a whole lot of future. And a whole lot of time for things to really go off the rails, or get back on track. As their time unfolds before them like a wide and verdant meadow, my own time gets smaller, and the sense of urgency grows to help get something right for them.
The urge is stoked with each expression that says I'm watching you and listening to you and learning from you, with each look that says I already know more than you think I do — like, I already know how to get you to do things for me, with each attempt to speak through lips trying to form the shapes they saw in your own lips.
So you read the books, and sing the songs, and play the games, and point out the birds and clouds and flowers and cars and everything else you encounter on your walks in the neighborhood and through the woods and around the backyard, and you explain what it all means, hoping all the while that osmosis is working, while knowing that's a long-term game whose outcome you won't know for some time.
A faithful reader and wise sage recently wrote me to say, "Grandchildren: the salve for what ails you."
And the motive for what we do.
We celebrate that on this day, then work toward all the days to come.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
