Love your Dad.

Far too often, adult American children do not honor, respect, or even maintain any kind of ongoing positive relationship with their father. Many of these adult children will simply say that they are just too busy in their daily lives, others might say that their dad said or did something that upset them and consequently have consciously made a decision to eliminate their father from their lives. Whatever!
I say that there is no good legitimate reason to cast a father aside, as if he no longer exists, the exception being a father who has deliberately and with evil intent been abusive. I firmly believe that of which I profess.
I hold that perspective even though I have good reason not to. The fact is that I grew up without my father in the home or in my life until my adult years. I was born out of wedlock; and, my dad never acknowledged me when I was a child. Indeed, my mother, with the encouragement and support of my paternal grandmother, had to take my father to court in order to legally establish paternity. Complicating matters was the fact that my three older brothers in our home had a different father with whom my mother had been married and divorced, and who was the younger brother of my own father.
My mother maintained a close relationship with all her former in-laws, i.e. my paternal grandparents, my aunt, my uncles, and my cousins. Throughout my entire childhood and adolescence, we often visited my paternal grandparents while they were still alive, and also visit my uncles and aunt on my father’s side of the family; and, for a few years of my childhood, we all attended the large extended Danish paternal family annual Christmas Eve gatherings of which my father (who had married a woman other than my mother four months after my birth) attended, but did not speak with me. Everyone else at these Christmas Eve gatherings interacted with me in a very loving manner, including my uncle who was my mother’s former husband and the father of my three older brothers. Incidentally, I also had another much older brother who was also at these Christmas Eve gatherings and with whom I was very close; he was my father’s oldest and only other son, born from my father’s marriage to another woman who had died when my oldest brother was a very young toddler. This all made for a complicated childhood.
It wasn’t until I was 23 years old when my 13 year older brother took me in the spring of 1971 to visit our father that my father and I bonded. Thereafter, we did many things together. I visited my father almost every Saturday morning for 13 years until his sudden death in April 1984.
I had married in 1972, had children in 1973, 1974, and 1977, had a full time job, and was extremely active in a variety of community organizations. Even though I led a very busy life and even though my father had nothing to do with me prior to that initial visit I made to him in the spring of 1971, I made it a point to have and maintain an ongoing positive relationship with my dad and he did likewise. I made sure to take the time to be with my father. I did not hold a grudge against my father for his past exclusion of me; and, I did not allow my busy everyday life prevent me from being with my father.
My dad and I had a very wonderful, respectful, loving relationship the last 13 years of his life.
I am now 72 years old; and, I say to all adults who are fortunate enough to have a father still alive on this Earth, “Take the time to telephone your father, visit him, hug him, and let him know you care.”
LOVE YOUR DAD!