HAPPY FATHER'S DAY ISC

[Al's Fastball News]

>From: Frank Trejo <franktrejo1257(at)hotmail.com>


My name is Frank Trejo. Back in the ‘60s I participated in ISC
ball. It was a wonderful experience – I even wrote a book about
it. The title was “Going Around 3rd Base in Life and Headed Home.”
In it I posted an essay I read in a book many years ago. It is
a gripping story of a father disturbed by many guilt feelings
of the lousy job he was doing as a father. Please share it with
others – kinda like a wakeup call. You may want to read my bio
at www.trejobarrio.com. A little silly but a lot of humor. I
changed the title to “Barrio Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
HAPPY FATHERS DAY – ISC PERSONNEL!
                                               FATHER FORGETS

                                              By Livingston Larned.


‘Listen, son: I am saying this, as you lay asleep, one little
paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls sticking to
your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just
a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library,
a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to
your bedside.
These are things, I was thinking, son: I have been cross to you.
I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave
your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not
cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some
of your things on the floor. 
    ‘At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You
gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You
spread butter too thick on your bread.  And as you started off
to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand
called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold
your shoulders back!”    
‘Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came
up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles.
There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your
boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house.  Stockings
were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more
careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
‘Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how
you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When
I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you
hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.
‘You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge,
and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me and your small
arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in
your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then
you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
‘Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from
my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has
habit been doing to me? The habit of finding a fault, of reprimanding
– this was my reward to you for being a boy.  It was not that
I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth.
I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
‘And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your
character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself
over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse
to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight,
son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have
knelt there, ashamed!
‘It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these
things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow
I will be a real daddy!  I will chum with you, and suffer when
you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when
impatient words come. 
I will keep saying as if it were a ritual:  ‘He is nothing but
a boy – a little boy!”
‘I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you
now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are
still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your
head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.”… End
of essay.                                                   
   
“God is in my mind. Heaven is in my heart.” Thanks to my immigrant
father. I loved him so much.
e-mail: franktrejo1257(at)hotmail.com
 
     

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