Knock Knock, Father

My good friend Robert Gelinas passes this powerful video clip along from poet/actor Daniel Beaty. Robert comments: “This weekend is so bittersweet for those of us who grew up without fathers. The statistics are 40% of all children and 70+% of African-Americans grow up without a man in the house. It creates a pain and longing that lasts a lifetime.”

I was moved by the clip, but perhaps even more moved by this small snippet from Robert’s childhood: “I still remember my grandmother taking me to a department store and flagging down a random store clerk in the men’s section and asking him if he would teach me how to tie a tie. Till this day I don’t know who that man was but even now, through my tears, I say, ‘Thank you.’” (More thoughts from Robert’s wonderful blog post here.)

Not a day goes by, much less Fathers Day, when I do not feel overwhelmingly grateful for my own father, Fred Dewey. He has fathered me well every day of my life. I can’t count the ways, but something about Father’s Day always reminds me of one particular way. My Dad continues to teach me, much more by example than words, what it means to love the fatherless.

My father often expresses his ambition to “love well.” By this he means a way of loving that is attentive, sacrificial, and sustained. It has a tender quality that deepens connections over time, and empowers the one loved. The remarkable thing is how, in addition to loving his own birth children, he has allowed this love to overflow lavishly to so many whose lifetime pain and longing is having been abandoned by their fathers and mothers. Oh what a healing balm my father’s love has been for them.

Just one of many examples is Cireaşa, with Dad above. When I snapped this shot in 2004, she lived in circumstances of severe abuse and neglect in Romania. Dad and Mom helped rescue her from that setting and have loved and guided her into a beautiful young adulthood. (She could not be adopted internationally, so they moved – for much of each year – to be with her and others in Romania.) Dad means the world to Cireaşa, as anyone can see by the sparkle in her eyes whenever they are together.

I have many loved ones who share Robert Gelinas’s and Daniel Beaty’s experience. Maybe because of them, there is nothing I value more than my father’s example of love for the fatherless and motherless of the world.

Thanks, Dad, for opening the door of your whole life to me and so many children who have knocked.