This is a story about Father’s Day, but bear with me.

Sometimes, suddenly, I become full of fear about my job or my health or a relationship with someone. There will be no basis for this fear, but there I’ll be, worried something awful is going to happen, leaving me high and dry, terribly sick or dead, or lonely. Crazy, huh?

Fear will then become coupled with resentment. After I’ve gotten a good, irrational fear going, I’ll react by getting mad at my employer or my friend or God.

Before long I’m fighting a battle of the mind, defending myself against all charges when I realize there are no charges. Then I’m ashamed of myself and start feeling guilty for having been mad for no reason.

This, of course, leads to feelings of self-justification, some “legitimate” displeasure. I figure it’s not right that I have to be going through and emotional wringer all the time. God has it in for me. Then I realize I’m in an emotional wringer all right: the spin cycle.

Don’t laugh. People do go through all these ugly feelings, all for no reason. I know they do because I do. You may be perfectly at ease all the time, but I’m not.

My emotions become convoluted and I get mad and fly off the handle at my wife and/or my kids. I worry. I feel like a failure. I feel like what’s the use.

This is still about Father’s Day, so hang in there.

I have found that there’s nothing like a dose of honesty in the midst of emotional turmoil to cure what ails you. You’ve seen it on the silver screen. The soldier is hysterical and somebody slaps his face. In my own experience, I can become a knot of self-pitying gush born of irrational fear and somebody will call me a big baby. Nothing like a little humility (read: truth) to bring a person to his senses.

I was driving back to the old homeplace the other day. It takes a while to get there and usually I’m lost in thought by the time I arrive – no longer simply driving, but riding and emotional rollercoaster. A lot of nostalgia seeps into the cracks of my consciousness and I get excited-wan about the old days.

This trip, I made a pit stop at the Dairy Queen in Loogootee, my head full of visions and gushy feelings not about the past, but about illusions about the past. Inside the Dairy Queen john, a young father was helping his little boy with his britches. This proved to be my slap in the face, the truth that brought me back.

Back on the road, the sweetness of the child’s voice and the tenderness of the father’s rang in my ears, as I recalled the simplicity of the task that confronts every father and son at one time or another. It may not seem like much, but it’s quite something, really, for a dad and his boy to make happen and work out okay. It takes patience and cooperation. It takes the dad’s responsibility and the boy’s trust. It takes uncompromising, unconditional love.

In this case, their circumstances reminded me of mine: the truth that I’m a dad, too, and despite what was or what I thought I was, despite what crazy feelings invade my consciousness, despite my propensity for self-pity and getting mad at the world – I’ve got kids who depend on me. They look to me not only for food and shelter (they take that for granted), but also they expect, ahem, emotional maturity (they don’t know they expect that).

Yep, that does it for me. When I get on an emotional jag, all I have to do is remember I’m a dad, that straightens me right out. See, I told you this was about Father’s Day.

By the way, I thought about that father with his little boy. I remembered mine when they were that little. It made me cry. – T.R.


written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 21st, 1987