Fathers of Fathers

Last week, I had dinner with a couple of former college seminarians from my time as Rector of San Jose Seminary. One, now in Law School, was accompanied by his girlfriend; the other, a high school teacher, came with his wife and his soon-to-be-one-year-old son. "Lumaki na ang pamilya mo, Father," one of them said. The teacher said, "Father, may apo ka na." And when we said our farewells, the wife of the former seminarian instructed her child, "Bless lolo."

That same night, I woke up from a dream I have now forgotten. The only feeling left was concern about my mother, who is going to be 80 this year, has Parkinson's disease, and who needs companionship and care, more than I have been able to provide.

I suppose this is what it means to be in mid-life. It is a bittersweet feeling: to watch the generation you nurtured become nurturers in turn; at the same time, to become the parent of your parent. You feel that you are in the middle of generations, bearing responsibility for those who have come before you and those who come after you.

There's a beautifull song from an award-winning Off-Broadway revue called Closer than Ever, that captures this feeling poignantly for me. Entitled Fathers of Fathers, the song is sung by three men, at different stages of their lives as fathers.

The first verse is sung by a young father, as he holds, perhaps for the first time, his new born son:

Hey Billy, my baby,
Hey kid, look at me.
It’s clear you’ve got your mother’s eyes,
But who do they see?
The nurse just called me “Father.”
Well, hell, I guess that’s what I am.
But what makes her think I’m a family man?

Those fathers of fathers,
Fathers of mothers,
How can you know what it’s worth?
For all my aspiration
Are you to be the indication
That I walked the face of this earth?

The second verse is sung by an older man. He is alone because his children have grown up and left home:

My children, I miss you,
How much you can’t know.
I laughed with you, I cried with you,
Helped each of you grow.
I kissed you every bedtime,
Your laughter woke me every dawn.
Then one day I woke And you’d grown and gone.

And fathers of fathers,
Fathers of mothers,
Strange how kids measure your worth.
They’re here and then they scatter,
But in some way they make it matter
That I walked the face of this earth.

The final verse, perhaps most moving for me, is sung by a man at the bedside of his critically ill father:

Hey father, I love you,
I pray you’ll pull through.
You cared for me, it’s my turn now
To take care of you.
I’ve tried to show my children
The kind of strength you showed to me.
I feel such a longing to be a son,
Instead now I’m one of

Those fathers of fathers,
Fathers of mothers,
What man can say what it’s worth?
This commonest of pleasures,
Why should it be a thing that measures
That I walked the face of this earth?

That's where I am now, I suppose: I've become "a father of fathers, a father of mothers." It's a strange yet wonderful place to be in, a place of responsibility and pride, of loss and letting go, of being right smack in the middle of life's mysterious ebb and flow.


Note: If wish to listen to the song Fathers of Fathers, you will find it posted on my Music site.