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Happy Father's Day
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Happy Father's Day ...written Jun 15, 11:04 AM by Jeff
This is my favorite poem about fathers; it is one I, as a father, think about a lot myself.
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
For their final exam two weeks ago, I asked my students to comment on this poem in relation to Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” in which a drunken father “dances” with his child; Roethke’s poem is pretty ambiguous about whether the child is enjoying the dance or terrified of the abuse. I expected my students to easily point out that Hayden’s poem was unambiguously positive: a father who quietly sacrifices for his child’s comfort.
But they didn’t. My students got hung up on line 9 about the “chronic angers” of the house. I can see their point, somewhat, but only a little. And I think they’re wrong, generally.
The point isn’t the chronic angers, but the father’s sacrifice. So long as we don’t create some backstory beyond what’s written, the father does love his child, and he is a model father. The father rises early and stokes the fire so as to make it better for his child. Despite his child’s indifference, the father persists. The father has no sense of entitlement; on the contrary, this is in addition to his week-long labor. The father takes the same route as Cliff Klingenhagen1, and partakes of the same mystery.
It is a mystery that I strive to enjoy, too. And happy father’s day, Pop.
——
1 by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Look it up.
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