FUSH, June 19, 2016
Tom Haushalter

I don’t remember exactly how old I was—nine or ten—but I can tell you exactly where I was the first time I heard the song, possibly folk music’s most famous cautionary tale, “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. My brothers and sister and I were in the car with Dad, passing through the corn and soybean fields in our little Indiana town, probably bound for sports practices, when the twangy, distorted first chords of the song came on the radio. And suddenly Dad shushed us and reaching to turn up the volume said, “I want us all to listen to this song. Listen to what it’s saying.” And so we did.

And we all know how it goes. A man becomes a father “in the usual way.” But before his boy is even talking and walking, there are planes to catch and bills to pay, and at all the most important moments in the boy’s life, the father’s away. “‘Can you teach me to throw?’ I said, ‘Not today, I got a lot to do.’ He said, ‘That’s OK.’”

There are many reasons why “Cat’s in the Cradle” is such an extraordinary song, why it’s a classic. At the young age I first heard it, I understood the lyrics’ subtle message, how carefully it defies your expectations of how it should end. And there’s something deeply American about it, isn’t there? How the sweet and moving melody of it almost, almost glosses right over the fact of the father’s absence, the boy’s abandonment. How American it is to maintain hope for a better tomorrow, our habit of making hollow promises: “We’ll get together then. You know we’ll have a good time then.”

That first listen stayed with me, I think, because the song didn’t end how I expected it to. This father and son never solved the problem. They managed to perpetuate it, without the presence of mind to realize it. The song taught me: Time passes, and when it does, it can be too late. Sometimes you miss a shot at redemption. Heavy themes for 9-year-old me!

Dad flipped the radio off when the song ended, and the car was quiet for several seconds. Then he said a few things about why it was so important that he and Mom spend as much time and do as many things and go as many places with us as possible. This was before I realized that the “things” and the “places” aren’t what really matter. Before I realized that this car ride, this time shared, this song and our reflection, our collective silence, his presence with us—this moment counted.

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Why do I find it so difficult to say what fatherhood means—what it means to father? And not to ask on behalf of only men, and men with children. But just as we did on Mother’s Day, opening motherhood and the mothering potential to all of us, to encourage the nurturing, life-giving qualities we all possess, how do we make fathering a universal trait?

Mothering traits are natural and inherent in all of us. They’re deeply human traits, aren’t they? But to be a father? That seems to keep changing over time, if we give any credence to cultural norms. To be a father has meant being the provider, the breadwinner, the disciplinarian, the one with the answers. Mercifully, those norms are shifting. Apparently now it’s acceptable for fathers to do all the things that mothers do, from diapers to packing school lunches to letting your children see you cry. Who knew!

In my experience, demands for providing and breadwinning, although I do contribute, are being seriously jeopardized by a profound wish to stay home, read poems, garden, and plan dinners. I’m mostly terrified to raise my voice, because my raised voice is terrifying. And I honestly don’t have many answers. I have a lot of pretty good guesses, but I admit I love to say, “Go ask your mother.”

You could call these “advances” in the area of fathering. You could. But much of what we speak of when we speak of fathering is conditional. It’s so often about what fathers do, and maybe how they’re getting better at what they do, as if that’s something we should celebrate, even though a lot of what fathers do better nowadays are things that mothers have been doing well forever.

I think to get closer to understanding what fathering is and means is to accept this—now bear with me—to accept that a father, from the beginning, at best is striving to overcome that gulf of intimacy between himself and the child—that beloved other—a gulf that doesn’t naturally exist between mother and child. So how do you compensate for that distance? What’s your first fatherly role? Protect and provide? Not that those are unwelcome traits. They certainly do arise in you. They are undeniable and true. They are things that a father might do. But they haven’t closed that gulf.

This may be part of the reason why thoughts of one’s father are painful to so many of us. Statistics estimate that 1 in 5 children in America grow up without a father figure present. Fatherlessness may not be exclusive to those whose fathers are physically absent. A father’s presence is also emotional, and we hear a lot in our culture about fathers’ emotional absence.

If I can attempt a definition, then, finally, a Sunday morning theory of what fathering means for all of us, it is that fathering is trying to solve the problem of connection, to overcome and close that distance, to erase the absence, to show up. Fatherhood is showing up. It isn’t anything you do. It’s being there. It’s showing up.

Who in your life do you need to show up for? Maybe it’s someone you’re with on a daily basis—a child, a parent, a partner, or friend—whom you work to remain mindfully present with, to carve out windows in your busy lives to do nothing, to listen to, to open up to and learn from. This can be really hard to be. Ask yourself how much of your life you can un-structure in order to allow for space to be together with those you care most deeply about. Showing up, after all, is as much a gift received as it is given.

Is there someone in your life you’ve been meaning to show up for but haven’t in the longest time? Someone weighing heavily on your heart. Now, there may be someone long-lost in your life with whom it may not be possible or even advisable to reconnect in a mutually meaningful way, so don’t try to be a hero about it. But do you have a friend who needs a friend right now? Who will you show up for?

Who can you thank today? Who might you owe an apology to?

Today I want us all to begin to embrace the power of our own presence in the lives of those we know and love and meet every day.

It won’t necessarily be because of anything you do that will matter, but because you were there, fully there, and listened, and saw, and were patient, and understanding, and erased the distance.

As in that beautiful poem we read, “The Gift,” by Li-Young Lee, he doesn’t remember the story his father told him, to soothe him as the splinter was removed. He recalls the tenderness of his hands, and simply the sound of his father’s voice: “a well of dark water, a prayer.”

I’d like to end with a word of gratitude, in honor of Father’s Day. Thank you to the fathers here today. Thank you for your presence and your flashes of tenderness.

I want to thank my Dad, who here’s today, who drove all the way from Cincinnati to be here. Thank you for the good chat at dinner the other night—for assuring me that, yes, Muhammad Ali was that good in his heyday, that he is still the greatest of all time. And I have loved every minute of watching the connection blossoming between you and Avery, simply in the way you’ve sat and listened to her tell you what the world is like.

Thank you all for showing up today and every day.

Amen.