Father's Day
Title
Father's Day
Creator
Jacob Schlitt
Description
"It is Saturday, and tomorrow, it will be Father’s Day."
Date
2016-06
Format
application/pdf
Type
text
Language
en
Identifier
FATHER'S_DAY
Text
FATHER’S DAY
It is Saturday, and tomorrow, it will be Father’s Day. Growing up, I made it a point to ignore the day. Make believe it did not exist. While my friends may have bought a tie or some other gift for their fathers, I figured I am saving money. What I would have spent on a Father’s Day gift and card, I would add to what I would get for my mother on the following Mother’s Day, 11 months later.
However, some time during the day, my mind might wander. What would it have been like if my father had not died when I was three? I would try to picture my friends’ fathers. Which one would my father have been like? Unfortunately, when I was six or seven, I really did not know my friends’ fathers. They were very vague. Larry Wilson’s father. Miltie Greenspan’s father. I never saw them. It was the depression. I assume they were garment workers. When I would go to Larry or Miltie’s apartment, there was only their mother. I knew Edmund Handwerger’s father because he ran the dry cleaning store around the corner. He and his wife were always working. That was the picture of fathers when I was growing up: men who were not at home, always working. They did not play ball with their kids. They did not take them anywhere. Not to ballgames, not to parks, not on picnics. I could not even picture them playing with my friends at home. I did not feel I was missing anything.
When I was in my teens, I found my closest friends, and would visit them in their homes, and actually got to see their fathers. My impression: They also worked hard and spent whatever time at home reading the newspaper. Bob’s father read The Tog, a Yiddish newspaper, and Sid’s father read the Daily Mirror. He also smoked a pipe. When I would come in, they might have said hello, and kept on reading. I did not visit Alex much. However, I was impressed that his father was tall. Everyone else’s father was short. Mel had moved out of the neighborhood, and Sol and Phil, like me, did not have fathers.
The two father figures in my life were my cousins Louis and Arthur, but they were not of my parents’ generation. They were American born, Louis taught high school biology, and Arthur was a men’s clothing salesman. I could not imagine being lucky enough to have had a father like either of them. My father, like most of my friends’ fathers, would have spoken with an accent, and would have been too busy trying to make a living to have any time for me.
Having been married twice, I had the opportunity to have had two fathers-in-law. Amazingly, they were almost identical. I would have expected them to be like my friends’ fathers, but they weren’t. They were both hard workers, but they never made a success at their work: Sam Feig as a butcher, and Martin Morrill as a small business man—junk dealer and small storekeeper. They were both “farbisineh” embittered. They both had uncomplaining wives, and children who made a fuss over them on Father’s Day.
In 1955, I became a father. It took less than a year for my wife and child to begin to make a fuss over me on the occasion of Father’s Day. And it has continued each year since then. I just realized: This is the 60th anniversary of my Father’s Day celebrations! How was it celebrated? What I remember are cards. And special meals. And gifts: first and foremost something made by my children, then articles of clothing, books, and a progression of music from records to cassettes to CDs. All saying “I love you.” Occasionally, we would go out to dinner, but more frequently it was the “special meal.” Going to the theatre was a special Father’s Day treat.
Since Father’s Day is the third Sunday in June, and my first wife’s birthday is June 18, the two occasions frequently coincided, so we would have a joint celebration. Two for the price of one. It would put a strain on our children’s finances in the early days. Pre-teens did not have a lot of money, but a drawing and a card did not take a lot of money, and to me, they were priceless.
These days, a card and a phone call fill the bill. Now that I have three grandchildren, their parents have to remind them to wish grandpa a Happy Father’s Day. I suspect this is usually done by their mothers buying greeting cards and having them sign them, and if they are not too resistant, having them call me. And since I send my daughters Mother’s Day cards, I feel I should send my sons-in-law Father’s Day cards.
Rereading the above, my mind started wandering, as it may have done when I was much younger: What kind of father was I? Oh, I loved my children, perhaps more than I can say here. I took pride in all their accomplishments. I tried to spend time with them, play with them, take them places, including summer vacations, concerts, museums, talk to them about what is important to me, which I hoped would be important to them. I worried about them, as the official family worrier, and I tried to guide them, lightly. But then I wondered if my work took me away from them too much. The day-to-day “chores” of raising children were carried by their mother.
Becoming a father in mid-20th century America was great timing. It was a great time to have finished school, started work, started raising a family, being politically active, and then transmitting our values to our children. My friends and I were in the right place at the right time. We had the good fortune to have children in the right place at the right time. Now on Father’s Day 2016, we can sit back, count our blessings, go to the mailbox and remove our Father’s Day cards, wait for the phone to ring, and receive expressions of love from our children, and maybe even from our grandchildren.
Happy Father’s Day!
It is Saturday, and tomorrow, it will be Father’s Day. Growing up, I made it a point to ignore the day. Make believe it did not exist. While my friends may have bought a tie or some other gift for their fathers, I figured I am saving money. What I would have spent on a Father’s Day gift and card, I would add to what I would get for my mother on the following Mother’s Day, 11 months later.
However, some time during the day, my mind might wander. What would it have been like if my father had not died when I was three? I would try to picture my friends’ fathers. Which one would my father have been like? Unfortunately, when I was six or seven, I really did not know my friends’ fathers. They were very vague. Larry Wilson’s father. Miltie Greenspan’s father. I never saw them. It was the depression. I assume they were garment workers. When I would go to Larry or Miltie’s apartment, there was only their mother. I knew Edmund Handwerger’s father because he ran the dry cleaning store around the corner. He and his wife were always working. That was the picture of fathers when I was growing up: men who were not at home, always working. They did not play ball with their kids. They did not take them anywhere. Not to ballgames, not to parks, not on picnics. I could not even picture them playing with my friends at home. I did not feel I was missing anything.
When I was in my teens, I found my closest friends, and would visit them in their homes, and actually got to see their fathers. My impression: They also worked hard and spent whatever time at home reading the newspaper. Bob’s father read The Tog, a Yiddish newspaper, and Sid’s father read the Daily Mirror. He also smoked a pipe. When I would come in, they might have said hello, and kept on reading. I did not visit Alex much. However, I was impressed that his father was tall. Everyone else’s father was short. Mel had moved out of the neighborhood, and Sol and Phil, like me, did not have fathers.
The two father figures in my life were my cousins Louis and Arthur, but they were not of my parents’ generation. They were American born, Louis taught high school biology, and Arthur was a men’s clothing salesman. I could not imagine being lucky enough to have had a father like either of them. My father, like most of my friends’ fathers, would have spoken with an accent, and would have been too busy trying to make a living to have any time for me.
Having been married twice, I had the opportunity to have had two fathers-in-law. Amazingly, they were almost identical. I would have expected them to be like my friends’ fathers, but they weren’t. They were both hard workers, but they never made a success at their work: Sam Feig as a butcher, and Martin Morrill as a small business man—junk dealer and small storekeeper. They were both “farbisineh” embittered. They both had uncomplaining wives, and children who made a fuss over them on Father’s Day.
In 1955, I became a father. It took less than a year for my wife and child to begin to make a fuss over me on the occasion of Father’s Day. And it has continued each year since then. I just realized: This is the 60th anniversary of my Father’s Day celebrations! How was it celebrated? What I remember are cards. And special meals. And gifts: first and foremost something made by my children, then articles of clothing, books, and a progression of music from records to cassettes to CDs. All saying “I love you.” Occasionally, we would go out to dinner, but more frequently it was the “special meal.” Going to the theatre was a special Father’s Day treat.
Since Father’s Day is the third Sunday in June, and my first wife’s birthday is June 18, the two occasions frequently coincided, so we would have a joint celebration. Two for the price of one. It would put a strain on our children’s finances in the early days. Pre-teens did not have a lot of money, but a drawing and a card did not take a lot of money, and to me, they were priceless.
These days, a card and a phone call fill the bill. Now that I have three grandchildren, their parents have to remind them to wish grandpa a Happy Father’s Day. I suspect this is usually done by their mothers buying greeting cards and having them sign them, and if they are not too resistant, having them call me. And since I send my daughters Mother’s Day cards, I feel I should send my sons-in-law Father’s Day cards.
Rereading the above, my mind started wandering, as it may have done when I was much younger: What kind of father was I? Oh, I loved my children, perhaps more than I can say here. I took pride in all their accomplishments. I tried to spend time with them, play with them, take them places, including summer vacations, concerts, museums, talk to them about what is important to me, which I hoped would be important to them. I worried about them, as the official family worrier, and I tried to guide them, lightly. But then I wondered if my work took me away from them too much. The day-to-day “chores” of raising children were carried by their mother.
Becoming a father in mid-20th century America was great timing. It was a great time to have finished school, started work, started raising a family, being politically active, and then transmitting our values to our children. My friends and I were in the right place at the right time. We had the good fortune to have children in the right place at the right time. Now on Father’s Day 2016, we can sit back, count our blessings, go to the mailbox and remove our Father’s Day cards, wait for the phone to ring, and receive expressions of love from our children, and maybe even from our grandchildren.
Happy Father’s Day!
Original Format
application/msword
Collection
Citation
Jacob Schlitt, “Father's Day,” Autobiographical stories & other writing by Jacob Schlitt, accessed September 11, 2024, https://tsirlson.omeka.net/items/show/386.