Category Archives: Family

One of my favorite poems for Father’s Day

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Only a Dad

By Edgar Albert Guest

Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.

 Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.

 Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd,
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.

 Only a dad but he gives his all,
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing with courage stern and grim
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen:
Only a dad, but the best of men.

Father’s Day Jokes

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A college boy wrote his father, “I can’t understand how you can call yourself a kind parent when you haven’t sent me a check in two months.! What kind of kindness is that?”

The father replied, “Son, that’s called ‘unremitting’ kindness.”
~~~~~~~~~~

Tom had won a toy in a contest. He called his kids together
to ask which one should have the present.

“Who is the most obedient?” he asked. “Who never talks
back to mother? Who does everything she says?”

Five small voices answered in unison:

“Okay, Dad, you get the toy.”
~~~~~~~~~~

The coed came running in tears to her father. “Dad, you gave me some terrible financial advice!” she cried.
“I did? What did I tell you?” said the dad.
“You told me to put my money in that big bank, and now that big bank is in trouble.”
“What are you talking about? That’s one of the largest banks in the world,” he said. “Surely there must be some mistake.”
“I don’t think so,” she sniffed. “They just returned one of my checks with a note saying, ‘Insufficient Funds’.”
~~~~~~~~~~

One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her small boy into bed. She was about to turn off the light when he asked with a tremor in his voice, “Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?”

The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. “I can’t dear,” she said. “I have to sleep in Daddy’s room.”

A long silence was broken at last by a shaken little voice saying, “The big sissy.”
~~~~~~~~~~

One night a wife found her husband standing over their newborn baby’s crib. Silently she watched him. As he stood looking down at the sleeping infant, she saw on his face a mixture of emotions: disbelief, doubt, delight, amazement, enchantment, skepticism.
Touched by this unusual display and the deep emotions it aroused, with eyes glistening she slipped her arms around her husband.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she whispered in his ear.

“It’s amazing!” he replied. “I just can’t see how anybody can make a crib like that for only $66.95!”
~~~~~~~~~~

Junior had just received his brand new driver’s license. The family trooped out to the driveway, and climbed into the car, where he was about to take them for a ride for the first time.

Dad immediately headed for the back seat, directly behind the newly minted driver.

“I’ll bet you’re back there to get a change of scenery after all those months of sitting in the front passenger seat teaching me how to drive,” said the beaming boy to the ol’ man.

“Nope,” came dad’s reply, “I’m gonna sit here and kick the back of your seat as you drive, just like you’ve been doing to me all these years.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Fathers of 1900 and Fathers of Today:

In 1900, if a father put a roof over his family’s head, he was a success.
Today, it takes a roof, deck, pool, and 4-car garage. And that’s just the vacation home.

In 1900, a father waited for the doctor to tell him when the baby arrived.
Today, a father must wear a smock, know how to breathe, and make sure film is in the video camera.

In 1900, fathers could count on children to join the family business.
Today, fathers pray their kids will soon come home from college long enough to teach them how to work the computer and set the VCR.

In 1900, fathers shook their children gently and whispered, “Wake up, it’s time for school.”
Today, kids shake their fathers violently at 4 a.m., shouting: “Wake up, it’s time for hockey practice.”

In 1900, a father came home from work to find his wife and children at the supper table.
Today, a father comes home to a note: “Jimmy’s at baseball, Cindy’s at gymnastics, I’m at gym, Pizza in fridge.”

In 1900, a Father’s Day gift would be a hand tool.
Today, he’ll get a digital organizer.

In 1900, “a good day at the market” meant Father brought home feed for the horses.
Today, “a good day at the market” means Dad got in early on an IPO.

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Paul Harvey on Fathers

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Some of you may remember Paul Harvey’s radio broadcasts with “the rest of the story.” I don’t know, are those still on any more? I found this some years back and love it: it’s one of my favorite pieces about fathers (though of course the theology here and there is off — but I am posting it for the sentiment about fathers).

A father is a thing that is forced to endure childbirth, without an anesthetic.

A father is a thing that growls when it feels good–and laughs loud when it’s scared half to death.

A father never feels entirely worthy of worship in his child’s eyes. He never is quite the hero his daughter thinks, never quite the man his son believes him to be. This worries him, sometimes, so he works too hard to try and smooth the rough places in the road for those of his own who will follow him.

A father is a thing that gets very angry when school grades aren’t as good as he thinks they should be. He scolds his son although he knows it’s the teacher’s fault.

Fathers grow old faster than other people.

And while mothers can cry where it shows, fathers stand there and beam outside–and die inside. Fathers have very stout hearts, so they have to be broken sometimes or no one would know what is inside. Fathers give daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than anybody’s. Fathers fight dragons almost daily. They hurry away from the breakfast table, off to the arena which is sometimes called an office or a workshop…where they tackle the dragon with three heads: Weariness, Work and Monotony.

Knights in shining armor.

Fathers make bets with insurance companies about who will live the longest. Though they know the odds, they keep right on betting. Even as the odds get higher and higher, they keep right on betting more and more.

And one day they lose.

But fathers enjoy an earthly immortality and the bet is paid off to the part of him he leaves behind.

I don’t know where fathers go when they die. But I have an idea that after a good rest, he won’t be happy unless there is work to do. He won’t just sit on a cloud and wait for the girl he’s loved and the children she bore. He’ll be busy there, too…oiling the gates, smoothing the way.

Father’s Day Quotes

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Father's Day Quotes


1. To be popular at home is a great achievement. The man who is loved by the house cat, by the dog, by the neighbor’s children, and by his own wife, is a great man, even if he has never had his name in Who’s Who. ~ Thomas Dreier

2. “A man’s children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season.” ~Author Unknown

3. “A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be.” ~ Author Unknown

4. “None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of SUCH a Father who has not his equal in this world-so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don’t be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal.”
~ Victoria, Queen of England

5. “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” ~ William Shakespeare

6. He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care. ~ William Penn

7. A father is someone you look up to, no matter how tall you grow.

8. Fathers are people who give their daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than any body’s.

9. The father will be too small or too busy to interest the big boy if he counts himself too big or too busy to be interested in the little boy. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

10. “By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder, infinitely prouder, to be a father.” ~ General Douglas MacArthur

11.“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” George Herbert

12. By the time a man realizes that his father was usually right, he has a son who thinks he’s usually wrong.

13. If you want your child to talk to you when he is 15, listen to him when he is 5.

 

A few poems for Father’s Day

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FATHER

Out in the morning Father goes,
Whether it pours with rain or snows,
Whether the wild wind beats and blows:–
By the fire sit Mother and I
Doing our lessons quietly.
Back in the twilight Father comes,
When I’ve finished with books and sums.
Not all the noise of all the drums
Is a jollier noise, I know,
Than Father when he says, “Hallo!”

~Author Unknown~

Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young,
Who loved thee so fondly as he?
He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue,
And joined in thy innocent glee.
~ Margaret Courtney

Two Prayers

Last night my little boy confessed to me
Some childish wrong;
And kneeling at my knee
He prayed with tears–
Dear God, make me a man
Like Daddy–wise and strong;
I know you can.
Then while he slept
I knelt beside his bed,
Confessed my sins,
And prayed with low-bowed head.
O God, make me a child
Like my child here–
Pure, guileless,
Trusting Thee with faith sincere.

~ Andrew Gillies

(The beautiful graphics are courtesy of Snapshots of Joy.) 

Fathers and sons, good and bad

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In light of Father’s Day coming up this Sunday, I will be posting several things relating to fathers from my files throughout this week.

The following is from Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot, published by Vine Books in 1995.

While visiting [a] Bible College in South Carolina, I found in the library a little book called Father and Son, written by my grandfather, Philip E. Howard. He writes:

“Do you remember that encouraging word of Thomas Fuller’s, a chaplain of Oliver Cromwell’s time? It’s a good passage for a father in all humility and gratitude to tuck away in his memory treasures:

“’Lord, I find the genealogy of my Savior strangely checkered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations.

Rehoboam begat Abijah; that is, a bad father begat a bad son.
Abijah begat Asa; that is, a bad father begat a good son.
Asa begat Jehoshaphat; that is, a good father begat a good son.
Jehoshaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father begat a bad son.

I see, Lord, from hence that my father’s piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.’”

Show and Tell Friday: My grandmother

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show-and-tell.jpg Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts the “Show and Tell Friday,” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky.“

My mother’s mother passed away when I was about four. A few weeks ago I was thinking about her and realizing how little I actually knew about her as a person, so I wrote to my my aunt, my mother’s sister, and asked her a bunch of questions about her.

I had forgotten about that until my aunt called me this morning (Thursday). Her voice was about the last I had expected to hear when I picked up the phone! We chatted for a while, catching up with various family members, and then she began to answer some of my questions about my grandmother. I had grabbed a pen and tablet of paper and was furiously trying to jot things down as she spoke.

I learned that “Memaw” had always been thin and had gone to college to become a P. E. teacher (somehow I didn’t inherit either of those genes, thinness or athleticism!) She left college to get married. She loved music and played the piano. My aunt said she had a mental image of her mom playing the piano and her dad standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at the music and singing along.

She passed away from cancer when she was only 48. She had ovarian cancer and waited too long to deal with it, then one of her ovaries burst. They did surgery, but the cancer spread to her colon. She had radiation, but they did too much of it and she suffered burns from it. They tried chemotherapy, which at that time they had to sign off on as an experimental procedure. She told my aunt she would have never gone through with the chemo except that Papaw so wanted her to be able to live longer.

Even with feeling so awful and the outlook not very promising, in the hospital she told everyone not to feel sorry for her, because she had gotten to see her kids grow up and to see many of her grandkids. She said, if you want to feel sad for someone, go to the children’s ward.

I so enjoyed not only the conversation with my aunt but getting a better picture in my mind of my grandmother as a person. I’m so glad my aunt took the time to call.

Over the years I have really grown to love the idea of family treasures to pass down to the generations — not expensive things, but sentimental things. I’ve so — not envied, exactly, when I have heard or read other people talking about things passed down from the their loved ones, but just regretted that for various reasons our family has not passed things down or has lost some items along the way during moves. But a few months ago while cleaning out a desk I rediscovered some pictures my mom had sent me before she passed away. These were pictures she had sent to her parents that eventually had gotten back to her after both her parents were gone. In that package was this special picture of my grandparents holding me when I was a baby.

It is a treasure to me not only because of who they are, but because it is one of the few mementos I have of them, made all the more precious to me today because my mental picture has been fleshed out a little more by the conversation today with my dear aunt.

Time Travel Tuesday: Memories With Dad

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The topic for this week’s Time Travel Tuesday, created and hosted by My Life as Annie, is “Memories with Dad.”

She says:

We’re traveling back to special memories of our dad’s this week.
What are some special memories or a special memory you have of/or with your dad?
Any sayings that only come from him?
Any interesting lessons you learned from your dad?

As I wrote earlier, my dad and I did not always have the best relationship. Yet I have little snapshots of pleasant memories, especially from the early years…

I remember being afraid in my bed one night, then I thought about my dad’s big knife and trusted that he could take care of any bad guys that might invade our home.

I remember him brushing my hair and commenting about how beautiful the color was.

I remember waking up in his arms one night when I had fallen asleep somewhere and he was taking me to my bed. He stopped in the hallway where my mom brushed my hair back and told me good night and they murmured those loving things parents say when their kids are asleep. I remember pretending I was still asleep because I was enjoying the moment so much. 🙂

I remember that my dad had a motor scooter at one time. When I was young, everyone in our neighborhood would come out to their front yards after dinner with lawn chairs and watch the kids play and visit with each other. My dad would sometimes take kids in the neighborhood for rides up and down the street on his scooter.

I remember that when anyone in my family had a birthday, that person got to pick the meal for dinner, and my dad always chose corned beef and cabbage.

I remember that my dad was a welder and often repaired things for friends at home. I remember him in his big protective helmet cautioning us kids not to look at the sparks the welding made or get too close.

I remember on the Fourth of July he liked to get a lot of fireworks — not the noisy kinds but the kinds that made pretty patterns in the sky.

When it comes to lessons, the one overriding lesson I earned from him was respect: respect for authority, for elders, for country. Even respect for God, in a way — he was not a believer until late in life, bet I never heard him say or do anything irreverent, and he was always respectful of preachers who stopped by.

To participate in Time Travel Tuesday, click the picture above.

Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt: Cooked/Cooking

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This is Jim, Master Griller. 🙂 You can see part of Suzie, the dog, to the left waiting for her portion.

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Jeremy and Jason several years ago helping to make Christmas cookies:

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And Jesse, making a “rainbow cake” for a contest. Our church has “family camp” on Wednesday nights during the summer, with a fellowship afterward with different types of foods each week. On certain nights, like cake or pie nights, there is a contest for different age levels, and this was Jesse’s entry for the kids’ division. If I remember, you just make a regular yellow cake mix, then divide it into 3 parts and put different food coloring into each bowl; then pour each bowl into a bundt pan, and as it rises and bakes it looks like a rainbow. I am not sure why Jesse’s expression is such as it is. Maybe he is protecting his creation from predators before the contest. 🙂

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And with my hands in the middle picture and me in the background in the picture above, there you have the whole family cooking.