You Never Stop Being A Father

or being a mother, for that matter.

*Welcome back to Fatherhood Friday. Be sure to visit Dad-Blogs to read some great postings about everything fatherhood.*


I never knew my paternal Grandfather, for he passed away before I was ever born. I heard my father tell enough stories of him, that I knew I had missed out on something good. A carpenter, husband and father of 8, he was not part of the diaper changing revolution. After all, in his generation, no men changed diapers - that waswomen's work. What he did do, was set an example of hard work and responsibility. He would not be caught dead 'babysitting', but he always provided for his family and treated his wife and children well. He set an example for his sons of what it meant to be a man.

When I was young, early grade school, my father worked shift work from 3pm-11pm at a meat packing plant. That shift was mostly a skeleton crew of machine maintenance after the day shift had gone home. He could go about his work mostly in solitude, without anyone looking over his shoulder constantly, that he knew of anyway.

When I was a young adult, my father shared with me a special memory he had of those days.

One night, during an especially stressed filled time in his life, while working alone in the packing plant, he was having a particularly hard time with a piece of machinery. Two interlocking pieces simply would not lock back together. He knew that they had to be just right in order to fit and the harder he tried, the more frustrated he grew. He could feel his blood pressure rising as he grew angrier that even such a simple task wouldn't go his way. Sitting alone and swearing to himself, equally frustrated about his life's current woes and the machine parts that refused to cooperate.

Suddenly and calmly he felt a firm and supporting hand on his shoulder and his father's voice, "Relax Jim. Be patient and relax and it will all be okay". Dad said that this soothed him enough to take a deep breath and continue working, now in a peaceful manner. Within a minute or so the pieces slipped together and locked with ease. He went about the rest of his shift with new found calmness as all of his frustration left him.

I'm not sure why Dad had shared this story with me, for he had never told this to anyone else, including my mother, a fact that I did not know until well after his own passing 11 years ago. This story had always stuck with me and for me has gained me the knowledge that fatherhood is a job that never ends.