With Father's Day coming up, that movie got me to thinking about fatherhood, and how sometimes a man chooses it, and sometimes a man stumbles upon it. Either way, what matters most is not how he came to be a father. What matters most is how he chooses to live up to that awesome responsibility.
So, I did a little web surfing tonight, and found some other thoughts on fatherhood:
"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was."
- Anne Sexton
"Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance."
- Ruth E. Renkel
"My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."
- Clarence B. Kelland
"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."
- Charles Wadsworth
"What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity."
- Jean Paul Richter
"It is a wise father that knows his own child."
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
"It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.
- Mark Twain
"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person. He believed in me."
- Jim Valvano
"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love the most is soap-on-a-rope."
- Bill Cosby
"A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be."
- Frank A. Clark
"To become a father is not hard. To be a father is, however."
- Wilhelm Busch
"My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."
- Harmon Killebrew
"It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons."
- Johann Schiller
Finally, I'll end with this bit of practical advice:
Quote from Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968:
"Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again."
