Fathers

One of the only good things about catching the bus to and from work, is it gives me time to admire the eye candy. Sike. I go to work too early in the morning, the only people I see on the bus are too old or too young for me. So, because on buses and in other public places, I don't like people staring at me I try my hardest not to stare, instead I read books, almost interrupted, ha. Yesterday, I finished "The Bond" by The Three Doctors (Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins). It was a great book, which they wrote with the help of the journalist Margaret Bernstein. The book looked at each of their relationships with their parents, but most importantly with their fathers. It was great because it looked at a different part of their development, not as friends who bonded and motivated each other to be doctors. Instead it looked at another bond they shared, that of boys who were raised without the benefit of having extremely strong relationships with their fathers. For the most part they chronicled the events which led to the abscence of their fathers from their lives, and the lessons they learned from that experience, and the lessons they didn't get to learn from their fathers. Each was then raised by a single mother and or extended family. Though each admits a void in their life, they worked to atleast fill the void somewhat, by in adulthood actively working to reestablish a bond, and a real relationship with their fathers.

Admittedly, reading the book was a bit of an emotional experience for me. Given recent events in my life from graduating college to starting my first job and to some extent everyday life, I've too been made to think about those lessons, I didn't learn. A few weeks ago an acquaintance asked me, "You were raised by a single mother, weren't you? ... In a family of women?" Though there were men around my maternal grandfather who recently turned 80, and my mother's six brothers, the women raised the children. I thank God for the women who raised me, but over the years I've wondered time and again, how my life would be different, had I known my father.

Unlike The Three Docs I can't reconcile and reestablish a bond. My "father" died when I was two. We never met, there are no memories, there is no bond.

Though from time to time I still wonder what life may have been like had I had a father. I remember each day all I've accomplished because I've in many ways had to create my own definition of manhood, and not been steered by someone else's.