The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
-- Theodore Hesburgh
Heat of Departure
Ninety degrees of thick, rude heat — a summer guest
we can’t get rid of — hovering over our city,
our brick house. Yet our son, who’s leaving home
tomorrow, we wish would stay. No ac in his room,
but a window unit in ours for wicked waves like this.
He’s almost eighteen. Can’t sleep, he says, and, though
he’s refused our offer before, now he quickly slips
his mattress onto the floor in our room and plops
down: Six foot five, a man turned back
into a boy before us. The heat, we all keep
saying, it’s awful. In the morning I rise early
and shut off the ac just to hear him breathing.
-- Jim Daniels
It is a wise father that knows his child.
-- William Shakespeare
When I first read the poem above, I didn't realize it was written by a man. When I noticed that, it changed something for me. It tapped something, like the door of my heart, and I realized I am feeling some of the same things. Sneaking up on me, I too am feeling the 'heat' of departure. Though I've barricaded this door with my mind, the thief is still stealing my heart. I am slowing watching my children fade into their adult lives and it is creating a 'missing', even the smallest of things...like breathing.
