I posted this poem in the comments section of an article a year or two ago. I’m posting it here in honour of my dad. He grew up in the northern prairie where the boreal forests that stretch across the continent meet the farmland. He lived most of his childhood without flush toilets, electricity or television and watched his dad die as the result of a logging accident when he was just 15. I always thought he was a little too harsh when I was a kid but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that some people show their love more through deeds than through words. That’s my dad. He taught us kids to be honest, to work hard and to be ourselves and not worry about what others thought of us. He always used to tell us that you can buy a lot of things but not your integrity. Once you blow that no amount of money can get it back for you. He lived his life by that mantra.
This poem is a tribute to him and to the other the dads like him that occupy love’s austere and lonely offices….
Those Winter Sundays
By Robert Hayden, 1913 – 1980
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
That is strong. I like it.
That’s a great poem.
You were a lucky man to have a Father like that.
Indeed. Thank God for good fathers.