What is a father?

[seymoure]

Wikipedia says: "A father is defined as a male parent of any type of offspring.[1] The adjective 'paternal' refers to father, parallel to 'maternal'" for mother. The verb 'to father' means to procreate or to sire a child from which also derives the gerund 'fathering.'" Though that hardly seems to touch on the truth of the thing. Baesball great Harmon Killebrew used to say: "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.'" If you want to go "Old School" then remember that William Wordsworth said: "Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name." If that is a bit much how about: "Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance." -Ruth E. Renkel. Of course, there's that quote always attributed to Mark twain: "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." In the original "Father of the Bride" Spencer Tracy said : "'Who giveth this woman?' This woman. But she's not a woman. She's still a child. And she's leaving us. What's it going to be like to come home and not find her? Not to hear her voice calling, 'Hi, Pops' as I come in? I suddenly realized what I was doing. I was giving up Kay. Something inside me began to hurt." The truth of truths is that, no matter what children think their father is trying to teach them, no matter what fathers want to teach, what they are is the example of how to deal with the world. Any father who keeps going, no matter the pain, the failures or the setbacks and continues to support, not just with money, but with love and understanding is doing all that a man can do in this life. To all the Sons and daughters of the world, "Happy Father's Day!" We father's don't need a holiday, we get to see the great men and women you are becoming as our reward.