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16-Jan-07, 20:18
I just love this story and wondered if you had stories like this yourself.


FATHER FORGETS



Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your beside.
These are the thing I was thinking, son: I had been cross with you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with the towel. I took you to task for not cleaning you shoes. I called out angrilywhen you threw some of your things on the floor.
A breakfast I found fault, too. you spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put you elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for the train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in you trousers. I humumiliated you before you friends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Trousers were expensive - and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that,son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door.
"What is it you want?" I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran accross in one tempestuous plung. and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hand and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habbit been doing to me? The habbit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward for you being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your beside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during you waking hours. But tommorow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"
I am affraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.


---------------------------- The End ---------------------------------------


A comment rests under this story that I like too.

Instead of condemning people. lets try to understand them. Lets try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. "To know all is to forgive all."
As Dr Johnson said: "God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days."
Why should you and I?

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Do you have any short 'heart-wrenching' or 'profound' stories like this?