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 bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were
dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I
took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you
threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your
elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you
started off to play and I made for my 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 your stockings. I humiliated
you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings
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 across in one tempestuous plunge, 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 hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What
has habit been doing to me?
The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding‐this was my reward to you for 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
bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But
tomorrow 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 afraid 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.
