Portraits of the Patriarchy
Father Time examines the progressive shift in modern fatherhood
Part 5
My fifth grade teacher Mrs. García introduced a new vocabulary word every day. Juxtapose. Cavort. Loquacious. Cohort. With the word written on the board, she would then pronounce it and define it. We would write it down in our vocabulary journals, then try using it in a sentence.
I loved this exercise. It activated my early love of language, and I credit Mrs. García for tuning my ear to big words.
The lesson was more about context than the size or sound of the word itself. She was asking us to define something based on the other words around it, or the way someone said it. This latter skill was one I honed early on in conjunction with one word my father used quite a lot. Cater.
Cater was the word he used to describe tending to me and my sisters. Not parent, or father, or cavort with. No, it was cater. As in “catering to the kids.” He used this phrase so often, around us and other family members, that it became ironic. Extended family members started to use it. It was all a big funny joke.
The context—the tone—was what got me though. I knew catering was a bad thing. To be catered to was even worse. That was his way of saying he didn’t really like doing what he was supposed to be doing as my father.
Oh, well. Lots of fathers today still refer to watching their own children as “babysitting.” You might also have heard, “Daddy Duty.” It’s all the same thing. It’s all another way to say catering.
Let’s be real, guys, getting your kids their food, drink, playing with them, taking them places, is parenthood. It’s what we signed up for. If we wanted something else—like a customer service experience—we should have applied at a hotel, say, in the banquet department. Then, only then, can we be complain about the guests.
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Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash