The Greatest Gift a Father Can Give His Son

The greatest gift is something I have never truly received; I don’t think any of us who live here have to be honest with you.

I was overhearing a conversation a while back in the community. A moment of complete and utter transparency that was rare for a man of a certain age.

It was Father’s Day, and our local community was trying to have a sit-down discussion with fathers whose sons and daughters were of different generations. The elder speaking was perhaps a few years older than my own father and mother, so his son would be my senior by a few years, too naturally.

He spoke passionately about his experiences growing up, and how that transferred to his son, who was rather “unique,” he described it. However, I can only imagine that perhaps that wasn’t the word he would have utilized back then.

He described himself as simple.

Spoke of his son as enjoying “the finer things in life.”

He was a hardworking blue-collar man.

His son had artistic and musical ambitions. A debate that I suppose is as old as time. The practical, simple man and the eccentric and intellectual son he is raising. I’ve heard this story a million times as it changed faces and cultures. And just like the way it carries this universal hue, the climax is the same here. The elder began to choke up, reflecting on the fact that his and his son’s differences almost separated them forever. Divine intervention and advice from a peer helped mend the rift.

There’s part of me that wished his son was there to give his side of the story. To hear the nuances he’d play on his instrument we call the human heart. But most of me knew that pain, my blood-pumping organ memorized that song, and found myself spiralling in thought.

“Why couldn’t this father “accept” his son for who he was?”

“Why did it take a possible breakdown that would end everything for him to come to the table and learn, not instruct, debate, chastise, or lecture, but to learn who was the man his son was becoming?”

Even now, all I have are theories, nothing concrete. But still a theory that I can stand on. It rests in a past piece I wrote. About fathers and mothers who garner a sense of empathy for the opposite sex only when they have access to those experiences when raising children of the opposite sex.

Fathers who learn empathy and begin to shed their gruff exterior for their “baby girl.”

Mothers who begin to learn to compartmentalize patriarchy when they hold their son’s soft baby hands.

Between that sat a more nuanced conversation that was microscopic to some and revealed so much to others. For every little girl that got her father’s love, there is a boy who was made to carry the bricks. For every son who sat and cackled, and kikied with his mother, there was a girl reminded she missed a spot when scrubbing the floors. In the same breath, we talk about the child who was showered with love, and keep that child of the same sex in silence.

The theory we raised and spoke of was simple on the surface but can be large and sweeping when you analyze its depth. Our parents, who share our sex- of course, we are referring to cisgender and heterosexual people- see in our siblings endless possibilities and their own ignorance. They have to learn the nuances because they know not the experience. In us, they fool themselves into thinking they got it.

Grandpa raised me this way.

Grandma raised me this way.

And both come to the same conclusion: “Look at me, I turned out fine.” The struggle when you push back, when you challenge, when you pick a different path feels to you like liberation, but to them like rejection. In your rejection of the table they have set, a deep pain resides. Our world externally validates these concepts. Masculinity is a unique one.

And returning to that anecdote, if a man’s son doesn’t want to claim his job, his profession, his education, his rituals, his mannerisms, even his sexuality, he believes he has failed as a father. And more damaging, he has failed as a man. He doesn’t separate your path from his internal validation, because his life was never written in that font. All he does, whether he knows it or not, is leave his son to search for that love somewhere else. To build a community to be a reservoir for the acceptance his father couldn’t give him.

Even that doesn’t suffice. The external validation, the acceptance, the reassuredness of those we find along the way only accentuates the pain. It doesn’t produce an antidote to it. Deep down in that blood-pumping organ and in the dark corner of our mind, we as men can ask ourselves.

“Why do these people seem to accept me for who I am after meeting me just a moment ago? Meanwhile, my father, who has known me my entire life, can’t bring himself to do the same thing.”

His acceptance, his value in the system we call patriarchy, is very often contingent on us taking everything he has and going out into the world and conquering with it. Just so that we can say, “My Dad taught me how.”

This brings me to the greatest gift portion of this piece. So much of our conversations about men and young men in general hinge on one subset of commentaries trying to answer what is going on and who is to blame. We speak so dogmatically depending on the sphere of this or the other. Some place the blame on single mothers, TV shows, porn, OnlyFans, Colleges, Public School teachers, the NAFTA agreement, Ronald Reagan, feminism, so many things. Some carry merit; others don’t.

Who is to blame? Who has the solution? I don’t know; that isn’t what we are speaking of today.

Today, when I recall that memory, when I recall that piece, when I recall so many things about men and fathers, I have come to realize there is a gift, a common one that rarely sat beneath the Christmas tree, exchanged from a father to his son. A valuable gift that weighs more on the scale of that young man, or boy, of attaining his dreams and becoming who he is supposed to be, not who his father wants him to be.

The most valuable gift isn’t an inheritance. It isn’t an Amex card. I know we live under precarious financial times, but character, I believe, will carry you places your wallet can’t. Call me old-fashioned or naive.

The most valuable gift isn’t anything material, such as a car or a house or a tool. Those things can be bought, and I know so many men who have them in their own hands and still feel burglarized spiritually.

The most valuable isn’t even a skill. Skills and trades are important. But this country was built by men who didn’t have anyone to teach them at home, and learned in the world, or on the job, or watching an elder, or a video.

The most valuable thing a father can give his son is accepting who he is, the path he takes, without recourse. Or without the feeling that his father will abandon him the second he picks something the father rejects for himself. Our men and our boys need to know that no matter what, no matter the path or situation, it won’t just be our mothers who will pick up the phone in the late-night hours. Our fathers too will be with them, on our behalf. They too can find value and beauty in the paths we take if it is the right one for us.

Even if it isn’t blue-collar like theirs.

Even if our hobbies are not like theirs.

Even if we live differently and travel in different circles than the way they did. The city versus the rural places. Among intellectuals versus “the guys.”

That is a gift that can sustain, that will never run dry. bell hooks tells us that:

“Mother love is aplenty and apparent: we complain because we have too much of it. The love of a father is an uncommon gem, to be hunted, burnished, and hoarded. The value goes up because of its scarcity.”- The Will To Change

I am calling for acceptance; I am not calling for accommodation. The two live in two different realms; one heals the soul while providing agency, the other passively goes along for the ride to appease. A father can show resistance without revoking his adoration of our identity.

Imagine a world where bell hooks’ words didn’t sting. Imagine if they seemed so nonsensical. Sons with fathers didn’t feel the need to crucify themselves on an altar and become something their father would love more.

What if they did leave the football team and saw their father at their band meets?

What if their father was as excited when they painted that picture as if they scored the winning 3 in the basketball championship?

What if they cheered as loudly when you won the Spelling bee as they do when you go to prom with the cheerleading captain?

What would the world look like? Maybe no difference, or maybe fewer nameless Michael Jacksons among us and fewer Donald Trumps above us.

A gift that can be enjoyed by all.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.