Sunday To Sunday Attentive Heart

Hi, this is Ann Mary Mullane of Sunday to Sunday Productions with another episode of The Witness podcast.

Since the beginning of time, fathers were mostly the same. They were stern beings, the breadwinners who provided the material needs for their families and imparted corrective wisdom when necessary. This caused many fathers to become distanced from the life of the household and their children in the movies and TV.

While Robert Young, as Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best, and Hugh Beaumont in Leave It to Beaver, were strong, but kindly dads. They were off to the side of the family dynamic. They were also the stern, but clueless dads like Captain von Trapp, who expected his children to answer to a whistle. If you remember the movie, The Sound of Music, Maria, the then governess, told the captain that was ridiculous.

Frank Gilbert was an advocate of time and motion studies. He was an engineer. He whistled his kids to attention as well. He's also the dad in the 1948 book, “Cheaper by the Dozen”, which has spawned several movies and TV series. My dad whistled too because he thought he was good at it. He mostly whistled to annoy my younger sister.

As my mom noted, the whistling stopped the day my sister got married. Well, daddies have changed and I've seen it happen in my lifetime. The dad of the early 1960s, like my own, worked to provide for his family and in the case of my dad went to college at night and drove the family car. The daddy was always the photographer who never appeared in any family pictures when it came to the day-to-day around the house.

The description in “Cheaper by the Dozen” fits most dads mine included. That dad as part of the child group could care for themselves, but no one else. My own dad was part of the daddy evolution, and clearly, it was evolution, not revolution because he didn't know he wanted the change. I have a clear recollection of incidents where his changing role was a struggle, but my dad, he was ahead of his time as the oldest of six.

I know that my dad bathed and coddled cranky babies and changed diapers, clothes, and ones using pins. But my dad was all about the shoes. Not in the girl dad sense it was more a quasi-military ready to move out. He would announce an adventure, maybe a surprise trip to grandma's, a ride on the Staten Island ferry, or just a trip to get gas in the car, but you needed to have your shoes on your feet.

Much later, as a teen going to high school dances, he would wait for my call that I needed a ride home because then he could take his shoes off and yep, it was the payphone in the school lobby, and I had to get in line. He had no clue where the kitchen was until much later in life. But he would never allow any of us to criticize the food that my mom put on the table.

I watch how easily my sons' in-laws hug their daughters and their sons. As my dad aged, the firm handshake evolved into hugs between my dad and my brothers. Well, today's daddy can pass a football as well as he can, pass in a tutu depending on the need and the audience. And thanks to cell phones, family photos are more plentiful, less staged, more joyful, and daddy is right there in the center.

Although Joseph is the patron saint of fathers, we really don't know much about him as a dad. In fact, while we often say Holy family, we know almost nothing about their family life. Joseph taught Jesus carpentry. Was Joseph a patient teacher like my dad when he would move the picnic bench away from the table to teach us swim strokes on dry land?

Did Joseph draw diagrams of furniture to calculate measurements if Jesus made an error? Did he suggest, as my dad would on my math homework, to use a different colored pencil because it forced you to look at the problem differently? When Jesus stayed behind at the temple courts, it was Mary who asked, what are you doing to us?

Was it because Joseph was confident that Jesus could find his way home because he had schooled him to recognize the landmarks of the area? That's what my dad did when he taught me to drive the car. I'm certain that Joseph was the best dad of his time. Well, he also had to evolve to understand a son that didn't want the family business, but it was bigger than that.

It was always clear. To myself and my sister and my brothers that my dad loved my mom as Joseph loved Mary and Joseph went to great lengths to protect both Mary and Jesus. It's really the only thing we truly know about Joseph. Actually. It's the only thing that matters.

Thank you. This is Ann Mary Mullane for Sunday to Sunday Witness from Kearney, New Jersey. Please subscribe to Sunday to Sunday and tell your friends about us. Check out our full website and other free resources at sundaytosunday.net. Thank you, and we'll see you next time.