By Gina Barrec

Do You Know Your Father？ Do You Like Him？

Its as hard to be a good father as it is to be a good mother—maybe harder.

Does Fathers Day1 cause you anxiety？ Does it make you wish you had a better relationship with your own father—or with your own children？ Was your father your friend？ Your enemy？ Or was he just a man doing his best？

Some men are excellent dads but they are not necessarily the ones youll see on the posters for Fathers Day： they are not the chipper， grinning and glad-handing guys shown in ads but instead are the exhausted， underpaid and under-appreciated men who commute to work， worry about their pay-checks and keep quiet about their own anxieties so that the rest of their family wont lose sleep.2

My good father was one of those exhausted men. He worked nine hours a day and took both a bus and subway to get to the place where his family sewed bedspreads and curtains for a living.3 Travel took him about two hours each way. Thats 13 hours spent doing stuff he didnt want to do so that we could live in a house and not in an apartment； it meant he had maybe five hours to be with us， his family.

Yet it never occurred to me that my father wouldnt have time for me. Okay， so I knew enough not to expect him to show up at plays I was in or to attend the award events that other families flocked to en-masse；4 not even after my mother died did he do this “stuff” because this “stuff” was not something he considered very important for him to attend.

I knew he didnt like meeting strangers and felt out of place5 amongst the other parents. With his grade-school6 education， he was shy in front of teachers. But he understood my projects were important to me—and thats what mattered. My father encouraged me whole-heartedly despite the fact that he didnt feel a need to be physically present to demonstrate his support.7

I accepted his encouragement in the way he offered it and learned to play to a wider audience in public； it wasnt his applause I was seeking， after all， because I knew I already had it. To him， I had nothing to prove.

When I got to college， I realized just how much pressure other parents—especially fathers—often put on their children. The girls I knew had to prove they were at the top of the class in order to justify8 their parents ambitions for them； they were terrified of disappointing their fathers. I knew my father wouldnt be disappointed in me unless I ended up 1. Married to a moron or 2. In jail.9 Those were the only deal-breakers10. Everything else we could work through.

A good father loves unconditionally11 but allows you to understand him well enough to make sense of his actions. A bad dad attaches an emotional price tag to everything， meaning that your success is his success， your failure is his failure and， essentially，12 nothing is ever yours. Hes not there as a support or a guide but as an overseer13 and a judge.

Ive come to believe that the straightjacket of masculinity is just as confining as the straightjacket of femininity and that its just as hard to be a good dad as it is to be a good mom.14 Not everybody can do it.

Actually， not very many people can do it—at least， not all of the time； being a parent might not be the toughest job in the world but its certainly one of the least easily assessed15. Not until generations have passed can you discover whether youve been good at your job. To those men who have， I want to raise a toast and say “Thank you， from the heart， for all youve given us and all youve done.”

1. Fathers Day： 父親節(jié)，起源于美國，最廣泛的日期是在每年六月的第三個(gè)星期日。

2. 有些男人雖然是好父親，但他們不一定就和你在父親節(jié)宣傳海報(bào)上看到的那些人一樣：他們不像廣告中那樣滿臉笑容、熱情奔放，而是滿臉倦容、薪水不高、懷才不遇，每天通勤上下班，為工資發(fā)愁卻從不會(huì)對家人提起，因?yàn)橹挥羞@樣自己的家人才能睡得安穩(wěn)。poster： 海報(bào)；chipper： 興高采烈的，精力充沛的；grinning： 笑嘻嘻的，grin意為“咧嘴笑”；glad-handing： 熱情的，友好相待的；exhausted： 疲憊的；underpaid： 所得報(bào)酬過低的；under-appreciated： 未受到充分賞識(shí)的；commute： 通勤； pay-check： 薪金，工資。

3. sew： 縫紉；bedspread： 床罩； curtain： 窗簾。

4. flock to： 成群結(jié)隊(duì)地去；en-masse： 〈法〉全體地，一同地。

5. feel out of place： （在某活動(dòng)、群體、場合等）感到不自然，感到拘束。

6. grade school： （美國的）小學(xué)。

7. 我的父親全心全意地鼓勵(lì)我，盡管他覺得沒必要非得親自到場才能表示出對我的支持。whole-heartedly： 全心全意地；physically： 身體上地。

8. justify： 證明……正當(dāng)（或有理、正確）。

9. moron： 傻子；jail： 監(jiān)獄。

10. deal-breaker： 不合格的事情，煞風(fēng)景的事情。

11. unconditionally： 無條件地。

12. price tag： 價(jià)簽；essentially： 本質(zhì)上。

13. overseer： 監(jiān)督者。

14. straightjacket： 束縛；masculinity： 男性；confining： 限制的；femininity： 女性。

15. assess： 評估。