Surrogate Fathers

We hold our holidays to impossible standards. The right gifts must be chosen, the food must arrive on time, and everyone must get along. But celebrations like Father’s Day often fall short of our expectations. For those who are physically or emotionally separated from their families, they are often a crushing reminder of loss.

Our Sunday paper was filled with memorials to fathers and grandfathers, their pictures lovingly displayed along with special notes written by loved ones still grieving.

In our hearts your memory lingers, sweetly tender, fond and true. There is not a day, dear father that we do not think of you.

Another: Papa it's been 17 years sense (sic) you been gone. I still miss you Papa.

Some spent Father's Day coping with emotional separation from their families. Yesterday, I received an email from a friend in Los Angeles whose family cannot accept the fact that she is gay. “On a sad note," she wrote, "I was not invited today for Father's Day."

She called her dad to wish him a happy Father's Day and asked when she could see him and give him his gift. Her stepmother told her to stop by after 8 p.m., because they would be busy before then. They had already made plans to go to the beach with her brother and his family. “I said nothing and waited. I was not invited,” she said. She later left the Father's Day gift on her parents' front porch.

After talking it over with a supportive friend, "I realized my real family is all my amazing friends. I have to start making the distinction if I am ever going to get over this and be happy," she said. "The fact is, since I'm not living the life they have chosen for me, my parents are not supportive. I must let go.”

*****

On Saturday, while watching my children at the pool, I heard a relentless, high-pitched scream. I turned and saw a small crowd moving quickly from the playground. In the front, a man comforted a small boy in a towel who had received some sort of terrible injury. The boy cried as blood dripped from his mouth. He had taken a tumble off the slide and bitten through his tongue.

The man helping him began giving directions in a surprisingly calm voice. “Can someone get some ice?” he asked. "Does anyone know his mother?" To the boy he said, “it will be o.k.”

The woman from the snack bar rushed over with ice. A lifeguard ran over with his first aid kit and wrapped up the boy's tongue. Someone grabbed a pediatrician who was doing laps. Another found the boy’s mother and little sister. The little sister was so upset that she started crying and ended up biting her own tongue, which also started bleeding. Everyone was taken care of, the situation calmed, and the mother and her children headed towards the parking lot.

Over the Father’s Day weekend, I reflected upon the man who had helped the little boy. By his care and concern, I had assumed he was the father. Apparently, they didn’t even know each other. How reassuring to know that there is within us something instinctive that enables us to care for one another as a parent, when the real parents can’t be found.

*****

Over the weekend, people around the world began receiving the shocking images from Iran of a young woman shot to death at a rally. According to reports, 27-year-old student Neda Soltan had been attending a protest on Saturday when a sniper shot her in the chest. I haven’t watched them, but understand that cell phone videos capture the horrifying moments as two men gently help her lie down on the sidewalk as they try to stop the bleeding. One of the men, since identified as her music teacher, was at first believed to be her father. On one video, as she begins to lose consciousness, he is heard offering her comfort in her final moments.

"Neda, don't be afraid…"

The world grieves for this young woman, whose death has become a galvanizing force for Iranians opposed to President Ahmadinejad. Protestors around the world now hold posters with her image and name, which means “the call” or “the voice” in Farsi.

As the world watches and waits, in the White House, another father, one who seems an exceptionally moral and intelligent man, contemplates the extent to which we are our brother’s keeper.