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： 父亲节，起源于美国，最广泛的日期是在每年六月的第三个星期日。

2. 有些男人虽然是好父亲，但他们不一定就和你在父亲节宣传海报上看到的那些人一样：他们不像广告中那样满脸笑容、热情奔放，而是满脸倦容、薪水不高、怀才不遇，每天通勤上下班，为工资发愁却从不会对家人提起，因为只有这样自己的家人才能睡得安稳。poster： 海报；chipper： 兴高采烈的，精力充沛的；grinning： 笑嘻嘻的，grin意为“咧嘴笑”；glad-handing： 热情的，友好相待的；exhausted： 疲惫的；underpaid： 所得报酬过低的；under-appreciated： 未受到充分赏识的；commute： 通勤； pay-check： 薪金，工资。

3. sew： 缝纫；bedspread： 床罩； curtain： 窗帘。

4. flock to： 成群结队地去；en-masse： 〈法〉全体地，一同地。

5. feel out of place： （在某活动、群体、场合等）感到不自然，感到拘束。

6. grade school： （美国的）小学。

7. 我的父亲全心全意地鼓励我，尽管他觉得没必要非得亲自到场才能表示出对我的支持。whole-heartedly： 全心全意地；physically： 身体上地。

8. justify： 证明……正当（或有理、正确）。

9. moron： 傻子；jail： 监狱。

10. deal-breaker： 不合格的事情，煞风景的事情。

11. unconditionally： 无条件地。

12. price tag： 价签；essentially： 本质上。

13. overseer： 监督者。

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

15. assess： 评估。