"Teach Your Children Well"- CSNY

So it's Father's Day in the good old US of A. Dads around the Country will see their children, young and adult, today. There'll be picnics, dinners, parties, and lots of brew hahas. My daughter, Sarah, and I agree that there shouldn't be a Mother or Father's Day, period. Make it Guardian's Day.

Beyond that, I hate Father's Day, not really hate, hate, but it bothers me. My daughters' father has been gone for eight years and before that his illness kept him away for all but the six years before I divorced him. Sarah doesn't really know him well, only what she gathered as he held her those two or three times as an infant and when she and Leila sat with him on the porch of the foster home where he was preparing to pass - even if he never took another drop again - they gave him five years, but he went right back to the booze and got it over within a matter of months. When we heard the sad news, Leila ran into her room and curled up into a fetal position. Sarah said she just felt so bad to see Leila so upset. "I really didn't know him," she said.

So on Father's Day I get through the day. This year I've placed a candle at the photo of Ed and another candle beside my father's photo. But our light shines for them year round. This day is just a reminder that we don't have them anymore. But I know Ed watches his girls and I dream about my father and it is precious.

Priceless.

Sarah is headed to the beach with one of her friends. She is gorgeous and I see a darling college student but men will eye her, stare without grace or dignity and as I type this in my apartment, thinking of her walking to the train and later lying on the beach, I pray times will change one day. Those hungry men have daughters, too, and don't they know it is a sugar bear of a little girl who walks by them not an object to be possessed?

All the women who walk this World had a father at one time. That may change one day and I look forward to it. Until then, if you are a man and not yet awakened to the reality that who you stare at is a human being with feelings and a desire to be left alone- if only from your eyes- then know that my sterling daughters walk about today, on this day, without their father.

I used to poll my female students at the college where I taught and whenever I asked how many of them were sexually harrassed on the street, every one of them - from sexy to conservative - raised their hand.

Happy Father's Day.