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Father’s Day
Nothing prepares you for the role, except everything.
Last year I shared a reminiscence about my father. He will have been dead fifty years this November.
I myself am the father of four children: three boys and a girl, or more accurately these days: three men and a woman. As I want to preserve a little of their privacy, I won’t give their names.
They have turned out well, but my role in that outcome is not easy to pinpoint. One thing I take some pride in is that they are different from me. I have seen the family trees of doctors or actors or family businesses of myriad kinds and wondered whether the line of succession has been a chain of captivity.
My children’s jobs are more suited to the times; with one working in social media marketing, another working on institutional web design, and a third works as a sort of hybridised, software/electronic engineer. The eldest, who seems to have “fallen closest to the tree,” as the saying goes, is a researcher in a government department.
Even in their hobbies, I am glad to see them make their own path. The youngest…