A long time ago someone asked me:
How is the father you wish you had had?
This question left me stunned and lost…
My thoughts revolved around a dizzying journey to the past where I am still a child. This child, like any other child, needed very little, just love, affection, attention and support. Speaking in the voice of that child that I once was, I would say that what I missed most during my childhood and adolescence was the absence of my father. I believe that so many years ago, that role was played in a different way than what is proposed today, but being a father is not a role proposed by a culture / society.
Being a father is soul and life in the heart of a child, being a father is to make a child dream, to make a child imagine how much this father can do: everything! "My father is a super hero", "my father is prettier than yours", "my father knows how to do it better than yours" – these are the words of children when they feel that their father is everything, their life, their hero.
There are children who, unfortunately, realize that their father doesn't have a hero's cape, that after all, he doesn't know how to do things as well as the father of his friends, that he is absent and that he is not that “pretty”.
But the father who, throughout his children's growth, continues to be generous, a friend, concerned about continuing to give soul to his children's dreams, to be the support when perhaps these children want to jump higher in the adventure of life and sometimes fall. How nice to have a father like that, as it makes me calmer, more secure, more confident, more adventurous, it's like my father's super powers have been transferred to me. Thank you Grandfather/Father, because you, my dear grandfather, were this father, who helped me to dream, who played with me, who hugged me tightly until I almost lost my breath.
To be a Father is to feel that your children are a part of you, of your existence, of your energy to live, your source of inspiration, your source of certainty of wanting to live in order to continue to love them.
If Father is sacrifice, it is giving up reason to give way to emotion and crying with joy from pride, fear, concern.
I have by my side a husband/partner who is this Father, whom I admire and love and who constantly transports me to my grandfather's arms when he loves his children and mine.
Today, in sharing these words with you, I would like to make you feel this love of father and love of children, because growing up without a superhero is growing up without wings.