Down by the Riverside

You can't step twice into the same river, because other waters keep flowing is the "weeping philospher" Heraclitus wisdom that has wended its way through the ages. (H is also sire of the saying that "War is the father of all things..." so you can tell he was a fun guy to chill with.)

And what is true for one is also true for two: father and child. Still, there is a natural interest in following in one's father's sandalprints. So, we note today that Amber Martin — after being clear that dad wouldn't compete — is running for the city council spot once held by her dad Harry. In an intriguing bit of campaign rhetoric, she does note her low income as possibly appealing to voters at the same time her campaign bio mentions that she works for her dad. Something about the river seems a bit murky but it's not so easy to pinpoint it exactly.

Nor is it clear whether young Myco Coker thought he was honoring or disgracing papa C when he took the latter's wheels out for a bit of a gambol. MC claimed to be helping out with local traffic in his fancy ride — by pretending to be a deputy sheriff &mash; but the fact that he was pretending to be his dad, an actual deputy sheriff seems to have had little positive affect on the the judge who has grounded him for the foreseeable future.

Honor, disgrace and anger are also ingredients the recipe Sheryll Cashin proffers in The Agitator's Daughter, her look at the river in which her dad fished: "As a teenager, I seethed with anger about [my father's] priorities. As I approached middle age and Dad approached his 80s, I simply wanted to understand the origins of his altruism and share my journey in a book that might motivate others."

As she describes it, she inherited his passion, but as with every child, it did not come to her in the exact same "blind" form and has taken her to a different river.

Term Limits?

Once again we ask what is in a name.

Men take care of children and sometimes don't even go to an office when they do it? Nor is this a new concept. For example, where was Noah and what was he doing? The mythical lone farmer out on the prairie works on farm, just like the farmers wife, which I don't think meant nobody took care of the children?

But the "stay-at-home dad" descriptor still makes for a headline and "news" as in the story of Hamilton, New Zealand, papi Evan Mayo, who left his job to take care of his new son. Now, he started architecting out of his home ... and its news ... and he's better at constructing buildings for having slapped a nappy on a wriggling kid.

The moniker is even used to humorous effect in telling the story of Robert Hackett, a SAHD forced to leave off taking care of his children because of his wife's parking tickets.

And, to be honest, the SAHD label is used more and more, but it's not always clear what it means. For example, can a gambler really be a SAHD?

Maybe the news is that we're just at that point in history where everything is location, location, location ... and children. So, if you don't work out of an office and you have kids, you're now a SAHD. Who knew?

Composing Bonds

Fathers use music to lead their children in a variety of directions.

For example, George von Trapp corralled his brood into a singing septet and escaped an increasingly threatening Nazi Germany, a family tale eventually immortalized as The Sound of Music. How far did he take his family? It is only now that his 94-year-old daughter will return to the family home.

And Lee Ferrell took the pressure from performing off son Will, helping to lead him from sportscasting to sophomoric movie stardom. According to the son and Step Brothers co-star, his father's wisdom was something like, " 'if it was only about your talent, I wouldn't worry about you. But it's all about luck.' When he said that, it kind of took the pressure off of succeeding at something like that and demystified it."

Another Lee, Bill Lee, had a different vision of how his music would play out for his kids: "“I always tried to inspire creativity in my children ... I wanted them to do what they wanted with their lives." Which seemed to work out for son Spike, whose movies often feature his father's compositions.

Of course music doesn't only only build paths for the famous. It can be a connector from the first days of life as it is for Jeremy and baby Jonah Eichler. Or it can be a spiritual path for a daughter to understand her father, as Annegret Schmidt did upon hearing the compositions of her father, who she lost when she was five.

For all, whether alive, dead, famous or anonymous, music offers a way beyond words for fathers to move their children.

Footpaths

Money often provides a twist to the path of a fathers footsteps.

The Australian "Mister Sin," Abe Saffron, purveyed much that was illicit into a relatively noisy fortune. He did bring son (currently talent agent) Alan into the business a bit, but also kept much from him. Some of what he kept from him — in the form of money from the estate — might have played a role in the son writing a tell-all memoir of the pain his father put him through.

Richard Branson, also known for the decibels of news his fortune lets him create, has laid a very different foot path for daughter Holly. And when she was waylaid by medicine from following him, he began a new medically-related venture to seduce her into the family biz. No doubt the Virgin family business will soon have something environmentally induced to make sure son Sam stays within the fold.

While Saffron and Branson used fortunes to encourage their kids, Richard Garriott created a fortune to spend on following his father's trail. Garriott, son of skylab astronaut Owen Garriott, was told by NASA docs that he didn't have the vision to lives his dreams in space.

But it turned out he did have enough vision to a series of electronic and online games that built him a fortune. And the vision that created games millions want(ed) to play now means that he can spend $30 million to book 10-days of space travel on a Russian space station.

Money may serve as stepping stones along a father's path, but the stones are laid in different places at every turn.

Read It, Don't Weep

A child's love in the heart and memories in the head are so much stronger and nuanced than whatever s/he may put into words.

Surely, Doro loves daddy much. But the testimony of daughter to Bush 41 and sister to Bush 43 that is found in this week's objet d'eBay, an autographed never read first edition of My Father, My President, probably pales next to her actual feelings.

While this book seems to have quickly headed to pulp mills without leaving much of a trace — it was published less than two years ago — a father-loving blog has the opportunity for a much longer life. Even so, words of another politician's daughter, these found in McCainBloggette, Meghan's McCain's campaign paean to daddy John, also suggests more than demonstrates her deep feelings for her father ... and surely it is just coincidence that she is feeling the blues in her most recent post (July 23).

Maybe the point is that no matter what is written, the act of writing is the tribute and enough in and of itself. The actual love of a dad is found by what is read into the words. And so, while Tina Maat and Corrie Schuurman have pen palled with each other for 45 years, writing about their own lives, the passion for sharing their lives with someone they would only come to know is a monument to their fathers — the two holocaust survivors who first encouraged them to communicate.

And that is something that can't be auctioned off.

Drunk and Lyrical

Fathers have often found poetry in alcohol. So,

A fortunate young man of Bray
Enjoyed his Irish too much on one day
But the judge set free
The father-to-be
Insisting he not again stray.

[and]

There once was a father and son
Who thought making bombs and drink fun
When the Feds came looking for drugs
The two met the officers with shrugs
But their neighbors knew a crime had been done.

[also]

A father and child took to drink
Alas, they first did not think
A sotted underage son
Even one having fun
Is a crime when police smell the stink.

Unfortunately, while it may make them more interested in a gambolic verse or two, fathers (or anyone) rarely find good poetry at the bottom of a bottle.

Created Fathers

Saving a father from debilitating illness is a great trope for art. Not that great art necessarily makes life easier.

In Undertown, Jim Pascoe's manga of Sama's search for the Sugar Stone that is his father's only chance for salvation, an entire dark imaginary universe is lit with hope. (Vol. 1 is out; V.2 is due in Nov. '08.)

And Phillip Toledano's tribute to his "Days with My Father," thirty-five images and text of his father's journey into Alzheimer's, is an extraordinary creation of joy and even sadness stolen from encroaching death. Physically, Toledano's father can't be saved, but something about his spirit and the connection between father and son has been built to last for an eternity.

Alas, art may inspire life, but, unfortunately, it can't fix it. Sama will no doubt find the cure for his father many, many volumes from now, it will be a fictional fix. And, no matter how wondrously Toledano has saved his father's image and spirit from death, the shadow over his art is that he (and now we) will lose him to memory.

Decisionmakers

Sometimes children blur vision. As a result, father's might not see the line they are about to cross.

So, maybe a judge really should cut Jude Sherlock some slack during sentencing. Father Sherlock claims that when he was arrested for trying to unload €10,000 of marijuana, he was just trying to raise the deposit for an apartment so he could regain custody of his daughter. This time he really was doing it for a good reason, unlike the 14 previous times he was nicked for drug offenses, plus the drunk and disorderly citations.

Another man confused by sentencing is Demetri Korzh, whose 8-year-old daughter Anastasiya, was disqualified for wearing an earpiece. An earpiece that happened to allow her father to help her out during a tennis tournament. He says that while he had taught her to play tennis, he hadn't taught her to keep score so well and so the other girls were cheating her. Tournament officials disqualified her, even though he had already taken it off and was adamant that his being able to talk with her was actually a disadvantage (something about offputting her coordination).

And like Korzh, David Farnham was only thinking of his son, 2-year-old Justin, when he kept the windows closed in the parked car where his son was (unfortunately) "crying and sweating" outside the theater where he was taking in the midnight show of "The Dark Knight." He was probably Ferberizing a child who really should have been sleep — who would take a todder to watch a midnight movie instead of letting them sleep — and Farnham wanted to make sure his son was stolen.

It was just another case of love, sort of like the interest a 69-year-old father took in his son's girlfriend. Realizing she wouldn't be true to his son, the father started dating her. Unfortunately, the evidence daddy dearest presented didn't convince his son of how he should dump his girlfriend. Instead, it resulted in son kidnapping dad and leading police on a 60-mile, high speed chase.

Maybe when young Andrew calms down — now that he's in police custody — he'll realize that his father, like the others above, was really (maybe? sorta? possibly? hopefully?) blinded by paternal affection when he stepped over the lines of normal decorum and won't simply write the old man off as someone deliberately looking the other way.