The Absent Father
How long should you try to get his attention?
Submitted by Marty McDonald
Imagine a 5 year old girl, never having met her father. She asks her mother, “Mommy, do I have a dad?” The mother replies, “Yes, you do. Here is his address. Write to him whenever you want”. So she writes a letter to her father, asking him to visit.
She sends it, but gets no response.
So she sends another letter, and another, and another, but never receives a response.
Over time, the girl wonders if her penmanship is wrong. So she tries to improve her penmanship. Still, no response.
She tries enclosing drawings in her letters, but still, no response.
She decides her letters are ignored because she isn’t writing in cursive. So she works hard to learn cursive.
She practices endlessly and is very hard on herself when she makes cursive mistakes. But even writing in cursive, she never receives a response from her father.
She even starts to use more beautiful, expensive stationary & envelopes, thinking those will motivate her father to respond. Still, no response.
After 15 years of this, the child (now a 20 year old woman) concludes, “Either my father is a complete jerk for not answering…
