I Hated My Father, Now I Love Him Essay - 521 Words

I hated my father. He was always concerned with fairness, and so was I, but our definitions differed greatly. I thought fairness meant my happiness--when I was not happy, something was unfair. My father did not recognize a truth that I knew, that I was the most important thing in the universe, and the world should please me. To be fair to my father, the world was full of people who did not recognize that truth, but he was the person most willing to bring a dissenting opinion firmly into contact with my bottom. That was a different time, when punishment was a fathers prerogative and duty. Spankings gave way to being sent to my room, or being given additional work around the house. Always the voice that stopped me from doing what I†¦show more content†¦Even then, I knew that I loved him, too. My father was always willing to accept the consequences for doing the right thing. In north-central Florida in the early 1960s, he was active in civil rights; the Gainesville newspaper called my father the only liberal in Levy county. We could not get fire insurance because the word was out that the Ku Klux Klan would burn down our business. Later, my father, who served in both World War II and the Korean War, carried the flag at the head of the very first march against the Vietnam War in Gainesville. I was always very proud of my father. nbsp; nbsp; And my father always trusted me. When I was eight, he let me ride my bicycle ten miles into town each week to buy comic books. When I was fourteen, we climbed Mount Popocatepetel together, and he stopped short of the summit, letting me go to the top without him. A vainer man would have made excuses for staying behind or risked a heart attack to continue. My Dad said, I cant make it. You go on. And I went on, knowing he had passed on a responsibility to me. nbsp; nbsp; I never hated my father after I became an adult. I believe those two things are related. A time came when I realized that my father and I had begun a journey together, he as a father and me as a son, and we both began itShow MoreRelated James Baldwins Life in Notes of a Native Son Essay1374 Words   |  6 Pagesperson was James Baldwin, who voiced his opinion through writing short stories about his experiences growing up as a black man. In order to convey to the reader the unbearable nature of this troubled era, he traces his feelings of hatred for his father and his hatred towards society, which transform as he evaluates his experiences. James Baldwin wrote â€Å"Notes of a Native Son† in the mid-1950s, right in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement while he resided in Harlem. 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