I can’t help but think each Father’s Day, as a mother of two young boys, that they are most likely going to grow up to be fathers themselves one day. I hope that I am preparing them, as best as I can, be be good fathers, good husbands, good friends, and good people.
I first read If by Rudyard Kipling in college during a poetry course. I kind of feel in love with it. I have thought of its words often while watching my young boys sleep, giggle, stumble, smile, play, skate, cry, struggle, succeed, throw and grow.
If
By Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Good Morning Gloucester 
Wonderful
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You are a good Mom. Strong buildings need sturdy foundations…built with time and patience, laughter and love. Your boys are well on their way. I look forward to watching them grow.
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Thank you very much, Sue. So kind of you! They are good kids….I’m pretty proud of them.
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It’s a marvelous poem — Kipling was a master — but I try to imagine reading this to my wonderful grand-daughter, almost ten, and I can’t get the last couple of lines right! Because if he had known her he would not have written it just to a boy.
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Excellent poem is outstanding spoken from the heart when this good! Your words proud of them and like a mother bear and her cubs 🙂 And you are doing just fine! Growing up I had a great mom but a little lacking in the Dad department compliments of the Korean War…But a Step dad came along and did just fine…plus it’s all about the foundation and just reading your post shows me that foundation is still as strong as it was years and traditions ago. Your two you men are so fortunate to have a mom and dad that I see you your posts I admire them and that from you both well done!!
“Where the foundation is strong from it grows a strong future of respect and hope for they are our future!” 🙂 Author Unknown
Pops go tit right I would say! 🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
Louis Armstrong – What a wonderful world
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