Saturday, June 30, 2012

Fatherhood, {Thoughts on the death of Don Grady} It takes two to tango!



I was struck at what an impact Don Grady made on our lives.  We came at life with new expectations of parenting interactions.  Not just the silent children of other generations.  We would interact.  We would contribute some our neophytic observations into the lives of our parents.  Fred Macmurray and Don Grady acted out the intimacies of Father/Son love with microscopic precision.  We loved to laugh at the intricacies of their humorous interplay.  But, we came to expect more from our love.  When we held that little boy in our arms and when our sons grew we expected to really know them, or want to know them.  I thank the "hippy" generation for injecting this kind of expectation into our family "Love American Style".
I did have this kind of relationship with my dad and I wasn't a boy.  We talked about everything and he let me tell him stuff like that.  I really applaud the uniqueness of delving into the concentrated relationships of parent /child from a positive and even humorous perspective. 
Teenage parenting can be so intense and so stressful, but it can also be so fun and educational.  Thank you to the memory of Fred Macmurray and Don Grady for this contribution to our culture. Ernie said, I prayed that you would come in here, to the father. What a prayer, that the fathers would come up to the plate of fatherhood. I think they did, somewhat inspired by fathers like Fred Macmurray and sons like Don Grady. Thank God for some of the television we had.

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