A FATHER'S LOVE


Abigail is a beautiful name borne by some beautiful persons. Recently I came to find out that the name meant “Father’s love”. This thought set me wondering if fathers had any love in them. A lot of fuss is made about Mother’s Day and a mother’s love, so I wondered if fathers had any love at all. After days of much thinking, I came to the conclusion that fathers had a lot of love in them. At least we remember how sometimes dad went down on all fours to play horse whilst we sat on his back pretending to be on horseback.

The father’s love is not that soft come-and-hide or hug-me love which mothers showed. This is not to say mothers are all soft. A father’s love is a tough and very stern love called DISCIPLINE. It is the kind of love shown either when he spanks you for some wrongs or gives you a stern lecture you’re unlikely to forget for a long time. Of course in our part of the world, and for those of us born in the years before the wanton proliferation of modernity and human rights (in the seventies and eighties), the kind of fatherly love we have known is being lashed when young and given stern lectures when old.


The father’s love is not to be discounted. It teaches us to value the love our mothers give us. In fact, we value our mothers’ love because our father’s discipline drives us to know how deeply our mums love us.  It is the father’s discipline that has made most of us the responsible adults that we are. Of course, discipline when it is being applied seems difficult or harmful. However, when the discipline is perfected, we see the beauty it creates in us. Once when I was very young, around age 10, I climbed an electric pole – the green teak ones – and I was reported to my dad. When I was called and given a warning never to climb electric poles, my dad took his cane and took me to the pole. He asked me to climb it so he sees how I did it. I was as fearfully surprised as a deer caught in the glare of the hunter’s light. I climbed the pole and when I got to the middle, my dad lashed my buttocks. I was reduced to crying but hugging the green pole tightly lest I fall like a plucked coconut. That lesson ended my pole-climbing tendencies

Again, when I was almost 20, I fell into the bad habit of shouting at or disciplining my younger sisters for the least thing they did wrong. Yeah, big brother life. My father waited till one day when I was about to go to church. He called me and gave me a very stern lecture about treating women right, particularly my sisters. That day I was so ashamed and I determined never to maltreat any woman, no matter how angry I got or how wrong she was. The lesson had been well-taught and has stayed with me to date.

Today most of us disregard our fathers and their love for us. We celebrate mothers and their love for us so well. We refuse to celebrate dads because of some flimsy excuse that they never took care of us or our mothers. A man who refuses to care for his wife and children is in no way a father.  Thus if he never took care of you, he is not your father. It does not mean every father is not loving or even responsible. Your father disciplined you and shaped you. He channeled your mother’s love so well that today you can call yourself a responsible adult. He has been a source of pain because of his stringent discipline, yet, he has always sacrificed to make you who you are now.


Today let us celebrate fathers, the men of worth who have disciplined their children and taken care of their families. Celebrate your father as much as you would your mum. Tell him you love him, and that you are grateful to him for his discipline, care and support.

I love my dad, do you love yours?

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