Girl code: Women, you can’t play fathers too

Father’s Day was just the other day and I know men waited to be celebrated just like mothers on the Mother’s Day.

Instead, most mothers, especially those with deadbeat partners carried the day. In the recent years, this has been a day when deadbeat fathers become the talk of the town.

I have never really understood why this good day set aside for fathers ends up becoming a battleground for deadbeat fathers. Maybe they should equally have their day so that they do not take over Father’s Day.

Dear mothers, if you also play the role of father, we appreciate your effort fully and acknowledge your will to give your children the best. In fact, we could have given you a standing ovation had we all been assembled in a room just for you. However, let’s not take what does not belong to us. Yes, we are mothers.

Those who made us mothers walked out on us making us take up the parenting role single-handedly. That doesn’t, however, mean that we have automatically become fathers.

There’s really no point for us to thump our chests on Father’s Day, wanting to be celebrated as fathers. We aren’t and will never be fathers for Pete’s sake. Let’s flex our muscles on Mother’s Day as much as we want, that’s our day. If you aren’t in a position to celebrate the man you made a child with, then at least celebrate your father, uncle, brother, cousin, colleague or any other father around you.

Let’s not turn Father’s Day into a day to step on deadbeat fathers because in the long run, we use a lot of energy on them thus forgetting the real men of the day who have been present in their children’s lives.

My own daughter has never met the father, not because I have put any boundaries. The father just doesn’t want to make the effort. But I will not start clapping for myself on Father’s Day because there’s no single day my daughter will refer to me as her father. Even if I taught her boxing or took her fishing, I will never be a father in her eyes but will remain the best mother she ever had.

Given a chance, however, I will celebrate her father. Not because he has or hasn’t done anything for our daughter but because of the fact that he is a father, my daughter’s father. That will not mean that I have spread my arms wide open for men with such backward behavior of turning their backs on their own flesh and blood. In fact, if any of such men was in a room and it caught fire and I had water with me, I might just drink the water.

Celebrating him doesn’t equally mean that I will throw helium balloons and fireworks as I blow vuvuzela, shaking my small behind he once loved. Just by shutting up and not saying anything about him on this day could equally be a way of celebrating him because, given a microphone and a podium on Father’s Day and told to say something about him, I might never see the gates of heaven.

So I would rather direct my attention to the great fathers around me starting with my own father, Itindi the Great, as he rests peacefully in his ancestral home next to his father Zadok Wanga, he who pierced a rock with his fingers.

All I’m saying is, shall we all just let Father’s Day be about fathers? Whether present or not, let’s all let them have the day. It’s their day, the only one they have to themselves all through the year. Since I would wish to see the gates of heaven, allow me to say this: “Happy belated Father’s Day my daughter’s father!”

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