Being thankful can bring up many topics in today’s world. If you were to ask someone what he or she is thankful for, they would probably reply with “my family” or something similar to that. Family is one of the greatest things to have in the world. Two poems, “Those Winter Sundays” and “Forgiving my Father,” both show how children don’t exactly appreciate their parents or they love shown by their parents by being narratives from their childhoods, focused on the tension and unhappiness at those particular moments. 

Oftentimes we look back on our lives and we see regret. We also hear from so many people around us “if we had known then what we know now, we could have made things different.” As we mature with time we begin to see the world differently and our experiences throughout our lives teach us lessons that we cannot ignore. In Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays,” the speaker is a man who is reflecting on his apathy for his father in the past. As an adult the speaker realizes what he did not understand as a young boy how his father was showing his love for him.  In the opening stanza the speaker introduces his father. From the first line on the poem it is understood that the father’s devotion to the child is a formal and strained one, which is implied by the fact that even on Sundays, a rest oriented day, he worked on behalf of his son: "Sundays too my father got up early” (Hayden 1) Significantly, Hayden uses the word "father" instead of Papa, Daddy or Dad; father being a more formal and less affectionate term than others. This word choice reflects the coldness of their relationship. In the next couple of lines of the poem the speaker tells how hard his father works and tells of the difficulty of his life; “put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached, from labor in the weekday weather made, banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him” (Hayden 2-5). In the second stanza of the poem the speaker talks about his feelings towards his father and the life that they had. “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house” (Hayden 6-10). When the speaker talks about the house he talks about the people inside the house and not the house itself. As the poem continues into the last stanza the speaker changes the tone to a regretful sense and the reader could now see that the speaker did not appreciate the things his father did for him as he was younger; “Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden 11-15). As you can see, the speaker confesses how he feels now as an adult compared to how he felt when he was a child. Hayden repeats the question "What did I know?" in line 13. In doing so, he allows the reader to acknowledge the terrible sense of sadness and regret the speaker now feels. The poem’s final line completes the question: "what did I know/of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden 15). The poem throughout its entirety shows an older, more matured individual accepting his father’s devotion that he did not appreciate at the time his father was around.

“Forgiving my Father” by Lucille Clifton is a poem which begins with “it is Friday. We have come to the paying of the bills” (Clifton 1-2) This line for some subconscious reason makes the speaker remember her father, “all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost” (Clifton 3-4), signifying that her father is deceased. These memories of her father are from moments in her life that he impacted the most and they are what she uses to, in a way, judge him by. It is obvious that the daughter still has a hard time with this because her words are harsh and unforgiving stating, “there is no time for you. There will never be time enough daddy daddy old lecher old liar” (Clifton 8-10). Seeing that her father is deceased this would not be a very appropriate statement were they in good standing before his death. She doesn’t only dislike her father but she blames her father for her and her mother’s struggles. The daughter states that, ”I wish you were rich so I could take it all and give the lady what she is due” (Clifton 10-11). This confirms that the daughter is angry and wants to be able to help her mother out because she feels that her mother deserved more than what she was given. If her father had been rich or been able to pay his dues the daughter believes that their problems would have gone away or would have been nonexistent to begin with. Later in life the daughter realizes that her father had tried to give her all that he had. It just so happened that the father had nothing more to give. She understands that he did what he all he could do; “but you were the only son of a needy father, the father of a needy son; you gave her all you had which was nothing. You have already given her all you had” (Clifton 12-16). This is a harsh statement to make, but it is harsh only in its reality. “In other words, the daughter does not mean to be biting and scathing with this statement, she just realizes the harsh reality” (New Criticism Essay).  At the end of the poem the daughter forgives her father but not the situation, “you lie side by side in debtors’ boxes and no accounting will open them up” (Clifton 22-23).

These two poems both relate by the speakers being the children growing up and realizing that their situations when they were younger were not their fathers’ neglecting or not loving them, but that their fathers showing them love in a way that they could not see at the time. Respecting your family is one of the greatest challenges in life. Little things can change your attitude towards them and create issues within the household. As a reader can see in these two poems, the children did not quite understand what was going on when their fathers could not quite give them the love or the things that they desired. However, the love was there but it was only shown in other ways such as waking up early every morning and polishing his son’s shoes and warming the house for the family. 

In conclusion, some children do not see the significantly small things that their parents do for them. They may not catch on to the gestures that their parents are giving because they just don’t quite understand what it means yet, such as a kiss from a mother to a young boy. He may think at the time that it is gross and thinks it will embarrass him in front of his friends, but later in life he may realize that it was a small gesture for his mother to express her love. In some cases like the poem “Forgiving my Father,” the girl didn’t quite understand that the father had nothing else to give and that he had only very little to give. As you can see these two poems come from very different viewpoints but in both cases the children grew up naïve about their situations and their relationships to their parents.
