
As a child, you look up to your parents and expect them to support you in any way they can.  My brothers and I were lucky enough to have this kind of support from our parents, but sometimes we didn’t understand the sacrifices and dedication they performed.  Children do not know everything in the world, and it takes a while for them to realize and understand what goes on beyond what they can see.  The work and efforts of one's parents can be interpreted differently as a child in comparison to as an adult.

In Those Winter Sundays, the narrator fears the father due to the pains he goes through to help his family.  Each day, the narrator would wake to the "cold splintering, breaking" (Hayden 6).  While this could literally mean the house becoming warm, it may also demonstrate the father working extremely hard, with his "cracked hands that ached" (Hayden 3).  When the father calls for the narrator to come downstairs every morning after heating the house, he is in pain from the "blueblack cold" (Hayden 2).  The cold and pain that the father had to go through may show in his voice and the narrator, a child that does not know any better, interprets his pain incorrectly as anger.

When the narrator reaching adulthood, he begins to truly think beyond the childlike short sidedness.  He comes to learn of the hardships that the father had to endure.  In the last stanza, the narrator claims to have "[spoken] indifferently to him" (Hayden 10) when living with their father, despite him having "driven out the cold and polished [the narrator's] good shoes as well" (Hayden 10-12).  Looking back on everything, the narrator questions their understanding of "love's austere and lonely offices" (Hayden 13-14).  The narrator, throughout the entirety of their childhood, acted uncaring when confronting his father and fearful when his father called for him.  The narrator looks back on their childhood and realizes that his father did everything to care for him, despite the hardships, and all after the narrator questioned if he really understood what love truly meant.

In Forgiving my Father, the narrator feels that her father is betraying her.  The father, in the eyes of the narrator, "stood in [her] dreams" (Clifton 2).  She believes this because her father is "the pocket that was going to open and come up empty on Friday," (Clifton 17-18) which is the day that bills get paid.  The father, however hard he may have worked, was working at a job that did not pay well joining the other 43.1 million other people living in poverty (Feeding America).  This lack of money is the cause of the family being generally poor, which results in the narrator not being able to get the financial support she needs to pursue her dreams.  She joins the, at the least, 45% (32.4 million) of the children living in low income families and possibly joining the 16.1 million (22%) children who live in families under the federal poverty line (Addy/Engelhardt/Skinner).  Because, at the time of this poem, the narrator is most likely in her childhood or adolescent years, she feels that the father not being able to help support her dreams is a sign of betrayal.

The narrator feels that, while her father may have cared, he ran out of time to show it.  The theme, being “time”, is constantly mentioned throughout the poem.  The father is described as a "ghost, asking for more time" (Clifton 3).  This has two meanings to it.  The first meaning can be literal, with the father being dead and having ran out of time in to provide support for his family; this is just one example of 60% of impoverish families living without their father (Kirby).  The second meaning can be figurative, with the metaphor of a “ghost” asking for more time representing the futility of the actions of the father.

When reflecting on the past, both narrators acknowledge some will for the father to support their family.  Throughout Those Winter Sundays, the narrator says that "no one ever thanked [the father]" for causing the "banked fires [to] blaze" (Hayden 5).  In Forgiving my Father, the narrator, despite all the negativity she brings regarding her father, mentions that he was "the only son of a needy father, the father of a needy son" (Clifton 12-13), which is her sense of forgiveness.

While the narrator in Those Winter Sundays comes to a complete understanding of their father's position, the narrator in Forgiving my Father is less understanding about her father's position.  In Those Winter Sundays, the poem ends with mentioning "love's austere and lonely offices" (Hayden 13-14).  However, in Forgiving my Father, the narrator finishes by saying her father "[lies] side by side in debtor's boxes and no accountant will open them up" (Clifton 22-23).  Both narrators end up with different views on their deceased fathers.  The narrator in Those Winter Sundays feels that their father died in a lonely office, trying to express his love to his family.  The narrator in Forgiving my Father still fixates on how her father will never be able to pay back her family as opposed to what the father actually feels.

Both poems have the same foundational story of poor absentee fathers, but in the end the defining details are what make each poem different from each other.  The ability the narrator in Those Winter Sundays has to forgive his father for not being able to do more to support and supply the essential needs for living, is much more promising than how the narrator from Forgiving My Father stubbornly never forgave her father for not being able to provide for her needs. 
