THE former Celtics basketball star Bob Cousy reflected recently on his marriage of 63 years. His description of how his marriage was better when he and his wife, Missie, were old and of how he cared for his wife for ten years while she was suffering from dementia is sweet and moving. Missie died in September.

Notice, however, this statement:

“I was busy playing a child’s game,” Cousy said last week, sitting in the living room with daughters Marie and Ticia. “I thought putting a ball in a hole was important. Looking back, I should have participated more in the lives of my family. But my girls were in the best possible loving hands.”

Actually, Cousy wasn’t just busy playing a child’s game. He was involved in a demanding, competitive sport and he was supporting his family by pursuing excellence in that sport.

Cousy said these words in a vulnerable state of mourning, so my point is not to criticize him but to note how familiar this lack of appreciation of the male provider is. A man who is working hard and cannot be home much is often believed to have failed his family while at the same time his wife and children flourish because of his hard work. This view is common. It is part of the general, pervasive effort to destroy the sort of loyalty exemplified by this couple.

— Comments —

Jane S. writes:

Laura writes:

“It is part of the general, pervasive effort to destroy the sort of loyalty exemplified by this couple.”

It is part of the general, pervasive effort to teach you to think of the government as your daddy.

Buck writes:

What a terrific way you have of expressing what manhood and fatherhood are, even for the preoccupied man, who in the midst of both never gave it a thought.

I was fifteen when Bob Cousy retired. I always thought of him as the last man to go to the basket without breaking any rules. He defined an era in professional basketball, an era that had class.

Please follow and like us: