"Those Winter Sundays"

"Those Winter Days" ~ Robert Hayden

The love of this father endures forever, yet the relationship between the speaker and the father suffers from the lack of conversation. The speaker is "fearing the chronic angers of that house (Hayden, 781)." Indifferent to his father's attempts to help the relationship, the speaker ignores his father. He does not realize the father's efforts with the fire and the shoe polishing. In the dead of winter, the father would rise and tend to the fire. Only calling to his child when the house warmed, the act demonstrated his love. He suffered through the hypothermic cold to heat the house for his son. Although the father may have a short temper, he strives to make the child happy. Nevertheless, the speaker states definitively that no one ever thanked him. He takes his love for granted.