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  DADS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

  DADS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

  Adventures in Fatherhood

  Neil R. Campbell, Ph. D.

  Copyright © Neil R. Campbell, 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Copy-editor: Michael Hodge

  Design: Jennifer Scott

  Printer: Webcom

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Campbell, Neil Robert

  Dads under construction : adventures in fatherhood / Neil Campbell.

  ISBN 1-55002-472-8

  1. Fatherhood. 2. Parenting. 3. Campbell, Neil Robert. I. Title.

  HQ756.C34 2003 306.874′2 C2003-

  1 2 3 4 5 07 06 05 04 03

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on recycled paper.

  www.dundurn.com

  Dads Under Construction, Dads Can, and Dad Classes are registered trademarks of Neil R. Campbell. www.dadscan.ca

  1-888-DADS CAN (323-7226)

  Dundurn Press

  8 Market Street

  Suite 200

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5E 1M6

  Dundurn Press

  73 Lime Walk

  Headington, Oxford,

  England

  OX3 7AD

  Dundurn Press

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  Tonawanda NY

  U.S.A. 14150

  In memory of my father,

  Thomas Benjamin,

  and for my daughters,

  Ailène and Alexandra,

  with love.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Freezing My Father’s Pyjamas

  Pig Tied to a Wagon

  Generations

  Moving Too Fast

  Exploding the Tulips

  Learning to Ride a Bike

  Rooftop Attack

  Death of a Sister

  Father as Friend

  Pulling Away

  Running the Good Race

  From Child to Adult

  Let’s Not Talk

  Time Alone Together

  God?

  Family First

  Buried in My Heart

  Becoming Dad

  Father to Be

  My Father, My Daughters, and Me

  Father and Mother

  The First Time

  The Geek Missed

  Pick Your Ride

  Piano Styles

  You’re Embarrassing Me

  Hug Fights

  Watching from a Distance

  We Need Each Other

  Afterword

  Appendix: 10 + 1 Tips to Be an Involved Father

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This is a book of living memories — snapshots of my journey into fatherhood. The reader is invited, through reading about my experiences with my father and later with my own children, to understand how a man sees himself as “father.”

  In the Dad Class program that I facilitate at St. Joseph’s Health Centre in London, Ontario, more than twelve hundred expectant and new fathers have been encouraged to construct for themselves a model of involved, responsible fathering. They have come to understand themselves as fathers, something that is so important to families and society today. A resource referred to in these classes is Dads Can, a national charitable organization founded in 1997, that promotes this model of involved fathering through various educational materials and programs.

  This book would not be able to exist without the interactions that I have had with others, both recently and throughout my life. I particularly thank my mother Elma, who always encouraged and supported my father in his involvement with my sisters and me. My older sister Jeanette, before her death at such a young age, encouraged his increasing involvement with my younger sister Jean and myself. Jean challenged my father to grow with the changes that she experienced.

  I thank my wife, Karen, for likewise encouraging and supporting my relationship with our daughters, Ailène and Alexandra, and for letting me find my own fathering style.

  Dr. H. Aufreiter, Dr. E. Hanna, Dr. J. Lohrenz, and Dr. P. Steinberg assisted in opening numerous doors for me and encouraged my self-examination. I am in their debt. Dr. Beth Mitchell, psychologist, provided her expertise in child development to this book. I thank her for that.

  The experiences of all those dads who have participated in the Dad Class over the years highlighted for me the various paths that fathers take in their journeys. To all of them I express my appreciation.

  Donald G. Bastian had the foresight to support this book project from the start. I cannot thank him enough for his superb editing and book publishing skills.

  Dr. Diane Whitney arrived on the scene at an important time and quickly demonstrated support for this book. Thank you.

  I also thank St. Joseph’s Health Centre and the London Health Sciences Centre for their ongoing support of Dads Can and its programs.

  My secretaries Lynda Cowie, Debra Roche, and Janice Seaborn were very patient with my typing requests.

  The Lawson Foundation, The Walter J. Blackburn Foundation, and the board members of Dads Can have always been behind this project. Thank you, as well.

  And of course, my deepest thanks to my father and my daughters, who taught me how to be a dad. I love you very much.

  FREEZING MY FATHER’S PYJAMAS

  I was fifteen years old, the time of life when mischief takes hold of a young man. Who better a target than my father, who was a staid fifty-eight? He was an industrious man who worked long hours operating a laundromat and working as a telegrapher with the railway. Out of necessity, he usually went to bed early.

  My father had a thing about being cold. He often felt chilly. Winter was never his favourite season. And of course, his creature comforts at bedtime were very important to him. He always had his pyjamas folded neatly under his pillow, and he looked forward to getting into a warm bed for a good night’s sleep.

  One evening, several hours before his bedtime, I snuck into the master bedroom and took his pyjamas from under his pillow. I quietly made my way to the laundry room, filled my mother’s laundry spray bottle with cold water, and sprayed the PJs thoroughly. Then I put them into the freezer. One hour later, shortly before he went upstairs to get ready for bed, I retrieved the pyjamas, which by then were frozen stiff, and put them back under his pillow. I left the room and waited in gleeful anticipation as he came upstairs and prepared to go to bed.

  From down the hallway came his startled exclamation. He immediately called out to my mother, wanting to know who was responsible for this deed. He got to bed somewhat later than usual that night because he had to defrost the pyjamas in the dryer.

  I played this trick on him several times during my teen year
s, and he would always give the same startled yelp. He knew very well who was freezing his pyjamas. Years later, he told my mother that he appreciated this prank I’d played on him. He said that in a strange sort of way, it made him feel important.

  During the period when I was growing up, in the 1950s and 60s, “father” meant the authority figure, the one in charge, the breadwinner. Certain roles were expected of my father, even though he did not always understand how to play them out in his own life. He resolved this uncertainty by working very hard, the only thing he knew how to do, and the only thing he was sure was expected of men. The frozen pyjamas prank I pulled on my father was one way I had of poking fun at him — a way to challenge his authority role. I had found a way to engage him in play.

  As the years passed, my father grew wise enough to see this. Instinctively, he knew it was because I cared so deeply about him, and because I cared about what he thought of me, that he had become the target of this and other pranks. That’s what he had meant when he told my mother that it made him feel important. He sensed that this was one way I had of differentiating myself from him, of declaring my own personhood, separate and distinct from him. At the same time, it was a way that we could connect with each other. That’s why he never really became angry about the frozen pyjamas.

  Some children find it difficult to find positive ways to declare their independence. They may resort to negative “acting out” behaviour, such as getting into trouble at school or perhaps breaking curfew. So, too, some fathers find it difficult to let go of the authority role. They cannot bear to have this role challenged. Sometimes they absent themselves from the situation altogether. When that dynamic emerges, the scene is set for a power struggle that can reverberate throughout a child’s life, right into adulthood. My father received the message from my pranks that I needed to challenge his role, and he accepted this playfully. He and I grew closer in our relationship.

  PIG TIED TO A WAGON

  My father shared very few stories with me of his own childhood, and what he did share was usually at my prompting. My father was raised on a one hundred and fifty acre farm located ten kilometres north of Elmira, Ontario. Farming in the area was mixed, but focussed on growing a variety of seed grains. My father’s was a self-sufficient farm typical of the time: crops included hay, vegetables, and a variety of fruits, while the livestock consisted of cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens.

  It was difficult for me to comprehend my father simply having fun as a child.

  One playful story he recalled was in the context of hard work. Two other stories were of mishaps that were quite painful to him, and one of them made him feel devalued by a family member.

  With these three stories that he would tell me, it was always left up to me to determine what the meaning of them had been for him.

  The playful story was of an incident when he was nine years of age and playing with his older brother with a children’s wagon in the farmyard behind the barn. After awhile, they became bored and decided to liven things up a bit. They went into the pigpen and tied a pig to the front of the wagon. Both my uncle and my father attempted to sit down inside the wagon with the intention that the pig would pull them. Just as they got inside the wagon though, the pig started running all over the pen. Suddenly the wagon tipped over and both my uncle and my father fell out. The pig then continued running toward the fence. The wagon shattered as it hit the railings. The fence itself toppled and the pig ran off, dragging the rope and pieces of wood behind it. My uncle and father scrambled to their feet and started chasing after the pig. Eventually they were able to corner it and bring it back to the pen.

  When they got back, my grandfather was standing there looking very stern indeed. He scolded them for the damage that had been done and told them to fix the fence. And he announced that they would not get a new wagon.

  To me, it sounded like an ingenious, playful activity for my father to engage in, like something fun with a disastrous outcome. My father did not see it that way.

  In the second story that he would tell me, he was about eleven years old. Working in the barn, he cornered a squirrel, bent down, and tried to pick it up. The squirrel, quite frightened, bit my father’s thumb, piercing his nail. The injury was incredibly painful, and he had to be seen by the local doctor. He received several stitches to his thumb and was left with scars for the rest of his life.

  In the third story, my father recalled a time that he was visiting relatives. He had not yet entered puberty and was still quite short for his age. His cousin, who was the same age, had grown considerably the previous year. Immediately upon entering his relatives’ home, my father was asked by his aunt to stand beside his suddenly lanky cousin. Comparisons of their height were made, and his aunt pointed out the disparity in size to the family members present. My father felt quite devalued by this situation and by his aunt, and the feeling would stay with him all of his life.

  Most of the time my father was an all-work-and-no-play sort of guy. I figured out pretty early in my life that if I wanted to play with my father, I would have to teach him how. To hear a story about a pig tied to a wagon helped me to understand that at one time my father had been a boy and had known how to have fun.

  The scar on his thumb always reminded me that my father had had a childhood. I knew he had been a typical boy who took risks — in his case wanting a pet and ending up with an injury. I was also reminded by his memory of the comparison that his aunt made between him and his cousin and how it made him feel. Sometimes I felt put-down in this way in situations with others. Being able to reflect on my father’s experience helped me realize that I was not alone.

  My father was such a hard worker that it was difficult for me to imagine that he was once a little boy who could have fun. These three stories he often told me allowed me to identify with him whether I was having fun, getting injured, or feeling self-conscious — three states of being that pretty well sum up being a boy.

  Telling children our stories, and even those of our fathers, is of great importance. We dads often forget, as we deal with our children, that we, too, were once kids who liked to have fun and who grew up. The journey from boyhood to manhood to fatherhood, in particular, is an important path. Through telling them the stories of our own childhoods, we provide our children with a sense of awareness that something has gone on before them and that something will follow. Children are then able to feel, in effect, that they are a part of history.

  GENERATIONS

  When my uncle died, my father gave me a large box of family photographs, but I was not able to find any pictures of his father. My grandfather died a number of years before I was born, when my father was a teenager. I have searched a number of sources and have spoken to neighbours who lived near the home where my father grew up. Same result: no photos.

  My grandfather’s death was sudden. He had a heart attack on the front lawn of the family home early one morning as he and his sons went out to do the usual chores on the farm.

  My grandfather, and previous generations on my father’s side of my family, are known to me only in the stories my father told me. I have always found these stories fascinating. Several years prior to my father’s death, he started looking into his family tree and documenting his history. Fortunately, he was able to research back several generations.

  It was different on my mother’s side of the family. I knew her father very well. He was a cabinetmaker who had a carpentry shop behind his home in Kitchener, Ontario. My grandfather was the son of a German immigrant who was a shoemaker. Skilled tradesmen abounded in my mother’s family. They also had a strong German heritage, something of which my grandfather was particularly proud. I remember him speaking and reading in German, and the meals I ate in his home, and in my own, were very traditional. I marvelled at how Grandpa made his own sauerkraut and allowed us to eat it right out of the fermenting barrel located in his basement.

  As a child, I would often visit him, and looked forward to playing beside him as he worked.
The equipment and the tools in his shop enthralled me. I remember the smell of the wood and the sound of the motors as he made various pieces of furniture. I recall him as a stern yet friendly man with an unusual sense of humour. My sisters and I would frequently go to visit him in his shop while he worked. When we entered his home, he would always have a dish of candies on a table just for us. Along with making furniture, he also made various games that we children could play.

  Fortunately, my mother’s brother kept an extensive family history and a very informative family tree that went back quite a number of generations. Like my father’s stories, this history provided me with a sense of previous generations. As I entered my teen years, my grandfather died. However, he left me with many fond memories.

  What I have learned from my grandfathers and their histories is how hard they had to work and how difficult the times had been for them. “Back then,” hard work was the order of the day, whether it was within or outside of the family, both for parents and for children. My mother was often called on to take care of her brothers, sister, and parents.

  After they were married, my mother and father followed the models of their parents. My father focussed on working outside the family, while my mother was deeply involved within the family. However, once my sisters and I were attending public school on a full-time basis, my mother and father opened a laundry business and their roles, to some degree, reversed. My mother worked increasingly outside the home in the laundry business. My father was now busier in his work, adding the laundry work to his railway work, yet he began to participate more actively in family life. This was not easy for him.

  Children often feel that the world began at their birth. Learning their family history helps them see that their parents were once children, and that they, too, will grow up and become adults. A sense of history gives them a feeling of responsibility, not just to their own families, but to the past as well.