Dads Under Construction Read online

  Through my father and mother telling me their histories, and my being able to connect with these, I have come to realize that I am not alone as I father the next generation. This awareness brings with it integrity.

  Knowing my father’s history has helped me to make adjustments to my work and home lives, in particular guarding me from the perils of overworking. In the past it was necessary to work hard, with little if any leisure time. Today, as hard as work still is, society has the luxury of increased recreational time. It has not always been easy for me to keep a balance between work, play, and family. I feel it is important to model the need for such balance for my own children. Through my father telling me his history and providing me with the opportunity to understand it, I have been given a sense of choice. I don’t just work, I choose to work. I am also aware of the need to relax and enjoy life.

  A father telling his story to his child provides the child with a sense of genealogical awareness, along with choice. This choice is how the child can continue living part of the family history while creating a new history at the same time.

  MOVING TOO FAST

  My father worked as a telegrapher for the Canadian National Railway for approximately forty-five years. The railroad was the cord that tied him to his family and yet let him move beyond that family to the outside world. The railroad was his ticket from rural life into city life.

  My father loved the railroad, and he would often go for long walks along the tracks at the end of a work day. When I was old enough, probably about six, I would join him. It was a time when he and I could be alone together.

  I can remember having trouble keeping up with him. The railway ties were perfectly spaced for me; I could walk on each one of them. For my father, they were too close together; he needed to take two at a time. This awkwardness of walking side by side often had me calling out for him to slow down. He would always do so, but shortly after we started out together again, the same problem would occur.

  Walking along the railway tracks was not the only time this problem came about. I also often had to ask my father to slow down when I accompanied him to work, as we walked hand in hand on the sidewalk.

  My father was a tall man with a long stride and large hands. He liked to move fast. I remember holding his hand as we walked along, marvelling at how large it was compared to mine. Sometimes I would try on his shoes. I could put one of my shoes right inside one of his. When I tried on his hat, it fell over my face. His winter coat was heavy enough to pull me to the ground when I put it on.

  My father was also a strong man. From his childhood on the farm and on, he was used to working with his hands and lifting heavy objects. Any attempts on my part as a young boy to lift similar items would often be met with disaster.

  Without a doubt my father was frustrated by my constant requests for him to slow down. He never exhibited this frustration, however, and patiently followed through on what I asked. But the problem would soon re-emerge. Again I would have to ask him to slow down. Eventually, my father would pick me up in his arms. Problem solved.

  It was not only moving fast that I was having problems with, it was also my father’s size. When I looked up at him, he looked like a giant. I noticed the same reaction in each of my daughters when they were small and would put their hands in mine and marvel at the comparison in size. They too would put their shoes inside of mine and would constantly say how big I was.

  When we adults look down at a child, we tower over them. It is beneficial to children for us to bend down when talking to them, or to get down on one knee and face them eye-to-eye.

  Your child views you as a strong person, a hero. Your responsibility as a father is to meet your child at his or her level and to follow the pace they set for you. Listen to what they need; they will tell you.

  EXPLODING THE TULIPS

  Early every fall, my father carefully planted tulip bulbs in the garden that bordered the outside walls of our home. He enjoyed this task, and always looked forward to his gardening. He spent a great deal of time designing the correct layout of the bulbs that he wanted and then planting them. The following spring, in May, they would bloom in a lovely pattern of colours. It was a beautiful sight. As they bloomed, he would gingerly tend to them, preparing the soil around their bases and pulling out any weeds that may have started to grow.

  Also in May is the national holiday marking Queen Victoria’s birthday, when it is traditional to light firecrackers through the preceding weekend and on Victoria Day itself. My mother was quite hesitant about my lighting any firecrackers when I was young. However, she did find very small ones that I could light. We called them “ladyfingers.” My mother would start a piece of string smouldering and send me outside with it. I would light each of the firecrackers with this piece of string. As I gained confidence in lighting them and my mother felt that I was practicing care, she would leave me alone outside. I devised all sorts of activities with these firecrackers.

  One of these times when I was outside lighting firecrackers, my father was grooming the tulips at the front of the house. They were growing quite well, and the large colourful blossoms looked very healthy. He slowly worked his way around the front of the home to the side and then around the corner to the back. As he disappeared from sight, I suddenly had an impulse to place one of the ladyfingers in one of the tulip heads. I lit it. It was quite satisfying how the entire tulip head exploded and the petals shot up into the air and floated slowly to the ground. I gathered the petals and put them in my pocket. I decided to go onto the next tulip head and do the same. I continued to do this along the front row of the house. Performing this deed efficiently from tulip to tulip gave me a great sense of accomplishment.

  Eventually my father came back around to the front of the house to start watering the tulips. Kneeling to sprinkle water from a can around the stem of the tulip, he was shocked to see nothing there except stigma and stem. Looking down the row, he saw a number of other tulips in the same sad condition. At the same time, he watched me walk slowly around the corner of the house. I did not realize he had seen me, nor did it dawn on me that I was actually destroying his labour of love.

  My father stood up and quickly ran toward the corner of the house. He took hold of my arm, took away the string and the firecrackers, and told me to come inside with him. He sat me down in one of the chairs in the kitchen and proceeded to tell me about the amount of work he had put in to growing and caring for these tulips. It was a scolding of sorts, but beyond being sent to my room for a time-out period, there was no further disciplinary action.

  That fall, wise man that he was, my father made sure I was involved with him in the planning stage of where the next year’s tulip bulbs would go. We also planted them together.

  My father and I both learned a valuable lesson from this incident. As a boy, I was acting out my normal aggression, perhaps even aggression toward my father. It was something I needed to do. Meanwhile, my father was observing (and so was I) how he was handling his frustration over his tulips and his anger toward me. He did not try to cover up his true feelings of anger, but he found a way for us both to channel our feelings of anger through working together. In time I, too, would be a father facing similar issues with my children and would draw on this encounter to problem-solve each new one.

  As important as it is for father and child to play and have fun together, there are also times when a child may act out. Quite often this is during the initial stages of (and throughout) adolescence, but it may happen at any time. In a sense, acting out is a way for a child to express individuality, sometimes assertively or even aggressively. What is important is the father’s ability to handle that aggression and to help his child understand what is happening. A child watches how a father reacts very closely. Will the reaction be aggressive in kind or patient and understanding?

  An involved father helps his child to modulate that aggression. My father’s reaction taught me how to handle feelings of frustration and anger as I grew up. When my two da
ughters act out, I know that the most important thing is to help them understand their behaviour and the effects it has on all those involved.

  A good example of this creative and constructive channelling of energies is how fathers and sons engage in hockey. Here is an opportunity for a father to teach his son how to be assertive, while at the same time exhibiting respect for other players as well as referees. However, there are fathers who respond to their sons’ games aggressively, which sends all the wrong signals.

  Throughout a child’s formative years, a father who reacts constructively to acting out is teaching respect for others. By working out a consequence that fits the “crime,” the child is better able to understand his or her behaviour.

  LEARNING TO RIDE A BIKE

  We had carefully practiced this on a number of occasions over the past several days. My father and I walked my new bicycle over to the parking lot behind the insurance company near our home. I was seven years old and quite eager, like many of my friends, to ride a bike on my own. I would stand on the curb and carefully climb up onto the bike as my father held it steady. My father would patiently walk beside me, holding the bike as I learned to balance and started to pedal. It became apparent that in a day or two it would be time for me to go solo. We both agreed on the day that I would try.

  When the big day arrived, my father and I again walked over to the parking lot, and I climbed onto the bicycle. We started out side by side, he holding the handlebars and me beginning to push harder and harder on the pedals. He started to run beside me while holding the bike. Then he cried out that he would give me one last push. He did so while standing back and letting go of the handlebars. At first the front wheel wobbled and I was frightened. Then I heard my father call out, “Pedal harder; harder!” I did, and I felt the bike straighten out and surge forward. My father’s voice began to fade. I was now biking on my own, and was quite proud of the achievement. I glanced back to look at my father and to show him how I was doing. That’s when I noticed how far back he actually was. Carefully turning the bike around, I pedalled back to him.

  As I got off the bike after coming to a clumsy stop, my father beamed with pride and gave me a hug.

  I had not yet mastered the ability to get up on the bike and start out on my own; however, I would achieve this within the next several days. Eventually, I started to bike over to that parking lot without my father.

  My father recognized at this stage in my life that learning how to ride a bike was an important part of my journey toward independence. I wanted to be like my friends who were all riding their bicycles. So he bought me a new bike, something he himself never had, and he spent a great deal of time just being patient as I learned to ride it. In each of those attempts to ride, I felt secure with my father holding me up. Then he realized the time had arrived to push and let me go.

  My learning to ride a bicycle gave both of us a feeling of achievement. By being dependent on my father, I developed a sense of my own independence. By striking the right balance between holding onto me and letting me go, my father was being an excellent teacher and coach.

  Your child’s ever-developing independence is precisely based, in all situations, on your knowing when to support and when to let go. You need to be there. First you will take the lead, then you will be shoulder-to-shoulder, and then you will step back slowly, moving into the background. Both you and your child will learn when to hold each other and when to let go. And even when you separate, each of you carries a part of the other inside.

  ROOFTOP ATTACK

  I was eleven years of age and my younger sister Jean was nine. It was a lovely, sunny Saturday afternoon in the summer. My father had noticed for several weeks that the grouting on the chimney was in need of repair. He took the ladder out of the garage and climbed up onto the roof of our one-storey ranch-style home, taking with him several tools and a bucket of cement.

  While he was working on the roof, I went around to the side of the house where the ladder was and quietly removed it. When he realized that he needed several more tools, he discovered the ladder was gone. He immediately called out for me and asked me if I had removed the ladder. I stated that I had and initiated a process of negotiation, my final offer being that if I were to let him off the roof, he would not discipline me. Eventually, an agreement was reached. I put the ladder back up, and my father came down. He obtained more materials and went back up on the roof.

  By this time, my sister had come outside to play. She and I put our heads together and decided we would play a prank on him. Quietly, we removed the ladder from the side of the house. I went to the front door and locked it, and then my sister and I each went to opposite sides of the dwelling. On each of those sides was an outside water tap with a garden hose connected to it. We turned on the hoses and prepared ourselves.

  Again, my father came over to the point where the ladder had been, and once again it was gone. A second time he called out for me. I responded by running around the side of the house with the garden hose and shooting a fine spray of water up at him on the roof. My father immediately backed up and decided it would be more to his advantage to go to the other side of the roof in order to get away from me. He climbed over the peak, only to discover that my sister was waiting for him. She sprayed him as well. My father was now in a predicament on the peak of the roof. He moved down toward the chimney and stayed there. Again, after another round of negotiations, a deal was struck that neither my sister nor I would be disciplined if we quit spraying him; we put the ladder up to the side of the roof and let him down.

  My sister and I were not finished with him yet. We had discovered that both hoses could reach the point where my father would come down from the ladder. Jean came running around one corner and I came running around the other, each of us with hose in hand, catching our father in the crossfire. He made a mad dash toward the front door of the house, which of course I had locked. My father was now in a difficult situation, with my sister and me spraying water at him through the screen door. He started knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, calling for my mother to let him in. She eventually opened the door and my father stumbled inside.

  My mother immediately took charge of the situation and told my sister and me to stop. We retreated back to the side of the house, realizing there were going to be some consequences to our prank. Soon enough, my father came out and informed me that he was so wet he had to change. My mother accompanied him and asked us for a truce so he could finish his work. I do not recall my father ever being upset or disciplining us for this incident.

  My father’s family had taught him one value, and that was hard work. He grew up on a farm, with its constant round of daily chores. It was difficult for my father to break that habit and put down his work to involve himself with my sisters and me in fun. This was a language that he hadn’t learned as a child. My father always seemed to be at his job as a telegrapher. He also worked in the evenings and weekends in the laundry that he and my mother had started. In what spare time was left, he did a great deal of house maintenance and gardening. I would frequently engage with my father in one of these activities as a way of being with him.

  Our silly prank was an attempt to turn his work into some sort of fun, playful activity. Jean and I were both trying to find a moment with our father where we could be doing something together that from a child’s perspective we enjoyed. In a way, the child was teaching the father how to play as much as the father was teaching the child how to work.

  A number of years later, after my father’s death, I was speaking to my mother about this incident. She told me that he quite often spoke about the moment and how it made him feel close to my sister and me. He told her that he found it difficult to know how to engage and play with us. When we came up with an idea like this one, he pretended not to be part of it, but he actually was. In a way, my father welcomed such occurrences between us. My father needed us, his children, to take the lead in this.

  A child and a father often play-wrestl
e, roughhouse, and generally just enjoy physical engagement with one another. A child needs this connection to a father. A father does not just give a toy to his child; he is the toy. If a father is to be a toy, he needs to know how to play. My father learned how to play by observing and participating in what my sisters and I created out of our imaginations. It was our way of engaging him in a relationship with us. Little did we know that we were actually teaching him the value of play and of just having fun. We found a special way for all of us to be together.

  DEATH OF A SISTER

  One summer weekend, on the way to the cottage my family rented each year for a week, my older sister Jeanette, then sixteen, complained of not feeling well. The bright sunlight coming into the car was bothering her, she had several cankers in her mouth, and she felt quite tired. Jeanette had been feeling this way for several weeks now, and her condition was worsening. My parents had taken her to the family doctor on numerous occasions, but nothing could be diagnosed.

  As a ten-year-old, I was excited, as were my two sisters, about going to the cottage. My excitement contributed to my not being aware of how Jeanette was feeling. For the entire week at the cottage, she found it very difficult to go out in the sunlight, as it bothered her eyes. She would often be found in her room with towels and blankets over the windows, feeling exhausted. My parents were at a loss as to what they should do.

  Immediately upon our return home, my parents took Jeanette to the doctor. He consulted several other physicians and eventually diagnosed Jeanette with systemic lupus. At that time, in the early 1960s, there was limited, if any, treatment for lupus. My parents were informed that there was not much that could be done. It was only a matter of time before she would die.