By Pat Taylor - Sunday, June 20, 2010
Our greatest gifts to our children are to instill self-confidence and a sense of possibilities. Our greatest challenge is to guide and direct, to define boundaries while leaving open doors, without trying to make them just like us. Our greatest joy is watching them stretch their wings and fly with purpose.
They come without instruction manuals, other than drawing from the experience of our own fathers. Each child is different from day one, partially hard-wired to be who they are, partly influenced by experience. The number of unfamiliar moments is bewildering, some joyful, others tragic or nearly so. You are never quite sure how you are doing as a father until years later.
That's how I see fatherhood now, looking back. Though I'm no longer needed so much for financial support, my kids still need to know that I have their back and approve of their approach to life. A nickel says they will call me today just to talk.
The moment I became a father is as clear today as it was the day it happened. It was not the day my daughter, Laramie, was born. That was an eventful day, certainly, full of joy and fatigue. We brought her home a day or two later, and she slept in a dresser drawer in our bedroom for a couple of days while I found a crib.
That first week was mostly about mother and baby, bonding as mothers and babies do. I dutifully stood aside, wondering what I was supposed to do, feeling as useless as a fifth teat on a cow. After a week, we noticed a little diaper rash.
Following a penchant for natural remedies, we laid her in bright sunlight that streamed through a glass wall in our house, thinking it would dry out and clear up the problem. I was given charge of the duty while Lani took a much-needed nap. My first official charge as a father.
After lying there a while, this tiny creature whom I barely knew, all of about six pounds, started to fuss. I quickly but nervously picked her up and held her close. I'd held her before, of course, but never without others around. Her bare little fanny, about the size of a silver dollar, perched in the palm of my hand.
Instinctively, she reached out and wrapped her hand around my finger, fingers so small they barely surrounded the digit. The -pressure from her grip was like a whisper. She moved in my arms and her aliveness came alive in me like a current passing through us. I realized in that instant how absolutely dependent she was on what I did. A calm and peaceful understanding came that she would be that way for many years.
That was my epiphany. "So this is what this is all about," I remember thinking. "This is what is really important in life." And I was changed forever.
From that day, the search for balance between career and family was on. My -offspring are old enough and wise enough now to judge whether the choices and -sacrifices were well made. I know in my own heart that they came first.
What is it about a father's love - and -perhaps more important - his approval, that is so important to a child?
Fathers are a mystery to most children while they are growing up. They seem -larger than life. A little more distant, often less expressive than the mother, they are often the enforcer of rules, the arbiter of disagreement, the final word.
An act or tenderness, or a special time together, often gets set among the greatest of childhood memories. Why is that, when most mothers give so selflessly of themselves and always seem to be there for their children?
I don't have the answer, but I know that my own father, who died a few years ago, wrestled to come to grips with his conflicted relationship with his own father, who died in 1951. And I'm not sure he ever did. The need for approval, which Dad did not get until shortly before his father died, was that powerful. He spent more than 50 years trying to sort it out.
Thankfully, my relationship with my father was very positive, something he tried to foster deliberately. He took the opposite approach to how he was raised in many ways. Where his father was extraordinarily demanding, my father perhaps wasn't demanding enough. He wasn't perfect, but we didn't come with an instruction manual, either.
I am certain there was never a lack of love. And we all turned out pretty well in the end. Southern culture is complicated, with subtle, unwritten rules of behavior and nonconfrontational communications. Fathers who grow up here, especially those of the older generations, often teach lessons indirectly, rather than sitting children down for a lecture. They use time to allow results to play out, rather than pre-empting a negative result or "saving" their children from a bad experience.
Lessons Never Forgotten
I was reminded of this recently by a friend who told a story of her brother, who chose to have fun with his friends rather than doing work he was supposed to do. It was something of a routine, apparently. It seems this boy's family had a garden plot near their house and it was time to weed the garden. The boy jumped on his bike and rode away to join his pals, thinking he'd beat the system. His father didn't say a word.
A couple of weeks later, when the corn was pulled and served hot on the table, the youngster reached for an ear as it went around. Suddenly, the father reached across the table and pulled the bowl away. He looked at his son and said, "You didn't help plant it, you didn't help tend it, you didn't help harvesting it, and you didn't help cook it, so you don't get any."
The lesson was never forgotten, according to my friend. Another friend reminded me that fathers even show their love indirectly, rather than with a public show of affection.
Lynn had started a new job in the mountains and had moved into her first small house, which was heated by a wood stove. As a reporter, she sometimes worked odd hours. One day she came home, and the toilet seat was up in the bathroom. Her first thought was that someone had been in the house, since she never left the toilet seat up. Grabbing the poker from beside the wood stove, she cautiously crept through the house looking for a burglar. After looking under the bed, she reached for the phone and called her dad to ask what she should do.
"Sorry about that," he said. "I knew you were working late so I stopped by and filled up the wood stove so it would be warm when you got home." That's a father's love for his daughter.
Enid Bagnold wrote a line that I love about fathers and daughters: "A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again." My daughter gave me a framed print of that quote for Father's Day some years ago, along with a photo of us, and 15 real four-leaf clovers. A lucky man indeed am I.
Likewise, Robert Bly said in a book called "Iron John" that a woman can't teach a boy how to be a man. My wife never liked that line, but it is true that there are some things about manhood that a woman doesn't really get, and vice versa. Thankfully, the world seems to be coming back around to understand that.
Fathers make a mistake trying to stamp their sons in their own image. It is rare that they end up alike anyway, so it's more important that a father try to understand his son for who he is and encourage him to grow into that person, because we never have great confidence if we try to be someone else. In fact, it seems children spend their entire young lives trying to figure out who that someone is. Fathers are either a help in that process or a great hindrance, depending on how they steer the tiller.
That lesson became clear in my son's life when, after I'd pontificated about some fairly obvious truth, my 8-year-old looked at me and said, "Well, that's what you think. That's not what I think." I could never make him eat green peas, either.
Enjoy Your Day
As I look at my own experience in fatherhood, there aren't many regrets. I could have talked to them more, certainly. Spent more quality time. I could have been better support for Lani, surely. But they turned out pretty well.
The one regret, though, the one thing I wish I could do is advise them on how to approach their careers. Things have changed so much that all you can really say is, "Follow your bliss," and trust that you're headed in the right direction; and "Keep actively learning," because chances are there will be more change in the future than in the past. Oh, and "There are lots of ways to make money," so have courage to try things.
To all young fathers - and would-be fathers - out there, enjoy your special day. Spend the day with your children, for the time goes very quickly. Don't be afraid to show them who you are, because nothing you say hurts them as much as your distance.
Pat Taylor is advertising director for The Pilot. Contact him at pat@thepilot.com.
From The Pilot published on Sunday, June 20, 2010
