When it came to boats and travel, father knew best
Published 6/20/06
When I forward Jesse an online article about a domestic issue that I know he’ll appreciate and that I barely understand, and then sign it “Dad,” I always feel like I’ve committed identity theft. Even after 21 years of fathering, I just have not grown into the title. When I pick up the phone and the voice on the other end says, “Dad,” my first impulse is to reply, “Uh, hold on. I’ll see if one’s here.”
Maybe it’s the eternal adolescence syndrome suffered by a subculture of late bloomers within the subculture of baby boomers. At a fatherly age, I hate tinkering under the hood, my Craftsman ratchet set shines from lack of use and I still listen to Steppenwolf. Can I really be a father?
But the question may actually be, “Can I really be a father like my father?” My father took wild-game trips to Wyoming to hunt elk and deer. My father bought a fishing boat which he hitched to the family wagon for vacations. My father then traded up to a fiberglass birch bark canoe which we took to Canada to paddle in Ontario’s lakes while camping in its parks. My father took me to Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium to see the New York Yankees and their legendary pin-striped lineup of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Tom Tresh, Tony Kubek, and company. Frequently, my father took us kids to the zoo. Fortunately, he always brought us back.
As a father myself, I have tried to forward many of these experiences into the life of my own son, although keys are probably the only thing I’ve really ever hunted for. I’ve fished, too—for loose change. Yes, I guess I have deprived Jesse of the many manly values of hunting and fishing.
That may explain why at one point when my son was in junior high, at a time when we were having our generational differences, he looked at me and said in a tone of voice that suggested he was missing out on developmental tasks of early adolescence, “I want to lift weights, drive speedboats, ride motorcycles and see every major league ballpark in the country.” I knew the comment was a frontal assault on my obsession with dragging him into bookstores and used record shops while discussing my favorite existentialists.
Well, I could take a hint. In the next few years we took in an Indianapolis 500 auto race, took a boat—a pontoon speedboat, that is—out on Lake Monroe and became more aggressive about getting into the game. This summer we’re hitting the tennis courts, the softball diamond and the free weights when we can’t afford the pricey ones. We do this as a father and son who have only one year until the son’s wedding. (For the sake of his fiancée, we will not be racing motorbikes.)
My father’s work took me, by the age of 10, to the Southwest and the Northeast and—by proximity—to Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, Knott’s Berry Farm, Washington, D.C., the deserts of Arizona and the hillsides of Pittsburgh.
Since Jesse didn’t have the advantage of travels by transfers and has lived his entire life in Madison County, we’ve compensated by sending him to Ireland, Mexico, Japan, Jamaica, Kenya, England and to D.C. for a semester. Okay, so we overcompensated a bit.
When my father would take us up to canoe Canada, we would stop overnight in these little towns where we’d hear echoes of French-accents. On mornings when I woke up in Wawa, Whitefish Falls or Thunder Bay, I thought I had died and gone to…Paris. The car trip culminated with several nights in a tent, where I now woke up and thought I had died and gone to...North Dakota. It’s not unusual for hot August nights in Ontario to become freezing August mornings.
Treks to Canada, led by my father, were one way of seeing the world—the world outside our neighborhood—and understanding the differences in geography, culture, custom, language—or at least accent—and pronouncing them good. If my son has experienced any of that with his old man, he can thank his grandfather—my father—just as I did this Father’s Day weekend.
When I forward Jesse an online article about a domestic issue that I know he’ll appreciate and that I barely understand, and then sign it “Dad,” I always feel like I’ve committed identity theft. Even after 21 years of fathering, I just have not grown into the title. When I pick up the phone and the voice on the other end says, “Dad,” my first impulse is to reply, “Uh, hold on. I’ll see if one’s here.”
Maybe it’s the eternal adolescence syndrome suffered by a subculture of late bloomers within the subculture of baby boomers. At a fatherly age, I hate tinkering under the hood, my Craftsman ratchet set shines from lack of use and I still listen to Steppenwolf. Can I really be a father?
But the question may actually be, “Can I really be a father like my father?” My father took wild-game trips to Wyoming to hunt elk and deer. My father bought a fishing boat which he hitched to the family wagon for vacations. My father then traded up to a fiberglass birch bark canoe which we took to Canada to paddle in Ontario’s lakes while camping in its parks. My father took me to Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium to see the New York Yankees and their legendary pin-striped lineup of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Tom Tresh, Tony Kubek, and company. Frequently, my father took us kids to the zoo. Fortunately, he always brought us back.
As a father myself, I have tried to forward many of these experiences into the life of my own son, although keys are probably the only thing I’ve really ever hunted for. I’ve fished, too—for loose change. Yes, I guess I have deprived Jesse of the many manly values of hunting and fishing.
That may explain why at one point when my son was in junior high, at a time when we were having our generational differences, he looked at me and said in a tone of voice that suggested he was missing out on developmental tasks of early adolescence, “I want to lift weights, drive speedboats, ride motorcycles and see every major league ballpark in the country.” I knew the comment was a frontal assault on my obsession with dragging him into bookstores and used record shops while discussing my favorite existentialists.
Well, I could take a hint. In the next few years we took in an Indianapolis 500 auto race, took a boat—a pontoon speedboat, that is—out on Lake Monroe and became more aggressive about getting into the game. This summer we’re hitting the tennis courts, the softball diamond and the free weights when we can’t afford the pricey ones. We do this as a father and son who have only one year until the son’s wedding. (For the sake of his fiancée, we will not be racing motorbikes.)
My father’s work took me, by the age of 10, to the Southwest and the Northeast and—by proximity—to Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, Knott’s Berry Farm, Washington, D.C., the deserts of Arizona and the hillsides of Pittsburgh.
Since Jesse didn’t have the advantage of travels by transfers and has lived his entire life in Madison County, we’ve compensated by sending him to Ireland, Mexico, Japan, Jamaica, Kenya, England and to D.C. for a semester. Okay, so we overcompensated a bit.
When my father would take us up to canoe Canada, we would stop overnight in these little towns where we’d hear echoes of French-accents. On mornings when I woke up in Wawa, Whitefish Falls or Thunder Bay, I thought I had died and gone to…Paris. The car trip culminated with several nights in a tent, where I now woke up and thought I had died and gone to...North Dakota. It’s not unusual for hot August nights in Ontario to become freezing August mornings.
Treks to Canada, led by my father, were one way of seeing the world—the world outside our neighborhood—and understanding the differences in geography, culture, custom, language—or at least accent—and pronouncing them good. If my son has experienced any of that with his old man, he can thank his grandfather—my father—just as I did this Father’s Day weekend.
posted by Jack W. Williams | 6:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home