Tag Archives: #family

Rites of passage

There was a man who loved his daughter.

Not unusual, but this particular man was not very good at showing emotion, and thought that people would know, by his actions, how he felt.  He knew that this made them needy at times, and he blamed himself for it, but still he could not open up.

There was jealousy within the family because of this, and he bore the stress unto himself, trying to please everyone.

At the age of 15, his girl told him she wanted to be like some of her friends and get a small tattoo, to which he readily agreed.  Not long after that, she wanted to get her tongue pierced, and this caused an uproar. Her mother would have none of it, and pressured him not to consider it, saying he was too soft, and their daughter had him wrapped around her finger.  So, he did tell her no, as firmly as he could muster, and there was much drama and sobbing off and on for a few days.  The subject was soon brought up again, after he thought it had been forgotten.  Seeing the potential of another fight, he spoke to his wife privately, and struck the bargain that if their daughter still wanted this in a year, when she turned 16, he would see about it.  Both thought that she would lose interest by then, and go on to something else.

Indeed, when the time came, he had already put it out of his mind, but his girl’s resolve was strong, and, on the very day of her birthday, she said it was time for him to keep his promise.  Eyeing his wife sheepishly, he said he would look into it, then spoke to friends and acquaintances whose kids had gone for similar things.  Their best advice was to find a place that was government inspected, had an autoclave, and used disposable needles.  He sought advice from an actual government website, and found similar admonitions.  Within a few days, he took her, and the deed was done, not without some squealing on her part and a look of instant regret.  However, she put a brave face on it, and there was relative calm within the house for a time, even though his wife was resentful.

A year later, when it was prom time at the high school, the big kerfuffle was to find his girl a dress.  She was valedictorian, so it needed to be something special.  Off to the city they all went, together with a couple of her friends, and landed at a fancy shopping mall.  Mom & Dad left the trio to their own devices, telling their daughter they would meet back at a certain time, and hopefully she would find something she liked.  He and his wife then wandered about for a while, looking into the windows of some dress shops as they went.  He spotted a formal gown in black, beaded with beautiful silver designs upon it, and said to his wife “That’s the one she’s going to want.”  They walked for a half hour more, and made another circuit of the mall.  Coming to the same shop again, he decided to go in and ask the price.  The saleswoman said “you know, we have someone in here trying one on right now”.  It was $425, and, of course, you know who was trying it on.  While they were there, she came out of the room to look at herself.  Dad saw her first, and looked pleadingly at his wife, who, after seeing this sight, had no choice but to give in.  Their girl was glowing, and her friends gave her some envious looks.

After the prom, she announced to her Dad, when they were home alone, that there was going to be a party at a cottage belonging to one of her friends’ parents.  He gave her something of a cross examination, and, respectfully enough, she told him that there was “probably” going to be booze, and maybe even drugs, there.  For the first time in his life, he gave her a flat “No”.  She pleaded and said that she, of all people, had to show up, and would stay away from that kind of activity.  He believed her, but would not let her go, and she kept testing his resolve.  Something let go within him, and this man who had always kept his thoughts to himself, began to cry silently.

A change came over his little girl, and she crossed the room to him, hugging him tightly.

She said “Dad.  Dad.  You have nothing to worry about ever again from me.  I will not go.”

On his birthday, the card she gave to him said “Dad, I love you because you love me”.
Fifteen years later, he still has it.

Running for it

My old father-in-law, now gone, was someone I knew for the first thirty years of my marriage.

It does take me a long while to get to know anyone, and vice versa, but, as I grew into his ways (and he became more comfortable with mine), we got along fine.  There was my city boy naïveté for him to chuckle about, and I enjoyed the many parables that he related to me (true or made up) from his own street-wise life.  I think he was always testing me to see how much bullshit I would believe.

The last couple of years of his life saw him in a steep decline.  He began to have difficulty walking, and could no longer drive, but still wanted to pursue some of his favorite activities, such as looking through second hand stores to find some little trinket to bring home to his wife (who would usually spurn it anyway), going visiting, and prowling the flea markets and garage sales.

It fell to me to taxi him around most of the time, and I didn’t mind, because we kept each other good company.  Getting him in and out of the car, unfolding his walker, shuffling through the stores etc. at his slower pace taught me some patience,  and showed me his love and his own patience with his wife, who was well into her struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.

We were far apart, distance wise (hundreds of miles), but as her parents’ health declined, my wife and I visited at least monthly.  Sadly, her Dad began to lose interest in his gadabout lifestyle, and started wandering in his conversations.

When he and I were alone one time, he told me quietly that he had been having frequent dreams about the Devil, that he had a sense of being constantly examined by the Evil Eye, and that the Devil had shown him all of the misdeeds in his life, and was “expecting him” soon.  In the most recent episode, he was being chased around and around his car by “a short little bastard with red skin, horns, and brass buttons”.

I said to him “you’ve been watching too many cartoons”, whilst in my own mind I was pretty unsettled, despairing for all of the blackness of his visions, for the loss of his carefree self, and for my wife’s emotional state.  It wasn’t long before we took him to the hospital for the last time.  The physical ailment was bladder cancer, but he had long since given up the game, spiritually.

In those days, mental illness wasn’t a subject for open discussion.  Now, as I am approaching my seventies, and for the last couple of years, I’ve experienced the creeping insidiousness of the black thoughts, and have come to know it for what it is.  I’m on the run, as he was, in a way.  Recognizing what is happening (thankfully), and trying to stay a step ahead through therapy and (hopefully) wonderful medicine.

Still lucid enough to put something like this together, and to take a little joy from it.
God bless all of you out there who are rowing the same boat.

Parental recollections

  • Having the privilege of being there at my son’s birth, after many hours of my wife’s painful labour.
  • Quitting smoking and deporting our cat to the in-laws while the baby was growing.
  • Being zombies for the first few months because of rocking chair duties to help calm him down from his colic.
  • Missing, by minutes, the birth of my daughter.  I had taken her mother to the hospital, with my son in the car, because it was a late night surprise, and then thought I had enough time to take him to my mother’s place and still make it back.  Arrived breathlessly at the hospital, only to have a nurse announce that I had a daughter (delivered by the nurse, because a doctor was not on hand at the time).
  • Walking through a park with my family and some friends, with my son toddling beside us and our daughter in a carriage.  She became fussy, and I picked her up and rocked her while singing “the bear went over the mountain”.  I think it was her favourite song at the time, and seemed to be the only thing that would calm her down.
  • Bedtime stories, starting off with the mythical Dr. Seuss, then books by Richard Scary, to name a few.  One of them involved complex cartoon pictures, in which you had to find a little critter called “Goldbug”.  That certainly developed a spirit of competition between the two kids, and a little jealousy when one got the better of the other.
  • I actually read the complete “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” books to them.  It took about a year.  Daughter lost interest, but the son couldn’t get enough.
  • Piggyback rides down the hallway to their bedrooms, as part of the nightly routine, with the wife in the background telling me to “get them the hell to bed”.
  • Singing them to sleep when the reading and games didn’t work.  Mostly Beatles and Wings.  If the singing didn’t work, we pulled out a small electric keyboard on which I taught them to play “Smoke on the Water”, I think.
  • Having my son come home from school, very upset, because he had lost a model dinosaur that he had brought there that morning.  This was in November, and we got pretty cold while retracing his steps back there until we found it.
  • Driving my son to a job interview quite far from home, then stopping on the side of the road.  When he asked what for, I said “you’re going to drive”.  It was a standard.  He eventually got the hang of it.
  • Taking my daughter on her first driving lesson (same car) around the oval up at the high school.  She found it difficult, and more than once stalled it, but that is to be expected.  She does claim, though, that I got impatient and said to her “the lesson is over.”  I do not remember that.
  • Physically barring the door so she could not get out to go to a friend’s place late one night.  It had been freezing rain, everything was slick, and I just said no.  She hated me for a while.
  • Being involved in a serious accident one winter night (not hurt), and arriving home at about 2 a.m.  Kids were crying in the hallway.
  • Coming home from work, with my daughter waiting.  I tried picking her up and slinging her over my shoulder (she was about 11 years old), and instead slipped, collapsed, and wrecked some stuff in the hall.
  • Having tickling sessions on the upstairs bed when I went up to get changed after work.  The two of them would run up there, and we would see who cried Uncle first.
  • Bedbugs.   Lice.  Fleas.  Numerous cats.
  • Driving my girl two hours through a snowstorm to attend a talent contest.  Spending 14 hours there, only to have her fail the audition.
  • Taking a load of teenagers to downtown Toronto so they could attend some concert or other, and spending several hours bumbling around waiting for them to get out.
  • Fond memories of going to plays and concerts with my daughter.
  • Going fishing with my son.  Not catching much, but just going fishing.
  • Golfing with both of them at one time or another
  • Many, many trips to North Bay, complete with serious sibling rivalry in the backseat.  Never ever again will I put the four of us in one vehicle.
  • Thinking about taking my son to a strip club, then changing my mind.
  • Having a bunch of kids knock on my door, screaming that my son had been hurt.  Running down the roadway to find that he had broken his wrist in two after a roller blading accident.  He then went on to a career of fairly regular calamities, including another broken arm, elbow, and various accidents with saws etc.
  • Taking him for a dental emergency to a guy that turned out to be something of a butcher.  I could hear the screams from the waiting room, got him the hell out of there, and took him to a place that did sleep dentistry, a thousand bucks later.

Looking back, I loved (almost) every minute of it, and surely would not change it at all.