Per yesterday’s post, today’s topic on the little rolled-up slip of paper is, “What quality do you admire most in your father? Why?”
Well, like most girls, I admire my father for a lot of things – and those things have changed over time. When I was really little – like 3 or so, I used to love the smell of coffee on his breath in the morning (actually, I still do). I may be the only person in the country who actually likes coffee breath!
When I got a little older, I admired how physically strong my dad was – how he could pick me up and swing me, or get down on the floor and wrestle with me, and I could pound on him with my little chicken arms to my heart’s content without fear of hurting him. As I got into school age years, and beyond, I admired (and still do) how smart he is, how hard he works, how willing he is to drop whatever personal things he has going on to help someone he loves, and how he still opens the car door for my mother – every single time.
But I didn’t discover and/or realize what I admire most until I was well into adulthood. I knew my father had an unhappy childhood – we were never particularly close to his side of the family, since they all lived “back east” and we lived “out west.” He would talk about how many chores he had on the farm as a boy, and how his mother had to sign a waiver to let him enlist in the Air Force at just 17. He left home then, and never looked back.
For awhile in my early 30’s, my father and I carpooled to work together. As we sat in bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic, more details about his childhood emerged. He told me how his father (my grandpa) had a terrible temper, and would beat my father regularly. Sometimes, when “Harold” (as we refer to my dad’s father - often with the word "Weird" in front of it...but that's another story!) would be “on one,” my grandma would give my dad a sandwich and tell him to get lost – to go spend the night in the woods, and don't come back until his dad had calmed down (usually the next day). My father was only six years old at the time.
We recently saw a picture of a razor strop – a long piece of leather used for sharpening razor blades in “the olden days.” My dad said something about it making a good “whuppin’ tool,” so I asked him if his dad had ever beat him with one. “We didn’t have one,” he replied, “or I’m sure he would have. He beat us with everything else.”
I also asked him if Harold just wailed on the kids, or if he beat Grandma, too. “Oh yeah,” dad said. “He beat her, too.”
Recently, with the events of my divorce and the ample evidence I have that The Tool is definitely not the kind of man I want my daughters to grow up to marry, I have begun reflecting on the qualities that make a good man. Largely, they are the same qualities that make a good dad, too. I have been very worried that my girls, who pretty much adore their father the way most daughters do, will think that their dad can do no wrong, despite evidence to the contrary. I worry that they will accept the things he’s done, and the choices he’s made, as “OK.” Worst of all, I worry that they will grow up to select someone with equally shifty character traits as the father of their children, and thereby have to endure some of the hurts I’ve suffered over the last year or so. I would desperately like to save them from that pain, if it’s at all possible.
So – back to the topic at hand. I realize that many abusers are people who were, themselves, abused. I don’t have to look much beyond the character of The Tool’s family to figure out how he came to be the way he is. So the thing I admire the most about my father, is that despite the fact he came from an abusive household, he never, ever purposely hit me or physically hurt me in any way. Oh, sure, sometimes he’d give me a playful swat on the butt that stung more than he intended it to, and there were some times when we were wrestling that things got out of hand (Don’t they always? I can still hear my mom saying, “OK, that’s enough! Somebody’s gonna end up crying!!”).
But the point is, long before “breaking the cycle” became the buzzword for preventing child abuse, my dad made a conscious decision not to raise his own family the way he was raised. He didn’t want to put us through that drama/trauma. He made that promise to himself, and he kept it – no matter how disobedient or whiney or smart-alecky us kids were, or how tired or mad or edgy he was. I can’t imagine the kind of self-discipline and strength of character that required, over and over and over again, for the 30-some-odd years he had kids in the house.
Witnessing his triumph, even when I didn’t completely understand the struggle, gives me hope for my own situation on two fronts: one, that the cycle CAN be broken. Just because my girls have a father who turned out to be not as good of a man as I had hoped or wanted (let alone as good as I once thought he was) doesn’t mean that they will automatically accept character traits like their father’s as being indicative of “a good man.” The kind of man he is doesn’t have to mean that he will automatically be the kind of man they want to marry or be with as an adult. And two, since my girls can know my dad, know what he’s done for us, know where he came from and where he is now, they will know what a REALLY good man is all about.
Finally, since this turned into kind of a Dad Tribute Page (and it’s not even Father’s Day!!), I will leave you with this poem, attributed to Hilda Bigelow:
Well, like most girls, I admire my father for a lot of things – and those things have changed over time. When I was really little – like 3 or so, I used to love the smell of coffee on his breath in the morning (actually, I still do). I may be the only person in the country who actually likes coffee breath!
When I got a little older, I admired how physically strong my dad was – how he could pick me up and swing me, or get down on the floor and wrestle with me, and I could pound on him with my little chicken arms to my heart’s content without fear of hurting him. As I got into school age years, and beyond, I admired (and still do) how smart he is, how hard he works, how willing he is to drop whatever personal things he has going on to help someone he loves, and how he still opens the car door for my mother – every single time.
But I didn’t discover and/or realize what I admire most until I was well into adulthood. I knew my father had an unhappy childhood – we were never particularly close to his side of the family, since they all lived “back east” and we lived “out west.” He would talk about how many chores he had on the farm as a boy, and how his mother had to sign a waiver to let him enlist in the Air Force at just 17. He left home then, and never looked back.
For awhile in my early 30’s, my father and I carpooled to work together. As we sat in bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic, more details about his childhood emerged. He told me how his father (my grandpa) had a terrible temper, and would beat my father regularly. Sometimes, when “Harold” (as we refer to my dad’s father - often with the word "Weird" in front of it...but that's another story!) would be “on one,” my grandma would give my dad a sandwich and tell him to get lost – to go spend the night in the woods, and don't come back until his dad had calmed down (usually the next day). My father was only six years old at the time.
We recently saw a picture of a razor strop – a long piece of leather used for sharpening razor blades in “the olden days.” My dad said something about it making a good “whuppin’ tool,” so I asked him if his dad had ever beat him with one. “We didn’t have one,” he replied, “or I’m sure he would have. He beat us with everything else.”
I also asked him if Harold just wailed on the kids, or if he beat Grandma, too. “Oh yeah,” dad said. “He beat her, too.”
Recently, with the events of my divorce and the ample evidence I have that The Tool is definitely not the kind of man I want my daughters to grow up to marry, I have begun reflecting on the qualities that make a good man. Largely, they are the same qualities that make a good dad, too. I have been very worried that my girls, who pretty much adore their father the way most daughters do, will think that their dad can do no wrong, despite evidence to the contrary. I worry that they will accept the things he’s done, and the choices he’s made, as “OK.” Worst of all, I worry that they will grow up to select someone with equally shifty character traits as the father of their children, and thereby have to endure some of the hurts I’ve suffered over the last year or so. I would desperately like to save them from that pain, if it’s at all possible.
So – back to the topic at hand. I realize that many abusers are people who were, themselves, abused. I don’t have to look much beyond the character of The Tool’s family to figure out how he came to be the way he is. So the thing I admire the most about my father, is that despite the fact he came from an abusive household, he never, ever purposely hit me or physically hurt me in any way. Oh, sure, sometimes he’d give me a playful swat on the butt that stung more than he intended it to, and there were some times when we were wrestling that things got out of hand (Don’t they always? I can still hear my mom saying, “OK, that’s enough! Somebody’s gonna end up crying!!”).
But the point is, long before “breaking the cycle” became the buzzword for preventing child abuse, my dad made a conscious decision not to raise his own family the way he was raised. He didn’t want to put us through that drama/trauma. He made that promise to himself, and he kept it – no matter how disobedient or whiney or smart-alecky us kids were, or how tired or mad or edgy he was. I can’t imagine the kind of self-discipline and strength of character that required, over and over and over again, for the 30-some-odd years he had kids in the house.
Witnessing his triumph, even when I didn’t completely understand the struggle, gives me hope for my own situation on two fronts: one, that the cycle CAN be broken. Just because my girls have a father who turned out to be not as good of a man as I had hoped or wanted (let alone as good as I once thought he was) doesn’t mean that they will automatically accept character traits like their father’s as being indicative of “a good man.” The kind of man he is doesn’t have to mean that he will automatically be the kind of man they want to marry or be with as an adult. And two, since my girls can know my dad, know what he’s done for us, know where he came from and where he is now, they will know what a REALLY good man is all about.
Finally, since this turned into kind of a Dad Tribute Page (and it’s not even Father’s Day!!), I will leave you with this poem, attributed to Hilda Bigelow:
I had a father who talked with me --
Allowed me the right to disagree,
To ask questions – and always answered me,
As best he could, and truthfully.
He talked of adventures; the horrors of war;
Of life, its meaning; what love was for;
How each would always need to strive
To improve the world, to keep it alive.
He stressed the duty we owe one another;
To be aware that each man is a brother.
Words for laughter he also spoke,
A silly song or a happy joke.
Now time runs along, and some say I'm wise –
That I look at life with seeing eyes.
That I look at life with seeing eyes.
My heart is happy, my mind is free,
For I had a father who talked with me.
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