Life with father

My mom once said that my dad was too young when I was born. That he didn’t know how to be a father yet. This explains a lot about my father and I and our relationship growing up. I didn’t understand him and I don’t think he understood me. We had similar interests such as fishing, baseball, model building, but fundamentally we were different people. My entire childhood can be seen as the two of us slowly getting to know each other.

I remember getting very upset once, at what I can’t remember, but at the time it seemed important. It may very well have been important simply because my father felt the need to cheer me up. This didn’t happen very often so I remember when it did. My frustration had grown to such a level that I retreated to my secret hideaway deep within the recesses of our back yard pine tree. It turns out it wasn’t so secret as my father decided to do some work in the garage, in plain view from the pine tree and try to entice me into helping. He even went so far as to begin work on a model of a `49 Ford and yell out that he wished that he had somebody to help him with it.

Now, looking back, one would think that I would have been overjoyed that my father had wanted my help with something. My father was reaching out to me, trying to create a bond with me in the hopes we might find a hobby to be enjoyed together. I didn’t see it this way.

What I did see was a hollow attempt to bring me out of that tree and I was not about to cave. I saw this charade for what it truly was; a test of wills. And at ten years old, I knew I was stronger. I held my proverbial ground, and didn’t move. He persisted, and even went so far as to break out the airbrush for the first primer coat. What he didn’t know was that I had the forethought of bringing up a copy of Boy’s Life Magazine with me into the tree, knowing I was going to be there for a while. I was not about to let my father win.

One might stop and ask the question: Why did this young boy feel that his relationship with his father was to be viewed as a battle? To which I reply that that was the reality my father created. It did build obvious barriers to a functional relationship, but it also helped me out in life. That competition has helped me overcome many challenges. From baseball games to always getting in the last word when someone was making fun of me, I learned not to back down from much. To this day that competitive fire is still inside me, for better or for worse.

So who won? Another lesson I learned at any early age was that my father was not a patient man. If you stuck to your guns long enough, there was a good chance you would come out on top. After about twenty minutes of his painting and gluing and my reading about the physiological changes bears undergo during hibernation, my father gave up. But my father was never one to simply stop what he was doing if he saw he was beat; he gave up with a bang. In this case it was the bang of the ’49 Ford slamming against the garage wall. My father never attempted to bribe me again, partly because it didn’t come easy to him, but also because I think he respected me a bit more for not giving in.