The Most Important Skill My Dad Taught Me

When I was little, I marveled at my dad's skills. He fixed complicated analog machines. He built a doohickey that unscrambled 1980's television paywall stations (remember those?) He set up camps, and built fires. He barbecued a steak with the best of them.

I will never be able to learn these skills, I thought to myself way back then. Meanwhile, my dad was excelling professionally. He was moving up the corporate ladder. He was taking important business trips to Taiwan. Also – and he has told me this on more than one occasion – he kept a radio station on the air by holding two wires together.

Thirty years or so later, I am still partially right. I still don't know how to wire in my own ceiling fans (they're still in the original boxes). I am not bad at cooking chicken and seafood, but still struggle to get that perfect medium rare beef. Don't get me wrong – I've done okay for myself over the years. I've maintained a writing career, and I'm a pretty okay dad and husband. The skills I lack are not his fault. He showed me a lot of things back then, but I was apparently more interested in drawing and riding my bike than learning useful information.

However, there is an important skill I picked up from him. Some may not consider it a "hard" skill – like fixing a radiator or installing floor tiles. But it's high on the list when it comes to usefulness. What he taught me, by example, is about how to navigate rough waters. And it has kept me going through a lot of difficult times.

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My dad is part of the Boomer generation – you know, the people who worked for the same company for 35 years, got a retirement pension and watch, and then moved on with living their lives.

Except that on more than one occasion, when he was proudly working for companies he cared about, he got laid off. On those days he would sit at the kitchen table with his head in his hands for a bit, like a boxer who had taken a hard jab. But then he would lift his head, and start making dinner or something.

When he was getting a bit older, the "career" jobs stopped coming. But my dad, who has impressive experience on his resume, didn't give up. He didn't throw in the towel. He didn't sell the house and move us all into a tiny apartment. Instead, he took jobs that he probably never thought he would do. He worked at a truck yard. He inspected auto parts at a factory. He even delivered pizzas for a while, as well as books.

This was during a period of time before he landed another longer-term job, when he and my mom were doing whatever they needed to put food on the table. And he didn't moan about it much – so my brother and I didn't panic.

He rode out his working years as a janitor for a school board. It was a good gig, but also probably not one that he expected to have. Regardless, he took pride in the job, and he did it for several years until taking retirement.

Perhaps you're reading all this impatiently, looking for the place where I name the biggest skill he gave me, as the headline promised. No, it wasn't woodworking or changing fuses.

It was building resilience.

My dad showed me by example how to deal with hardship. He found a way to keep us afloat, even when the water was gushing into our ship.

He pushed on, although he was under a lot of pressure – much of it from himself. The world has become a heavier place in recent years, and I have personally been feeling the weight of it. Some days, it feels a bit unbearable. But I think of how my dad didn't give up when the chips were down, and I squeeze a little more strength out of myself.

Perhaps resilience is genetic, passed down through generations. Or perhaps it's about the environment one grows up in. Or maybe it's both. My childhood was stable, even when the earth was shaking around us. For that, I'm grateful.

And while I don't think I'm quite as resilient as my dad, I'm going to model the same for my son.