My father, my friend

To this day, my dad can be incredibly hard on himself. I think he sometimes questions my upbringing and thinks to hard on what he could and should have done. When I was younger, especially a teenager, I could have pointed out all the ways I thought my dad wasn’t being fair, or that he was mean. But now that I’m an adult, I’ve come to see how much he really did for me, and taught me; both in what he gave me and what he didn’t. So when I hear my dad being hard on himself, I always pause and think, could I have told him he was better more? And the irony is, that both of us tend to overthink it; we dont realize that we’ve probably taught each other a lot more then we could have ever imagined.

My family is probably anything but average or traditional. Though we lived in a small town, surrounded by family, I don’t think we were conventional. That thought was further reinforced in my head when we found out my sister was special needs. I think it became even more of a point, when I came to realize that there wasn’t a miracle or a cure for her. My dad, from my eyes has always been a rock when it comes to my sister. He has always done a lot of the heavy lifting and he and my mum went through many of the hoops and loops for her. Even as far as uprooting from our little town and moving to a new place in hopes they could give her something better. And even if my younger self felt like I was getting left out sometimes, my dad also did a lot of these things for me too. I just couldn’t realize it at the time. I was much to selfish and I couldn’t get past why I never seemed to be on his good side. Though in his defence, I wasn’t very good at telling the truth and I wanted to be inside and not outside. Which I don’t think my dad really understood. He understood the lying, I’ve heard my fair share of stories on his own childhood. But I don’t think he understood why I didn’t want to do chores, hated making my bed and above all really didn’t want to be outside by myself. To him I was lazy. To me, I didn’t have enough time for all my books, and well… uncle said that I’d be eaten by a bear if I went in the woods. And I figured, you cannot be eaten if you are inside. So we didn’t always get along when I was a kid.

Perhaps the one thing I really saw eye to eye with my dad on, was playing Mario Kart 64 with him or foseball. I loved playing games with him. And it was probably when I saw him smile the most. Christmas morning games, racing around a track and trying to arm wrestle him, we’re the lights of my time with my dad. I got to hear him laugh and he seemed relaxed. Sure there were other moments where he smiled; but those were with his friends. I was usually inside, watching them laugh and talk by the fire from the bathroom window, well after I should have been sleeping. I admired my dad and I always wanted to hang out with him, but I wanted him to like me. I really wanted him to just be happy about me.

And this continued on when I was a teenager. I wanted dad to be happy with me. And because of this, it wasn’t always easy to ask him for things or to learn things from him. My high desire to make him proud and to like me, lead to high filled moments of anxiety. Including the time he tried to teach me how to drive. Let’s just say we were both so stressed out, that I ended up driving on the wrong side of the road and he nearly hard a hard attack. Back then he was a smoker, and I had to pull over so he could have a stress smoke. I remember being so overwhelmed and filled with shame that I couldn’t do something as easily as he could. And it wasn’t always easy talking it through with my dad, we didn’t understand each other because we didn’t have the same experiences. He was the breadwinner of the family, and he really didn’t like his job. This made him moody and when the end of the day came around, he really just wanted to relax. Being an adult, I can completely understand him, now. I have no idea how he came home to us kids after a long stressful day at work. And I wish I knew that back then.

But as luck would have it, I think dad and I drifted further away in a sense because even though I was his kid. I stepped up in my roles at home. I took care of my sister, when they need to go out, have a date night or what ever. And when mum had her stroke, I took on helping him as much as I could. Mum was sick and even though we had grandma come down to help. I took on a lot. Someone had to keep his work shirts clean and help him with dinner prep. And even though there was a lot of hard moments with this. I got more of those goofy moments with my dad. He taught me how to cook different thing. And much to both our suprise, how to not scoop butter out of a container (pro tip: don’t use a hot spoon), not to leave cleaning up after the dog until spring, and how to laugh when you make a mistake. Even if I was perhaps the only teenager who knew how to properly was her dad’s clothes and make peppercorn sauce for steak. I don’t think I would have changed it.

If anything, I’d go back and change the parts where I was mad. Where my own temper made my dad question if I hated him or wasn’t proud of him. My greatest moment of clarity was in the fact that no, my dad didn’t give me what every other parent was giving their kids. The biggest point of frustration was, I didn’t have a car, not till I could buy one. And he didn’t bend over to give me a ride, most of the time I had to ask friends for a ride and take the bus home from school. I had to earn my allowance by doing chores and if I spent it all then that was on me. I don’t think I would have nearly as much appreciation for money with out this. I still find myself in the occasional problem but I know I can get out of it. Because I know dad did and I know I watched him do it. And he gave me the best tools he could by not giving me everything. There were days he wanted to. But I honestly think it was better this way. I couldn’t see it then; but I can see it now. Dad taught me to be independent, to keep pushing through, and to think before I acted.

I don’t think kids always get it. We think our parents, especially our fathers, are just being mean and grumpy. I don’t think we really know what they teach us, not until we’re older, not until we are seeing things from a similar perspective. And we don’t always remember the bad moments and the teachable moments. Our brains hold on to the good. I’ve fallen victim to that many times. Even when writing this essay. Because I’ve wanted to layer it with stories about Christmas, playing video games, and the horror movies we watched. And I think those things have their place. But I think I would be doing a disservice to my dad. Because though sportsmanship and not jumping every time someone goes boo are great skills. They aren’t the ones that have gotten me past financial hard ships. They aren’t the skills that have made me resilient and strong enough to take on the world even when it throws a million awful things my way. And even if I don’t have it all together all the time, or have everything. We aren’t perfect, and we are going to make mistakes. But you keep going. And I wouldn’t have learned that if my dad hadn’t made it clear that sometimes you have to keep going, you fix what you did wrong, and sometimes you can’t have everything.

My dad and I share in overthinking and wondering if we should have done better. We share in being stubborn, temperamental and sometimes firmly independent. But the things that go deeper than that is we share lessons, we’ve shared life and learning. Neither of us might have always understood the other, or always seen eye to eye. But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t be here without him, I wouldn’t have the tools to look ahead but to also make it work when life gets tough. My dad is incrediably hard on himself and he worried he was hard on me. But I’ve grown to understand, that was never the case, not really, it wasn’t that he meant it, it was because he wanted what was best. And he wasn’t perfect, he didn’t always know what he was doing; but we grew up together and without that we would never be who we are now.