My father, A Little Slice of the Pie

How do you describe a father?  I have known many fathers through fiction that I think were meaningful and I have known fathers of friends I grew up with.  I always learned respect for these men.  They were trying to keep their family together come hell or high water.  That was my experience.  The fathers that I grew up with, to quote Chris Rock, “Got their shit done.”  These men sacrificed a level of happiness and self-discovery to provide for their families.

What I would later discover about my father was he was a man, like many other man.  He most definitely had his faults, and he was absent throughout a lot of my formative years.  An earlier, younger version of myself wished he was around more often.  Maybe there was part of me that didn’t understand why until I got older and understood perfectly well why he wasn’t around.  He was working to pay the bills and feed his family.  He had to go.  Later, I realized that he would have loved to stay with us and simply - enjoy.  Work must be had.

Our mother stayed the course, and for the most part, raised his children, while he was off working.  He was a working man all his life and what I would later discover is, he managed to find some semblance of joy in what he did.  He was in the transportation business, driving truck from city to city, in Canada and America.  I remember one day when I was 15 and Dad came in and said, “We’re going to New York City, let’s go, you have half an hour to get ready.”  We’re from Saint John, New Brunswick.  I have not been anywhere for the most part and my father told me that we were going to New York City, of course, I jumped at it, and I got a couple of days off of school to boot.

We got in the truck with a trailer attached and headed down through Maine where I learned about insane highway driving, my dad at the wheel of course.  Through New Hampshire and Massachusetts, then into Connecticut, where my old man pulled off to the side of the road.  We waited.  Why?  Like surfers waiting for the perfect wave?  I didn’t understand why we had to wait.  We waited because we were about to enter a concrete jungle and there were precautions to consider.  Safety measures that I knew nothing about at the time, but he did.  So, we took them and arrived in downtown Manhattan safe and sound.

I don’t have any regrets with the man except one that I do feel lingering around in my mind from time to time.  We were driving in Louisiana heading toward Shreveport and instead of going south to our New Orleans destination, the old man drove north so we could drive to the actual site of where Bonnie and Claude met their demise back during the American Prohibition days.  I didn’t ask for that, he just felt why not, we’re here.  Anyway, we got back on track and were heading to New Orleans, and were just chatting.  We started talking about gambling, which was a small part of his life, and I said something to him, to this day I regret saying, as soon as I said I knew, but he was cool about it.  I said, “Did it ever occur to you that all the money over the years gambling and losing, was the very jackpot you always hoped you’d win?”   Fuck!

That’s always bothered me, he just nodded, and we talked about what it felt like to be older.  He simply said, “Not much.”  He had the greatest sense of humor, which I believe rubbed off on me.  He was great at humility, like any great comedian, dad wasn’t afraid to stand in front of a metaphorical firing squad for a bad joke.

He has since passed away so I reflect on what I learned from this man.  I would argue many lessons I may not have had access to many because they helped make me the man I am today.  One lesson that stands out because it’s an old school man who doesn’t quite have the vocabulary to explain, so he told me once when I was around 14, “Don’t ever hit a woman, hit a wall instead.”  It reminded me a couple of years prior, when my mother stated “Don’t be racist and be nice to homosexuals.”  It was sage advice for a young boy growing up in a simple, and often ignorant community.

When it comes to driving, every piece of advice, with the exception, dads will be dads after all, is the knowledge that is wired into my brain from this man.  “Don’t worry about your driving, you’re fine, watch everyone else's driving.  “While driving you need to look at the foreground and the background at the same time, you need to know what is in front, and behind you and also anticipate what’s coming up.”  Also, the most bazaar one, it may not make sense but I’m telling you, it works.  He said, “when you drive you need to feel it in your butt, the vehicle will let you know what is really happening.”  This is what we take with us.

My father and I were driving in Wyoming while the sun was about to set.  It was beautiful, cascading its way down the westbound rocky mountains.  My dad pulled over to the side of the highway and told me that I needed to see this.  So we both got out of the truck and watched, arguably, one of the best sunsets in my life.

There are many experiences I have had with my father, some I shared here, some I keep to myself, but there is no doubt that this man lived a life.  He somehow made, whatever was going on, lighter and easier to process.  What I take away from this man is, where you're going, protect yourself and your family, and most importantly........ look around.