Ode to Big Hank!

Today, my dear old dad celebrated his 64th birthday. Sadly, I couldn’t gift him with the pleasure of my company. In fact, I didn’t get him anything at all. It’s not that I’m holding out on the old man out of  frugality. No, my dad has cornered that market for the entire family. He is so cheap thrifty that it literally goes against his nature to allow himself to appreciate a birthday gift. What my dad does appreciate is the value of a dollar. I know that deep down in his core somewhere he secretly loves getting presents. I see his giddiness upon being handed a brightly wrapped package, the child-like sparkle in his eye before he inevitably retains his composure when he’s asked “Do you like it Henry?” He always answers the same way: “I don’t know yet. How much did it cost?” Anything over $50 is likely to be sent back, particularly if there is any sort of technology involved. A digital camera, a very generous offering from my stepmother, proved to be an epic failure one Christmas when my father discovered it had more buttons than he was able to navigate, and furthermore, there was no way all that perfectly good film was going to go to waste. Last holiday’s e-reader is just barely within his realm of comfort as long as someone else sees to uploading and downloading all data, leaving my dad responsible only for turning the machine on and off and turning the digital pages. Keeping this in mind, for his birthday this year I’ve decided to forego a traditional gift in favor of this heartfelt dedication, though in light of the light roasting he has just faced, perhaps I should start over.

There has been a steady and substantial succession of time since my tender formative early childhood years, enough time for my father to accrue the distinctive crankiness of men his age. He has firmly adhered this quality to his characteristic wry cynicism, both traits provoked by, or quite possibly exploded from, the storm of  my adolescence. Despite the havoc that was to come (more on that later) I can say without hesitation that I had a truly happy childhood. Many of my earliest and most cherished memories would not exist if it were not for my doting and enthusiastic dad. Though my father’s superior intelligence and impatience causes him to find many people insufferable, he has always had a soft spot for children. He just has an easy way with kids that causes them to migrate towards him. He is funny but not in that condescending way that adults tend to be with children, he is animated, he is creative, he is athletic. As a child, he was always finding new activities for my sister and I to do, always teaching us new things. Tobogganing, ice skating, tennis, badminton, bike riding, hiking. My dad was a teacher with summers off, and though he liked to golf and play tennis, he always had lots of time for his two little girls. He would take us to the library and to the movies, we would go camping and swimming. My dad was my hero, I thought he was the smartest, strongest, handsomest man in the whole world. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up, so much so that I would follow him around the house and mimic his routine. I wanted to shave like him, so he would give me a razor like his with no blade and put shaving cream on it, and we would shave together in the mirror. I remember telling my mom once that I was going to marry my dad, and being upset when she informed me that I couldn’t (as he was already married, she didn’t see to think it was a problem that he was my father). Thankfully by the time they divorced I had moved on.

As a little girl I just assumed that everyone’s dad was like mine, but looking back I realize that this wasn’t the case. I had an especially great dad. He was beyond involved in our lives and always there without hesitation or prompting, always enthusiastic to spend time with my sister and I and even our friends, and at least in my memory, the activities that we did together were enjoyed all of us. I contrast this with many of my friends fathers, who on the rare occasion they happened to be around, were sullen and quiet, or clearly thought taking us places was a chore they were forced to endure, and I realize how lucky I was.

When I was in Grade 3 my parents decided to divorce. They were very civil about it, it was probably the most amicable divorce in the history of the world, at least from a child’s perspective. I hardly ever heard my parents fight, so when they told me they were divorcing it came as quite a shock. I remember my dad sitting on the bed in my parents room telling me that he was moving out, and I remember my heart breaking. I remember hating my mother. I didn’t hate my dad, at least not then. I didn’t start hating him until I was a teenager. My parents were very insistent that they wanted the divorce to affect us as little as possible, so they resolved that there be as little change in our lives as possible. This meant that my mother and father communicated ardently about everything. If I was punished at my mothers, I was punished at my fathers. No pulling any fast ones. Also, for the first couple of years at least, the two of them decided it would be best for us children if we continued to celebrate holidays together as a family. They even went in together on presents. So divorce for us kids meant all of the psychological damage and none of the rewards like double the gifts at christmas. It was shit.

I have alluded to my adolescence above. Well, these years were particularly hard for my dad. I think it all started to go downhill the day I got my period. It happened, of course, on the Friday before I was to go to my dads for the weekend. I begged to stay home but my mother disagreed that menstruation was a disease and sent me anyway. She refused to let me take her feminine supplies (something about teaching my dad a lesson) and instead sent the two of us to the store. This is how my dad and I ended up in The Real Canadian Superstore, in the personal hygiene aisle, perched awkwardly on the edge of my womanhood. “Sooo….See anything you like?” says my dad. I want to melt into the linoleum. I frantically scan the 100 pink packages in front of me. Finally I see one that looks somewhat familiar, I think I recognize the brand as the ones my mom uses. I point and run out of the store back to the safety of the car. Safe. I wait. 10 minutes later I watch my dad walking out of the store, swinging the the box of pads like a big pink sign that screams “HELLO, MY DAUGHTER JUST GOT HER FIRST PERIOD!” He gets in the car. “You couldn’t have gotten a bag??” I screech, giving my best teenage wail. “Pay for a bag? It’s just one item!” My dad says. And that was that. We drive home. The box of pads sits between us on the drive home, but we don’t talk about it, it’s the elephant in the room. I didn’t know then that it was a foreshadowing of the many bigger things that would be left unmentioned between us in the years to come.

Though my father has a lot of winning qualities, he has some that are perhaps less appealing. He is an unbearable perfectionist, he is impatient and he is sarcastic. I am also all of these things, perhaps to an even greater extent. I have always placed an immense amount of pressure on myself to succeed at everything that I do, and that has led to a lot of stress and misery in my relatively short lifetime. Luckily for my dad, the wisdom of his many years has taught him to ease up on himself. Instead, he focuses his perfectionism on others, namely my sister and I. As a result, in addition to the tremendous internal pressure I have always sensed, I also felt like I had to live up to the impossibly high standards set by my father. As a sheltered young child without much free thought or perspective of the world beyond what had been spoon-fed to me by my parents, it was relatively easy to succeed in my consuming goal of pleasing the father that I so idolized. He looked infallible through my rose-colored glasses, my naive faith in his knowledge and judgement felt justified, and I didn’t resent the high standards that he set for me;I accepted that my father knew what was best for me. As a result of my passionate quest for his approval, and also likely owing to the fact that I was a particularly gifted child (and not just self-proclaimed, I skipped Grade 2 people!) our relationship was mutually rewarding and simple. He made it know what accomplishments would elicit the  most praise and I directed my actions appropriately, desperately lapping up all the attention that I could get. Unfortunately, it  couldn’t last.

It’s not that I was a particularly rebellious teenager, it’s just that I wasn’t necessarily an obedient one. Also, being the oldest child, I was a trial run for my parents. I think that having teenage girls is especially hard on fathers. I remember my dad blaming my mother for a boy giving me an ‘inappropriate’ look at a hockey game after she had the nerve to let me get my ears pierced. I was 12. I see 12 year-old girls now wearing bras as shirts with their thongs hanging out of their pants and wonder how my dad would have tolerated these fashions. My sister just had a baby daughter, so I guess time will tell. But I digress. Yes, I think it’ s difficult for most fathers to see their little girls grow up. But I think it’s probably even harder when it appears that your little girl is growing up into someone who appears to resent and despise you, which is how I treated my dad a lot of the time.This wasn’t the exactly the case, but as I entered my teenage years I found myself overwhelmed with inexplicable feelings of anger, resentment and helplessness. With no identifiable source, I lashed out at those closest to me, most often my parents and my sister. Fights with my father were always particularly awful;Because of our parallel personalities I know exactly how to provoke him.

Leaving my childhood and entering my adolescent years I realized that a great big world existed beyond the walls that my parents had built for me. I started to form ideas, make my own decisions, and forge my own path. I struggled with wanting to be my own person and striving for the acknowledgement and acclamation from my father that I had come to rely on for my self-gratification. I rebelled, which won me the acceptance of my peers, yet disappointed my father. I would never admit it, but it hurt to let him down. Yet throughout these tumultuous years, I found that often even my best efforts, which I still exerted in many aspects of my life, especially school, seemed to fall short of ‘good enough’. If I got an A: “Why wasn’t it an A+?” As a teenage girl who already set impossible goals for herself, this was the last thing I needed.  And perhaps the cruelest lesson that I learned during this time, one that most children must face as they enter adulthood, was that my father himself wasn’t the perfect man that I thought he was. Though this lesson has ultimately helped our relationship, at the time it was hard to abandon the idea that the man whose approval I had been seeking so desperately perhaps wasn’t the ultimate expert in everything.Needless to say, ages approximately 13-19 were rough.

But despite how many fights we had, despite how awful I was, my dad was always there. Every second weekend and every Wednesday he would show up to pick me up, no matter how much I hated him that day. I would scream and yell and tell him that I hated him and he would be there. My father, like me, is not a stellar communicator. He shows how he feels by his actions. Yet one day, he really hurt my feelings and I told him so, really driving the point home by crying, and I’m pretty sure refusing to speak to him for a period of time (that’s my style). He must have really felt bad, because he responded in a very heartwarming way. He wrote me a letter. I am not a sentimental person. I’m not like some girls who have hope chests filled with letters from ex-boyfriends and ticket stubs from first dates. I have a plastic box with a couple of old report cards and my silver medal from my pharmacy class. And now a my letter from my dad. It is my most prized possession, one of about 4 things I would save if my apartment caught on fire, and that includes my dog and my husband, and those are in order.

My relationship with my dad now is great. My husband would argue that it is too good, as he thinks that I share too much with my father, but I enjoy the open relationship that I have with him, and the fact that when something good or sad or just plain emotional happens to me one of the first people that I want to call is my dad. Perhaps this is a sign that I need more friends, but I like to think that it is simply a reflection of the closeness of our relationship. We have had to endure a lot of strife in order to get to this point and I wouldn’t change anything about the way our relationship is now. Anyone who knows my dad can attest to his many positive properties: His humour, his kindness, his athleticism, his brilliance, his social prowess. He likes to swing an invisible golf club at invisible golf balls. He might ask you to call him “Big Hank”. He could break into song at any moment. That drink in the plastic cup in the centre console of his automobile may or may not be a beer. If it is, he will insist it is a “victimless crime”. However as his daughter I am privy to information that may not be public knowledge. He can be a sensitive, sweet, and goofy man when no one is looking. He would do anything for those that he loves.He gets $10 haircuts at Singletons.

Happy Birthday Dad, I love you, and I miss you!