What has your father taught you?

      There are very few people outside of our parents that will have made such an impact on our lives. We seem to sometimes over look that fact, as we might still be growing into know-it-alls. Over time we may learn to listen and even appreciate them, and no one has an impact like that on me more than my father.

      Most people seem to have the opposite problem with parents, I, on the other hand only really grew up with my father and in some ways we grew up together. As he was 15 years old when I was born.

      With having a kid at such an early age, I am sure it was the most challenging things he has ever done in his life, even to this date. He had the know how and the will power to drop out of middle school during the summer of eighth grade and start working to support his new small family. I was too young to remember those days, but I use to hear stories about how hard it was on all of the family. They use to tell me a few Christmas I was the only one that would get presents as there was not enough money for anyone else. That always bothered me as most kids would still be getting presents in their late teens, but not my dad.

      As I got older and I started to see things a bit more as an adult. I understood the need for alone time, and why he would always just sit on the couch and tell me to let him relax before playing with me. I saw that construction job he took to support me was taking its toll on him, even though he was barely thirty. The work, plus an early onset of juvenile diabetes did not help.  It never stopped him though, even recently he said “I’d rather work and when I can’t work anymore I might as well be dead”. It does not seem my generation has that same kind of worth ethic. As if we have lost some of the grit that help make the generation before us able and willing to tackle anything.

      Despite the worth ethic differences my dad never wanted me to go into the construction field behind him. Always making me stay up late to study for the spelling-bee, which never helped. I would still get stuck on any word larger than 4 letters. He wanted to know that I would not put my body through the same hell in order to make a living, but I liked helping him. I was never cut out to move one hundred and forty pounds of liquid concrete over 2x4s in the mud at 6:30 in the morning using just  wheel barrel, but I tried. Each time I spilled it I had just seconds to grab a shovel and pick all up before it started to set up the yard of some stranger.I found a certain love for manual labor. I think it has to do with the same relaxation that you get from working out. Or maybe at the end of the day you can look down at your work and see you have made a difference. You can review your work and people will admire or even live in what you have built. There are very few professions in the world that can give that kind of satisfaction.

      Despite his best effects I still dropped out of high school and ended up working in a factory with him. Each day we had the floor plans to make a new prefabricated house. Each section was reasonable for putting together a certain room, or hall way. I however was not skilled enough for even hammering nails apparently. I had to hammer mesh tacks for the roof support beams. It was hot, and there was no AC in that metal warehouse. No one cared about anything but getting paid and smoking, or in the case of the supervisor, doing cocaine off of his desk. Either way, at the end of each day I was tired, sore and well...wanted a cigarette and my pay check, but I still knew I helped build someone’s house. After a short time though I was cut from the line, I supposedly spent too much time drinking water. Not sure what I was thinking trying to stat hydrated going manual labor in 90 degree weather. They kept my dad on though.

      After some time from going from dead end security job to security job I had a sit down conversation with my dad about what I want to do with my life. I had always had a knack for fixing computers since I was fourteen years old. We threw around some ideas and despite my better judgement we decided to make my hobby, my job. I ended up starting out a community college which I thought was a waste of time, but my dad never saw it that way. I guess any college seemed like a good one from his point-of-view. I worked through it until I dropped out from school yet again. He was disappointed although he would never had told me that out right. He always seems to want to say something direct but it is like he knew he had never been in my shoes. Despite that, he understood what it meant to be ageing and no chance of retirement so he would still press.

      I eventually got into a university and started to make real progress there. Faltering before it was time for exams and my dad trying to talk me down into taking one question at a time. Even though he had no idea what I was learning about. The way he speaks about complicated topics has always been a sort of comfort for me. That each time life gives you shit the only thing you can do is press on, and that is what he would do, except he used his back in summer heat. I can see each sun bleach spot on him where is skin has just given on pigmentation completely.

     With his consistent ear to vent to about subjects above his head I was able to push through my degree. I did not even want to walk down the aisle. I thought it was so stupid to go up there and be handed a blank paper and wait 3 weeks for the real thing to get to your house. When you opened it, it is just be a consent reminder of looming debt pressed on cheap leather. He pressed and I caved, even buying the pre-walk pictures so he could brag to his friends.

     Now that I have come full circle and have a kid of my own I cannot look at him the same way. I cannot understand how he did it alone, never taking child support until 2 years before I was eighteen. Just the seer ability to be standing in the fire day-by-day and not crack. I even catch my safe saying the same thing to my son he used to say to me when he had enough. Phrases like “Don’t put that rock in back in your mouth or I’mma pop you” or the legendary “You want me to give you something to cry about?”

     I employ all of you to take this time, to look back at what you had, and who you were and try to see the difference your father has made in your life. Even if he was not around, or was a deadbeat, you may not have learned what do in life from him, but you sure learned what not to do.

 
What did your father teach you?



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