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My dad was a good man. I think about him a lot this time of year. He died in 1995 when I was 17 years old. He was riding his bike one morning with some friends when a drunk driver hit them. My dad suffered the brunt of the impact. He died the minute his head hit the car’s windshield.
We had just moved back to the United States from Brazil, where we’d lived since I was two years old. My parents were trying to give me a chance to adjust for a year before I went to college in the US. Instead, we spent that year reeling, trying to come to grips with our new reality—widowed, my mother decided not to go back to Brazil. My dad’s death not only ripped him away from us, it took us away from everything familiar in our lives.
I grew up out on the western edge of Brazil, near some of the best piranha fishing in the country. My dad loved to fish and he took my brothers and me to the same fishing lodge every year. We lived for those trips. We caught huge fish that sometimes leapt out of the water, flashing in the sun. We drove our small boat past the alligators and the jaburus, big birds whose wings beat loudly when they flew. My dad taught us his best fishing techniques, but also told us stories about his life, often staying up late to talk on the long wooden porch at the fishing lodge. It was called ‘Passo do Lontra’ in Portuguese—Otter Pass.
The author’s father and grandfather pose with their fishing guide and their day’s catch.
My dad was a complicated man. After he died, the good memories of connecting at Otter Pass helped me work through some of the more difficult parts of our relationship. We didn’t have time to deal with some of the issues that had come up in my late teenage years.
Now that I’m a dad—almost as old as he was when he died—I realize he was trying to help me at seventeen learn how to become a good man. He wanted the best from me and for me.
But he didn’t always use words that connected with me. I think now that he was searching for a way to communicate well with me. I know I don’t always know what I’m doing as a dad. When I was a kid, my dad felt sure and unchanging. As an adult, I realize that was only my view—he was struggling and working things out and still growing as a person.
It’s taken me a long time, but I think I have a more accurate picture of who my dad was as a person and as a father than I did when he died. I think some of his more stringent views would have mellowed with time. But I also think his values would have stayed the same.
These are the values I want to pass on to my own kids. When I tell stories about my dad, I remember the way he loved other people—he always made sure we dropped off some of the big fish we caught to families who didn’t always have enough to eat. He loved nature—he was never more content than sitting in the front of the boat as it skimmed the surface of the water. And he loved our family—he told us so all the time.
As I parent my own kids, I want to keep my dad’s values and many of his good qualities, but add in some other things that I think every dad needs. I want to listen well to my kids, not just sometimes but every day. I want to adjust my language and parenting to make sure I’m connecting well with each of them. I want to help my kids grow into their individual passions and interests, so that one daughter who loves robotics and our other daughter who loves art each grow in those areas. I want my kids to see me participating all the time in household chores and family management—a truly equal home is a beautiful thing.
Years after my dad’s death, his legacy lives on in our home and we tell stories about him all the time to our kids who never got to meet him. I even started a company named Otter Pass after the place he used to take me fishing. We make bags and accessories designed to free up dads so they can connect with their kids—it’s something my dad would have loved.
But I also don’t want our beautiful memories to gloss over the truth—my dad was wonderful and human, like any other person. I want to be able to critique and learn from him all at the same time. I hope seeing me as flawed and loving, complex and straightforward, is something my own kids will do when they’re adults.
We only get a few short years with our kids. No one is perfect. Every good dad is also a complicated one. To me, the key is being intentional and making sure we continue to learn, grow, and try hard as dads to connect with our kids while we can. I think it’s never too late to open up and share who we are, where we’ve been, what we struggle with, what we hope for. Sometimes it’s hard to be vulnerable and authentic with our kids, but it just might be the most important thing we could do.
I’m pretty sure my dad would agree.
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This content is sponsored by Otter Pass.
Photos provided by Jonathan and Jessica Goudeau of Otter Pass.