Some relationships are built out of wood, sweat, and blood.
I don’t have many memories of my father from when I was young. I’m sure there are many reasons for my lack of memory: my father worked a lot to support our family, I was lost in my adolescent world, and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I have many more memories of my mother and grandparents than of my father, though I hold no ill will toward my father regarding my lack of memory. I understand he had to work, and life is never easy.
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To be honest, I’ve never felt my father and I had a close relationship. We are different in many ways, and, as with many father and son relationships, our differences were most pronounced during my teenage years, which brought unwelcome stress. My father and I see the world differently, and I’m confident we always will see the world differently. This, however, is far from a negative aspect of our relationship. I think it’s healthy for individuals to understand their surroundings differently. Accordingly, my father and I have lived dramatically dissimilar lives.
My father is an only child, and I have a sister two years younger than me. While I am not a parent, I’m confident that raising a single child is much different from raising two or more children. There are different rules and different adventures. My father was raised in a military family (my grandfather served in the US Air Force for 20 years), and I was not; though, for the first 18 years of my life, I lived next to an air force base and went to school with many friends whose fathers and mothers served in the military.
My father was athletic in high school, and in high school, I participated in track and field until my sophomore year, and, then, I threw myself into drama and theater art. I joined choir and my high school’s renaissance singing group, the Madrigals, and I participated in musicals. I loved it. It was one of the times in my life when I was truly happy. The fact that I decided to participate in no sporting activities after my sophomore year didn’t please my father; however, I realize now that my decision strengthened our relationship.
I became the theater manager and set designer for my high school’s drama department, so I made sure the theater operated effectively, sets were designed and built for the three productions the department produced every year. It was a place and position where, despite my age, I was given respect and my opinion was valued. It was an odd feeling, since I had never really experienced that type of attention at home, or, perhaps, I didn’t fully understand the concepts of respect and value yet. It was during my time as a drama nerd that I finally felt appreciated by my father, albeit indirectly. We worked together on set designs and projects. We built sets that are still in use by my old high school, and it brings me a small amount a pleasure to know that my father and I did something together that has lasting value.
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Despite my father and my work during my final two years of high school, I still felt as if he wasn’t happy with some of my choices. As with many father and son relationships, I think it’s important to have distance of both time and space between the event and the judgment of the event. I have done my best to view my father’s inaction during my childhood as something that was necessary: his job was stressful, he had to work a lot, he had to provide, and these things prevented him from participating in parts of my life that were important to me. Building those sets for my old high school put further stress on our relationship, but it was a good stress in that we worked together to finish something, we sweated together as we threw wood around, we bled together as we cut ourselves or accidentally hammered our fingers, and we often got irritated with each other in the way two men who are locked in a garage over a weekend trying to finish a project on a deadline do. Those sets, perhaps just simple wood, screws, nails, and glue to some, strengthened my relationship with my father. It is something I never expected, but when I think about those creations on which he and I labored, I can’t help but be thankful for the sweat and smashed fingers because they changed our relationship in a positive way.
I value that experience more than any other experience I’ve ever had with my father. It was challenging, but I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. It was the first time in my life that I actually felt close to my father. I’ve never held any ill will toward my father for our tenuous relationship. It is what it is. I can’t go back and change it, and I wouldn’t want to change it. You can’t alter your past; you can only learn from it to improve your future. I learned a lot about my father when we worked together on my theater projects: he’s tough, honest, and a good man. He says what he means and means what he says. That’s a quality I value in my father, and I’ve tried to emulate it.
There are many things I wish were different and many things I wish had progressed down an alternate path. I would be lying to say I regret nothing when it comes to our relationship; however, despite the few instances of regret, I’m proud of my father, and I love him.
—Photo boliston/Flickr
