My dad turned eighty last month. Eighty! It doesn't seem as old as it once did, especially now that I am half way there. Imagine all the memories and experience you'll have when you reach that age. No wonder he's so forgetful! Since Cameron arrived we've seen a lot more of Dad. He likes the little guy and seems honestly thrilled by all that Cam does. I think he's forgotten how babies develop. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that; it's been about forty years since he's lived with a baby. Maybe it's just his old age. Or maybe it's just the fact that human life really is miraculous.
I hope I don't sound too maudlin or cliche when I say I understand better what Dad, and Mom, must have gone through while raising my siblings and me. How they did it is still a mystery to me. Being a parent just blows the socks off of any other experience I've had. While I was pregnant I worried about how I would manage the constant buzz of anxiety I was certain I'd feel once the baby arrived. A year later I have to say that the buzz it overwhelmed by exhaustion. If I ever manage to "catch up" on some sleep and become emotionally rested, then I'm sure the anxiety will come back. Until then, I just hope I'm not too tired to miss what's important.
This past week at work I've been discussing "character" with my students. The kids are writing short essays about what a good father is. It's kind of funny, the things they say. This class is mostly 14 year-old boys.
We started the process by using a lesson that asks them to rank fathers based on brief character descriptions. One father was a strict police officer, another was something like Tiger Woods' father and another was a cool dad who took his kid to concerts and never made him do homework. I did the lesson without much preparation but knew intuitively that it would yield some great stuff.
Our discussion began with me asking the kids which father they liked best. Their choice wasn't hard to predict. They liked the cool dad, the one who blamed the school for his kid's bad grades. In turn, they also liked the father of the narrator from Tobias Wolf's short story "Powder." He sneaks his son into a nightclub to see Thelonious Monk and drives in an English sportscar down a mountain road that's closed due to a snowstorm. I suppose their position, their status requires them to initially say, in front of their peers, that the cool dad is best.
"But, really?" I asked.
We reread the descriptions and charted the qualities. Seeing it up on the whiteboard, in front of them, clarified a few things. The cool thing about the cool dad was that he spent time with his kid. He tried to have a relationship. And the good thing about the strict dad was that he was protecting his kid. And the dad who mortgaged his house to support his daughter's athletic talent, he took a risk in an effort to secure her future. They were impressed by those qualities.
I then wondered, were they able to take it to the next step? To see what their fathers really do for them? When it came time to write about their fathers some of them really struggled. One boy said, "my dad never plays catch with me." And another said, "my dad really isn't a good father." Instead of writing about his own dad, one student decided to write about his best friend's father. That father had more positive qualities than his own.
A former colleague believed that teaching coming of age stories to high school students didn't work. He thought because they were in the midst of it, coming of age, that they couldn't really know the significance or importance of what they were going through. That, in part, they didn't have the distance required to reflect on the experience. I always argued that the students could at least connect to the story and relationship. Maybe they couldn't see the larger significance, but to connect to a character is huge.
I'm sure, the fathers of these guys aren't as bad as they think. (I'm still naive enough to hope that anyway.) They'll figure out some things with a little more reflecting and writing. It took my sqawking infant son to make me realize that the important relationships require maintenance. And sometimes, that's damn hard work. But the effort, always has to count for a little something. Doesn't it?
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