A Father's Day Correction

Last month, after taking a little flak about my Mother’s Day piece from people who didn’t exactly have the best relationships with their mothers, I mentioned that someday they should ask me about my relationship with my father, and that I have my own set of familial scars. Immediately, a friend of mine from way back jumped in, saying how wonderfully I turned out for someone who had such a bad father…or that maybe it was a conscious reaction to having such a bad father.

And that’s when I realized that I needed to do a little correcting of the story.

They say that no matter how good or how bad you were, all you’re ever remembered for is what you did last. I have a history teacher friend who says that Richard Nixon might have gone down as one of the 10 greatest presidents had it not been for that little Watergate thing at the end. That overshadowed everything else that he did.

Well, that’s the way it was with my father. The first 18 to 19 years were pretty good, but after that, things went all to hell, and the friends who knew me back then only knew the story from me being up close and personal to when it all fell apart. I didn’t have the perspective then that I do now, and they still only know the story that I told 40 years ago.

So let me say it again…it didn’t always suck. The first 18 or so years with my father were actually quite good. The next three or four became a living hell, followed by about another 10 of peaceful nothingness, and then 18 years of cautious détente. And it was during, and immediately after the years of living hell that my friends from back then heard the stories I was telling at the time. Stories that overshadowed the good stuff that came first.

What was some of the good stuff that came first? Here are a few examples of the important things he taught me:

• How to read and draw a map.

• How to use drafting tools.

• The fact that it’s a promise even if you didn’t specifically use the words “I promise” when you agreed to do it.

• The idea that the Bible may have been written about God, but it was written by people. People who were influenced by their culture and biases as much as what they thought God might have saying to them.

• How to use the microfilm reader at the public library.

• That the first thing you say after you’ve had a car accident is “Are you OK?” not “Oh my car!” (And boy, did my wife get grief for that one when I wrecked her car at a friend’s grandmother’s funeral back in 1986.)

• Got me started playing piano by ear.

• That the real cost of something isn’t measured in dollars, but in how many hours you had to work for it. (I always use this measure when people start complaining about how high gas prices have gone up. It almost always works out to take a McDonald’s employee roughly the same amount of time for a gallon of gas now as it did for me back in 1975 when it went up to an unheard of 75¢ a gallon.)

• Oh…and he was the one who gave me the freedom to basically ride my bike all over the county in middle school, when my mother might have had me tethered to our little town.

I also realized, with a little perspective, that my best parenting moments are based on the best moments of the first 17 years with my father, and not a total avoidance of trying to be anything like him. When I’m laid back about issues with my kids, when I give them a long leash rather than hovering over them like the dreaded helicopter parent, when I encourage them in all their interests, then I’m emulating the best of the Melvin Gatling I knew before 1976.

While avoiding the worst of that last act from 1973 up to then.

Because, you know…it didn’t always suck.

And now that I’ve made that correction to the story, my friends who knew me in the midst of, and right after, hell, will understand that.