It’s May 24, 1987 and I am making “excellent money” ($10/hour) working as a typist at a real estate appraisal company in Toronto. My partner (of 3.5 months) and I have decided to go west and I am one week from having enough money saved. According to my letter to Anne, while my mother is concerned this move will not significantly improve my career options my father is “surprisingly pretty encouraging and supportive.”
A week after this letter was written we put all our stuff and ourselves into our new-to-us lemon-yellow (never buy a yellow car) Duster and crossed from Windsor, Ontario into the United States in order to avoid going “over” the great lakes.
We re-entered Canada via Lake-of-the-Woods and despite the best effort of the border guards and their dogs, no drugs were found. After we repacked everything we decided to look for somewhere to stop for the night. Following campground signs, we were driving slowly down a back road when the bottom of the car sorta collapsed. In the gathering dusk we looked underneath and saw that most of the engine was resting on the road. We learned later an old weld had failed.
Two weeks later, after some lovely camping at a place aptly called “Journey’s End,” we returned, sans car, to Windsor. I went back to school and my partner went back to house painting. Two years later, in 1989, my parents moved to Vancouver Island and nineteen years later, in 2008 I finally did too.
Dad as a young man
Which brings me back to dad. He was duly sacrificed to the work gods so I didn’t see him much growing up. Then, immediately after retiring, he moved across the country with mum while I stayed in Ontario. For the next nineteen years my relationship with my parents consisted of long phone calls with mum and visits every ten months or so. Occasionally I talked with dad too, but dads are not phoners.
Since moving to Vancouver Island I’ve been getting to know him, in some ways for the first time. What I didn’t realize when I was young is that this man is my number one champion. We have always got along easily… cut from the same cloth, as they say…
But it’s more than that.
My mother did most of the parenting when I was young and her strong personality and role as lead worrier and communicator kinda eclipsed my father from my perspective. When I read the letter I wrote back in 1987 it confirmed for me what I am discovering now, in 2010. Dad actually loves me unconditionally. And, although I never knew it, he’s always had my back!
It’s impossible to re-live the past but if I could I would know a lot less fear.
I never knew mine that well. But like your father for you, mine had a major influence on who I am. As I grew in his absence, I tried to recall the man he was, as a father, as my mother’s husband, as a role model, picking through the anecdotes and memories for something to believe in and follow. It wasn’t until I was inspired to write my ‘testimony’ that I considered his own childhood, raised an only child by his Scots Presbyterian mother in post WW1 Scotland, his father having been sacrificed to that era’s madness. I don’t measure up.
Yes. Your dad unconditionally loves you.
Love the 3 piece suit. Probably worn in the height of summer as well.