The Hearts of Our Fathers

A very tall 16-year-old uncle and his nearly 3-year-old nephew masquerading as a motorcyclist helped make my day yesterday. But so did my five other children and three other grandchildren, all of whom were very present, at least by phone from various places around California, for their father and grandfather on a sunny, bright Sunday in June.

It was a two-game weekend set for my soccer player. Soccer is the only reason he's not with his Mom and younger siblings in the mountains on an annual camping trip. It's way more than the games; he's enrolled in a soccer identity camp at U-C, Berkeley this coming week -- an event where college coaches from many schools evaluate young prospects as they advance through high school toward their college years.

For that reason, this is a big moment in my son's soccer life. For the first time, he and I will get some sort of indication of whether he is a candidate for playing soccer at the collegiate level, or I should say levels, since there are three -- Division One (D-1), followed by D-2 and D-3.

The host school for this camp is of course a D-1 university, as well as the alma mater of his three older siblings, as well as the place where I taught journalism for 14 years, ending in 2003.

When you speak the word "father" to any man or boy, or to any woman or girl, many mixed images come to mind. Particularly for males, the relationships we forge with our fathers are complicated by layers upon layers of feelings, positive and negative.

Hopefully, through whatever other messy baggage that may be there, we can locate a sense of respect for our Dads. That's not always easy, and it's hardly exclusively the older male's fault that this is true.

In my case, I was not an easy son for my father. In many ways, I got to live out dreams he never even allowed himself to have. He grew up in a tiny farmhouse on a tenant farm. When I saw the house, the summer my first child was born and a few weeks after my mother almost died from a brain aneurysm, I was shocked at how small it was.

I believe that visit (which was due to the fact that we moved my mother from a hospital in Michigan to one in London, Ontario, for her brain operation), was the only time my dad ever went back to his childhood home, even though it was not a long drive from where we lived across the border in America.

He'd immigrated at age ten, held working-class jobs after high school, served in the Air Force in the war, and worked his way up through sales to office manager for milk companies in the Detroit area and then further north in Michigan as I was growing up.

He never loved his work. He loved to fish, to play golf, to root for the Detroit Tigers. He also loved his wife and his children. He had a great smile and a big heart.

I was not an easy son.

On Father's Day, it's important to remember things like that.

One of my sons spent yesterday with me all day. We had morning coffee at the nearby Atlas Cafe, lunch at a mall in El Cerrito, and dinner back home after his soccer game. We watched another old movie together last night. My oldest son called me from Pasadena, where he's about to move from to Seattle. My youngest called me from an ancient phone booth still marked Pacific Bell in a campground deep in the Sierra.

My youngest daughter, who made me a heart for Father's Day (above) talked to me from that same phone booth. My middle daughter called me from Sacramento last night. My oldest daughter hosted our visit to El Cerrito yesterday, where that very tall young uncle and his excited little nephew navigated that "motorcycle" to a park in the sun.

That was my day, a very good day. But I am acutely aware that for none of them have I been an easy father. First there are the two divorces from their mothers, both terrific mothers. Second has been my chaotic career as an entrepreneurial journalist, which ought to be an oxymoron, but there you have it -- my choices, which have not been easy for them.

And there's so much more, but we'll save that for the memoir that I should, but probably never will, write. Which means that we'll save that for them to tell, not me. If they are the story-tellers I think they are, the image of their father they collectively agree on will be far more accurate that anything this old journalist could ever tell you about himself.

I know my memory will be in good hands, because the truth is always far better than fiction; journalistic documentation superior to PR or marketing BS. And I have not raised any bullshitters.

Trust me, or better yet, meet my kids!

What did you do for Father's Day, who did you honor, and who did you remember? What kind of heart do you have and what kind of heart did you remember to have for your father? See, I figure on a day like Father's Day, it's not so much about what your father did for you, but what did you do for your father.

There's a question very much worth asking. It's what I asked myself today, as I remembered mine, may he rest in peace!

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