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April
What Sons Need From Their Dads
I recently finished writing a book called Fatherloss,
for which I had the opportunity to interview 70 men
about how they dealt with the deaths of their
fathers. In the course of those interviews, I also
had the chance to ask about the fathers' lives.
Specifically, as the father of a 7-year-old son
myself, I wanted to know: What makes a good dad?
How does a father's role change through the
life-span? And what, if anything, can a father do
to help prepare his son for the father's death?
Here's what I learned:
In childhood, boys need from their fathers
something that can broadly be called
"affection."
The men I interviewed didn't always use that
term. Affection has the connotation of holding,
cuddling, hugging, kissing, and other forms of
physical contact. And indeed, when that occurred
between a father and son, it seemed to have an
unusually positive effect on the child.
For many of the sons I spoke with, their fondest
memories of childhood were wrestling with their
dads, being tossed into the air or carried
piggy-back, or some other form of direct physical
play.
One son told me: "On Saturday mornings, when my
dad had been gone all week, I'd climb into my
parents' bed. He had horrible breath in the
morning. We played a game where he tried to breathe
on me, and I hid." This son actually remembered
this game with fondness! It's an indication of how
much sons want to be close to their dads.
I wondered why wrestling, bad-breath games and
other physical affection so warmly remembered by
sons. I eventually came to see it this way:
Physical contact between a father and son gives the
son a close-up view of the beast he will one day
become: a man. The boy experiences, in his body and
bones, how a man moves, feels, smells. Just as
importantly, when the father's touch is playful and
loving, the son learns that men are strong, but
that strength can be harnessed, restrained, and
used in a safe way.
Of course, some fathers do not easily go to
physical affection. Perhaps they were raised
without such contact with their own fathers, and
find it alien, even unmanly. Fortunately, I
discovered in my conversations with sons that
affection could be administered in a variety of
ways. Ultimately, affection was less about
physicality than about loving attention by a father
toward his son.
Some fathers show affection by simply talking
with, and listening to, their sons. Others showed
it by playing chess, checkers, and other games with
their sons. Still others played catch, coached
little league teams, helped with confirmation or
Bar Mitzvah preparations, took their sons to
concerts, ball games and the like. The key was to
focus attention, especially on activities that the
son initiates.
When a son doesn't get affection, in any form,
from his father, the resulting wound can be deep
and lasting. Second only to the abuser in
generating resentment among the sons I interviewed
was the faraway father, the distant dad, the
patriarch who was unavailable or uninvolved.
Whether the father meant it or not, the message to
the son was clear: You don’t matter.
One man's comment struck me a little close to
home because I love to read. A man I spoke with
told me this: "One of the memories I carry from
childhood is Dad's bookshelf. My dad read a lot. He
would come home from work, sit in his chair, and
read for most of the evening. Maybe it was his
escape.... Sometimes, I'd go to that wall of books,
and try to figure out what was there that was more
fascinating than me."
Now, I'm realistic. I don't expect myself, or
any other parent, to always be attentive to our
children. It's not possible, or even healthy. But
it has been good for me to pay attention to how
much I pay attention to my son, and to remember how
good for him it is to have my active presence in
his life.
If "affection" was the key word that arose when
sons described what they needed in childhood,
another single word captures the essence of what
adolescent and young adult sons need from their
dads: Blessing.
One man I interviewed, a business executive,
said he received a traditional Mexican blessing - a
bendicion - from his father when the son left Texas
at age nineteen to look for work in California. The
blessing, which his father gave to him in Spanish,
affirmed that the son was ready for the journey
ahead, and called upon God and humankind to look
after him. It also softened the son's feelings
toward a father who had often been harsh and
uncompromising.
In the introduction to my book, FatherLoss, I
speak of a blessing I received from my father when
I was 27. I was living at the time in Miami, near
my grandfather, my father's father. My grandfather
died suddenly, and I spent a day going through my
grandfather's apartment alongside my father. In the
course of the day, my father recognized that he
never heard his father express pride in him -- and
with the death, never would. So my father offered
me a blessing: He told me how proud he was of the
life I was creating, the choices I was making.
My father's blessing was especially important to
me because I was concerned that I'd disappointed
him. He'd put me through college, and then, five
years into my career, I'd quit a good job with no
plan for what I'd do next. When my father told me
he was proud of the choices I'd made, I took it to
mean that he supported me in my decision to stop
and re-evaluate my career direction. I felt the
pressure lift, and began to trust myself to make
the right next steps.
My father's expression of pride was
straight-forward, but blessings can be subtle too,
delivered, like affection, in ways unique to the
father and son involved.
One son told me he felt blessed when he was
asked for business advice by his father. Another
appreciated it when his father showed pride in the
son's selection of a wife, when the father enjoyed
playing with the son's children. Sons often felt
blessed when the father asked for help from the son
when he's sick or having a problem of some
kind.
One man I interviewed, who'd been beaten by his
doctor-father in childhood for failing in school,
steered clear of his dad for nearly twenty years
after leaving home. Then, when the son was in his
late thirties, he invited his father to visit him
at the son's home 2,000 miles away. The younger man
had become a carpenter, and during his father's
visit, led his dad on a tour of one of the
million-dollar homes for which he had crafted oak
staircases and cabinets.
The son recalled the awestruck look on his
father's face, and a blunt apology from his dad:
"I've underestimated you." In the years following,
the son accepted from his father fine tools as
gifts, and offered the older man advice on how to
build things out of wood.
And that was enough for the son. It seems, in
fact, that most sons will forgive almost anything
if they can hear - in whatever way, and at whatever
age - the genuine affirmation of their fathers.
In the course of my many interviews, there was
one more thing that sons said they needed from
their dads: a proper farewell. This need is
illustrated by the story of a man named Clyde.
Clyde was 34 years old when his father informed
him just before dinner together one night that he
was dying of cancer. The news "knocked me back like
a boxer," Clyde recalled. It had been just five
years since the two men had begun a reconciliation
following a long period of anger and estrangement.
In the weeks after his father's diagnosis, Clyde
visited the older man regularly, first at his
father's home, later in the hospital. And then the
father, a physician, took a sharp turn for the
worse.
In the father's hospital room one evening, a
memorable incident occurred. Clyde told me that
retelling it was "like walking on sacred
ground."
In the hospital room, Clyde had been sitting on
a couch a few feet from the side of his father's
bed. Clyde had been there for most of an hour, as
his father alternated between turbulent coughing
fits and labored breathing. The older man still
maintained his barrel chest, and full gray-black
beard. The skin on his face, however, as Clyde
could see from the couch, had become pasty and
drawn.
During a break from his coughing, the father
reached out a hand toward Clyde. Clyde rose from
the couch and clasped the hand. He stood beside the
bed. For a long moment, the father gazed at his
son's face. Clyde noticed that father's eyes,
normally brown, had gone gray.
Then, in a gravelly voice, the father forced
from his ravaged throat the few words he felt he
had to say. Clyde recalled that they went like
this: "You've got a beautiful wife, and a gorgeous
child. You've got a good life. You're going to be
fine." The father then beheld his son's face again,
brought it to his own, and pressed his lips against
Clyde's cheek. Then he said: "Good-bye. Now get out
of here! Go, go, go!" He then released his son
toward the door.
Clyde left the room without looking back. He
wept as he drove home. Several hours later, his
step-mother called. Clyde's father was dead.
In retrospect, Clyde marveled at "how much
selfless effort it must have taken" for his dad,
"being pulled in the other direction," to offer
such a good-bye. Had the encounter not occurred,
Clyde told me, he would "probably have doubted a
lot of things. I would have wondered if he was
still angry. But I never worried about it.... (The
good-bye) reduced my mourning to the sadness of
losing him."
Indeed, we may think that it's hardest to lose
family members we are close to. But my research
indicated that the sons who struggled the most with
the loss of a father, and for the longest time,
were those who were at odds with, or estranged
from, their dads. Instead of dealing with their
sadness after the loss, these sons were weighted
down by regrets, resentments, and guilt.
Which is why it matters that we fathers, if we
have a chance, offer this last gift to our children
- the gift of closure, completion, forgiveness,
good-bye.
Indeed, if we are able to be affectionate with
our young sons in whatever way is most comfortable
to us; if we can bless our children as they grow
into adulthood; and if we can say good-bye when the
time comes, we will, in my mind, have been the best
fathers we can possibly be.
©2009, Neil
Chethik
* * *
For 20
years, Neil Chethik has made it his goal to find
out what men really think -- about family,
relationships, fathering, aging, sex, and more. He
is the author of two best-selling books,
Fatherloss
(Hyperion) and VoiceMale
(Simon & Schuster). He’s been a nationally
syndicated columnist, a big-hall speaker, and now,
the national media’s go-to guy for what men
really think about their everyday lives. Contact:
Neil Chethik, P.O. Box 8071, Lexington, KY 40533 or
859.361.1659 or E-Mail
or
www.NeilChethik.com
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