All the fathers I have known…

 I was blessed to have three fathers in my life: my dad, my American daddy and my father-in-law.

I only lived with my American daddy, Hollis Davis, for a year but he had a huge impact on my life. He was a big, strong, farmer with a talent for working with wood. He welcomed me into his home and treated me just like a natural born daughter. He was quiet and unassuming but when he said, “That’s enough now”, whoever he was talking to immediately stopped doing whatever it was that he didn’t approve of. I’m so happy that he got to be at my wedding and that he met my children. I wish they could have known him better and spent more time with him. 

My father-in-law was mad about trains, and loved the country town where he spent most of his married life. He was the unofficial town historian and we’re very proud to see so much of his research now on display in the towns’ museums. He had a beautiful tenor voice but was usually too shy to sing in public. He had a delightful sense of humour and was often the centre of a crowd of laughing, happy people. He was a loving, faithful husband; a kind, supportive dad, and a delightful, generous grandfather. We all miss him.

My father had a tough childhood. He was illegitimate, so that was a black mark against him right from the start. People had a different attitude about such things back in 1910. He had a bad case of measles when he was five, and that ruined his hearing. He grew progressively more deaf as the years went by but he didn’t get a hearing aid until after my three sisters were born. He used to practice lip reading by watching the TV with the sound off.

For the first eight years of his life he thought his grandmother was his mother,and his mother was his sister. Then his mother married and moved to another state to live, and Dad was sent to live with the newly married couple. His stepfather didn’t like him and treated him very badly, so he moved out of his home when he was 13 years old. He made his own way from then on. I could go on and on but suffice it to say, he had a difficult, often cruel, life.

When he married my mother, and we girls came along, he finally had a loving family. He belonged. He was still deaf but, in spite of the problems that came with it, we didn’t think anything of it. Dad was dad. In spite of all the coldness, the hardships and the rejection, he still looked for and found beauty in his life: in music (how I wish he could have heard it like we can), in literature, in art, in nature, in wildlife and especially in other people. He wasn’t a perfect dad but he was a good one. I miss him.

For me, Father’s Day brings mixed emotions. I’m proud of my husband, who is a loving, giving, kind father, just like his father before him.  I miss my dads –all gone to their reward in glory — but I’m thankful that I had them in my life. We shouldn’t need a special day to remember them but it’s good to pause for a moment and say, “Thanks”.

P.S. I know I was blessed. I know that many others have had a different experience of fatherhood and I am so sorry about that. But, my dad proved that you don’t have to follow the same pattern; you can be a different father than the one you’ve known, or haven’t known. You can be present. You can be loving. You can be supportive. You can turn things around.