I’ve talked at length about our late fathers with my buddy, Jim, but I think our conversations are the exception, not the rule, for most men.
I’ve listened to women talk for hours about the complicated intertwined relationships defining mothers and daughters. Sometimes I feel like I need a guidebook or map to follow the twisting, turning paths taken by women I know well — or think I know — and their mothers or daughters.
They trod these paths with proverbial shovels and picks they use to dig deep into feelings and thoughts. No act or opinion expressed is beyond thorough and rigorous examination to the point where I shy away from the conversation and count myself wise and fortunate to have kept my mouth shut.
Most men I know won’t slam the pick into that hard ground and labor and dig until they uncover memories and unsaid words charting relationships between sons and fathers.
My conversation with my father about going into the family business lasted about 90 seconds and I will never forget the look on his face when I declined his proposal to spend my adulthood manufacturing traffic paint.
If I had been half as incisive and probing as most women I know, I would have challenged his assumption and pointed out that he knew perfectly well I had no intention of becoming a businessman.
Our conversation might have drifted into family history and how my rejection paralleled the one he presented to his own father who, in turn, rejected his own father who rejected his father.
My great-grandfather left Norway to become an American and undoubtedly disappointed expectations forged for him during his youth. He made something of himself in America, but when he held out the promise of college to my grandfather, he was rebuffed, and when my grandfather held out the opportunity of a comfortable life as a shopkeeper to my father, he was rebuffed. My father knew full well I intended to write and my disinterest in becoming an industrialist was preordained pain he endured without anesthesia.
Our fathers were very different men, but without directly saying so, Jim and I acknowledge in each conversation about our dads that they were men carved from the granite-hard stereotypes of mid-20th century American males.
For good or ill, our fathers fulfilled their respective destinies, leaving their sons to plaster over their legacies with platitudes or burrow into the lives they led, delving deep into dark tunnels prone to sudden collapse but also yielding up unexpected gems.
Manhood in America begins with a childhood buffeted by myths about masculinity. Boys grow up and do their best by their fathers, but many of us know to leave well enough alone and to not dig too deep in that well-trod ground.
My father stands just offstage in my life and a day rarely passes when I don’t think about him. His love was hard-bitten, sometimes even tear-inducing. But he gave me love with every corny-sounding piece of advice he dispensed, every book he shared, and every long-winded story he liked to tell.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
