Happy Father's Day - Highbrow Lowbrow

Dad:

I once referred to myself as his ex-wife. I was roughly 10 years old and couldn’t imagine anyone cooler than him. He was a great listener, a champion of all my ideas, a teacher who could take my thoughts and help me turn them into tangible contraptions. It was a time when my mother was the victim of my hormonally charged anxiety.

When my parents hosted parties and my mother embarrassed me or did something I deemed, in my prepubescent way, to be uncool, I would look at our guests and say, “Isn’t she terrible? I know because I’m his ex-wife and I don’t know what he sees in her!”

This usually got a good laugh out of the crowd and a big smile from my dad. My mom deserves the medal in those scenarios, for she tolerated my precocious ways far more than most saints would have.

She understood that the adoration I had for my dad, especially at that age, catapulted beyond the need to feel embarrassed or make any excuses for my outrageous claims.

My father is professionally well accomplished, but what I still find most interesting is how at a time in history when most men stuck with one company, one job, one industry, he has evolved and taken far ranging positions all over the world following opportunity and interests. He’s run a Fortune 500 company and a consulting business of one. His photography is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and was critically acclaimed around the world. He volunteered for Vietnam and served in the Navy’s special forces. He’s studied the Fauves and has become a master winemaker. His accomplishments go on and on. He taught me that if you’re curious and open to new ideas, each job, interest, experience will inform the next, bringing you further self-satisfaction and success.

As a mother trying my best to be there for my children and pursue my other interests, he is again a champion and a role model.

He taught me the value of integrity. Stand up for what you believe in. If someone is talking badly about you, figure out what you may have contributed to the unrest, try to work it out and move on. When adolescent fights broke out between girlfriends, he always offered helpful advice to me and my friends. In college, my friends would gather at my parents’ house on weekends, and the seat next to my dad was always a coveted spot. His stories captivated us and, as one friend noted, he always had a moral that was well timed to what we needed to hear at the moment. How did he do that?

When I started reporting, I needed to subsidize my income, so I waited tables at night. I was irritated that my parents wouldn’t financially support me. I remember him saying, “You’ve found something you love to do, and that makes you very fortunate. It doesn’t mean it will be easy, but if you really love it you’ll find a way to make it work.”

Around that same time I grew frustrated that the people I waited on at the restaurant treated me like a I was an uneducated dunce. Patrons at the upscale Italian bistro would say things like, “Do you know where Italy is on a map?” or “We had this Chianti in Chianti last summer. Chianti is a region in Italy, maybe someday you’ll make enough tips you can go there.”

Rome 1994 – Ely, Kate, Em, Dad

I lived in Rome in high school. I’d traveled all over the world. I was about to go to Northwestern for my Masters and I drove a Mercedes. I wanted to yell: “Oh I know the Chianti region, in fact this is a pretty cheap Chianti. If you were there last summer and you were at this vineyard it means you followed the tourist map rather than going to the really good vineyards. Maybe someday you’ll make enough money to go back and try the good wines.”

All of my retorts were rude and inappropriate. I told my dad. His response: “Emily, I thought you were more centered than that. Why are you letting these people rattle you? This is their perception and has nothing to do with you. They don’t know you and their assumptions should have no baring on how you feel about yourself. They should remind you that snap judgements are often wrong.”

He was right. I was feeling insecure and unhappy about having to wait on people. His perspective called out my reaction. Another person might have tried to cheer me up by commiserating and talking about how awful some of those patrons were. His words were much more helpful. He pointed out that my reaction needed to change, that I was reacting to myself, my insecurities and fears more than to them. Humor was the antidote. We could laugh about these incidences rather than feeling angry.

Dad also showed me the value in quiet time together. He used to fly planes, and I loved being the copilot. Soaring through the skies with the white noise of the engine and hours to talk about cloud formations, what we liked to eat, who our friends were and why and so many other mundane topics– the content of which is irrelevant now, but the time spent discussing them seems more valuable than ever.

His motto is: Life is about the stories you create and the stories you tell. It’s no wonder I became a reporter, a lover of stories. He is a master story teller. We begged nightly for his stories about the Phoenicians and a giant spider named Hildegard, all out to get a family that coincidentally, closely resembled our family. They were searching for a buried treasure thought to be in the same mountain we climbed every summer. I wish someone had written those down.

Another great trait is that he’s crazy about my mom. The hardest part about growing up in our house centered around the good and bad of having parents who loved each other so deeply. As children we always knew they loved each other more than us. Not that they didn’t love the four kids, but with some families it’s clear the mother is more in love with her kids than with her husband and that was not the case with us. My parents are a unit. You cannot get between them. We’ve all tried.

Their love for each other set the standard high. It meant that loyalty, trust, passion and gently caring for someone and in turn feeling those traits reciprocated on to you was the ultimate goal in life. Through medical issues, emotional losses, professional developments and setbacks, my parents naturally compliment each other. I understand now just how hard that can be and that it’s an evolution of a relationship over years. It takes time and work to learn how to care for someone else, especially someone who is not part of your original family.

My father didn’t grow up with the opportunities I’ve had. He didn’t grow up with a father who knew enough to talk about being centered or to tend to his mother the way one would hope. He didn’t have financial stability as a child, nor did he have the support I’ve had. This makes his personal evolution as a father and husband all the more remarkable.

We tend to live within the circles of our past experiences. Even when we vow to be different from our parents, the roads in our brains are carved from familiar pattens. It takes a massive effort and a great deal of self awareness to be different.

I am so grateful my dad did the work to be patient, to be kind, to be gentle and encouraging. Most importantly I’m so grateful my dad knew the most important thing you need to do as a father is to be interested in your children. Ask them questions, follow up with more, spend time with no external noises and let them fill in the gaps. Show them what you’re passionate about. Show them that you love people. Show them that you’re honest and hardworking. Work to understand what bothers your children and why, help them to better understand themselves. Encourage them to take risks and to fail. Be there to wipe their tears, to dust them off and give them the encouragement to pick themselves up again and laugh at their past mistakes.

My husband has big shoes to fill. I don’t always make it easy for him. I compare him to my dad way more than is helpful. It’s something I’m working on. I want my children to have as great of dad as I do. What I’m realizing is that though the approach or experience won’t be identical, the role a dad plays in his children’s lives is paramount to their future happiness. I naturally want to control this relationship, yet I know my meddling will only inform my relationship with my children. My husband is a great dad. He is all the things he needs to be and my children love him completely.