Fatherhood Stories

The First father memory I have isn't of my own father, but of my grandfather. In that memory he was a giant man, tall and strong with big rough hands. He was a carpenter, he built houses. And he would come over when I was small and lift me in the air above his head. My mother would yell, you’re going to hurt yourself. But he would just laugh. Then he’d sneak me a chocolate kiss and send me on my way. My own father doesn't make an appearance in that memory. He was around I’m sure. But he was clearly not who I was paying attention to. It was my Grandpa Jack and I must have been 4 or 5 years old. He was my fathers father. Born in Poland. Hardened by the war and time spent in Russian jails, Siberia and being on the run. He saved his family, my father, aunt and grandmother, eventually ending up in a DP camp in Germany after the war. 

Stories of him include tales of his temper, my grandmother’s depression, and the unsurprising damage the war did to him, the toll surviving takes. But I didn't see any of that and don't remember it at all. Those were the after stories, the stories told when I was older and he was long gone. What I remember are his hands, his big shoulders, the toys he built for me out of wood and the old tools he let me play with. I only knew the gentle old man who was more man than I could ever imagine. He didn't have those numbers on his arm so many other people were marked with. He wasn't a victim of the holocaust, he was a survivor of the Nazis, and he was the strongest person I could imagine. He is my first father memory. 

He died when I was young, I don't remember him sickly or weak. He must have gone quickly or else his sickness kept from my and my brother - we were young. And when he died my father gave me his old pocket knife. I remember crying a bit but mostly I remember the knife. And his hands. 

My own father is a gentle man. The kind of person who grew up in a home that wasn't so gentle. I’ve only seen my father truly upset, worked up or yelling, a handful of times. He is not his father, he is not Grandpa Jack. My father is a kind, wise, considerate person. He’s a role model to me, a man I would like to one day grow up to be like (will we ever grow up in the eyes or memories of our fathers?) He’s a caregiver, generous, and gracious. He achieved the life his parents had hoped for, and he did not grow up to be his father. And still, the first father memory I have is not of him but of my Grandpa Jack. 

Father memories are powerful. They’re fodder for the stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be a dad. And they imbed themselves inside us, moving us and inspiring us and setting us up all at the same time. And depending on how intentional we can be about our own parenting, our own fatherhood; and depending on how introspective and honest we really want to be, we can often find our fathering tendencies and inclinations in those stories. 

What does it mean to be a father? What kind of father am I? And what kind of father do I want to be? They are guiding questions I've found helpful in thinking both about the father I am and the father I'd like to become. And since so often the origins of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves aren’t clear, exploring the edges, corners, depths and sources of these stories can shed a lot of light. 

Fatherhood stories come from many places. Our own fathers and the fathers we grew up with are a great place to start a search. My grandfather offered me my first fatherhood story. It was initially and for many years a story of strength and survival, resilience and caregiving. He was the man who lead my father, aunt and grandmother to safety. In my mind he was the man who made it happen, who made my family’s survival possible. As I grew the story evolved. I learned about how hard his life was. How depressed he and my grandmother were, how damaged they both were from the war and horrors of the Holocaust. I learned of his temper, abuse. And while the story of my grandfather grew and developed as I learned more and integrated more. But the fatherhood story thats part of the bigger Grandpa Jack tale, that fatherhood story begins and ends with his hands. The hands that carried me effortlessly. The hands that went up into the air when he laughed loudly. The hands that built things and fixed things and worked, calloused and wrinkled and worn by life. The hands that came attached to the strong, worn, knotted body of a warrior, a survivor. And I am the inheritor of that story, the beneficiary of that story and at times a victim to it.

What are your fatherhood stories? And how do they support you and perhaps also not?