aircraft carrierIt is not Father’s Day in Australia. So don’t bother telling me what a good Dad I am or scrambling frantically to come up with an excuse as to why you haven’t sent me a gift. But it is Father’s Day in 52 countries, including the United States, so Happy Dad’s day to all you Pops out there – including my own.

I was a weird little kid. I was obsessive – a cataloguer and a collector. My room was filled to overflowing with boxes of baseball cards, rocks, stamps. I was fascinated with statistics and probability. Time and distance and especially the way that things worked. I spent many an after school afternoon disassembling things, breaking them down to their component parts. I was a builder as well, but largely in my head. I assembled elaborate scenarios in my head and made them as real as I could – elaborate alternate worlds in which I was not a squirrely little kid with thick glasses, fantasy baseball leagues in which I was the Cy Young award winning pitcher.

dad_oldI see a lot of myself in my son. More and more every day. As I watched him stack rocks – in a very particular manner – the other day, I had a flashback to my own childhood. When I stumbled over a perfectly aligned row of Matchbox cars this morning, I realized that – like it or not – Boy Z is going to be a product of his father. And his father’s father. There’s a bond between father and son that is irrevocable – genes, blood, shared experience. No matter whether you languish in it or fight it with all your soul, you are going to become – to some extent – your father.

My Dad didn’t have it easy. He grew up in a mining town in the northern wilderness of Ontario. His Mom took off when he was young, leaving him with his Dad and older siblings. His Dad, while a decent guy, probably wasn’t equipped for the raising of three kids on his own, so my Dad learned self-reliance from a young age. When he graduated high school he headed south for university. He got a degree in metallurgical engineering, a job with Union Carbide and has never looked back. He settled in Florida, about as far away from Northern Ontario as you can get, in 1980 and has lived there ever since.

grandadsI am the son of an engineer. I’ve inherited the mind of an engineer, a scientist. I didn’t realize that when I was younger. I spent a good part of my late teens and twenties trying to leave this inherent curiosity of the machinations of the world around behind as the trappings of childhood, but I’ve never been able to. At heart, I’ll always be that shy little boy taking radios apart in my bedroom. Rather than continuing to fight my nature, in my thirties I decided to use what I thought of us childish for my benefit. I became a scientist.  As a geneticist, I’ve exploited that childhood fascination with categorization, statistics and an obsession with the way things work and turned it into a decent living.

rocksI’m also the son of an expatriate. Like my father as soon as I graduated high school I left my childhood home firmly in the rear view mirror. I don’t know what my Dad’s experience in voluntary exile has been like for him, but for me the further away that I get, the more that I realize that the ties that bind are pretty elastic. Wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you are trying to escape generally comes right along with you. Especially since becoming a father myself, I feel that bond with my own father much more strongly. And his father. And presumably his father’s father. Maybe it is because of that hapless little Y chromosome that I hear my Dad’s voice come out of my mouth when I’m talking to Boy Z. Maybe it is something else – common experience, a blood bond – that means when I look in a mirror I increasingly see my Dad looking back.

Whatever it is, I’m luckier than a lot of men.**

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* Come September 6, however, you better have a damn good excuse.

** OK. To be 100% honest I didn’t get my shit together on time to get a card in the mail to my Dad. So, I’m taking the Steve Earle a la ‘Valentine’s Day‘ way out.

The images, for the curious:

  • Me in my bedroom with what I recall being a working aircraft carrier.
  • My Dad, probably in his early 20’s.
  • My sister and I with our paternal (left) and maternal (right) grandfathers. Both great men, both regrettably gone.

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