When the Engine Light is Red — Gifts from an Alcoholic Father
“You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway.”
– Roger Brault
What did you learn from your Dad?
Years ago, when my Dad was still alive, I heard an announcer on the radio — he was a new father — give a couple of examples of how his own father still helps him out.
“When the engine light on my car is red,” said the announcer, “I can call my Dad and he’ll come right over and check it out. Or if I have stuff to take to the dump, my Dad will let me borrow his truck.”
The announcer then asked listeners what, as Father Day approaches, our own Dad’s mean to us.
And I must confess that when it comes to my Dad, being on hand to help me out with mundane tasks is not what first came to mind. For starters, we didn’t even live in the same province. Plus he was in a nursing home now and couldn’t remember what he had for lunch, never mind what a red engine light might indicate.
But even at the best of times, those sorts of everyday tasks weren’t what I would associate with my Dad anyway. My Dad didn’t teach me to fish or drive or mow the lawn. My Mom and my brother’s did all that. I was six when my Dad moved out and my parents divorced shortly after. I usually only saw him once a week for dinner.
Though the divorce was a bitter one, to put it mildly, my Mom felt it was important that she keep us kids in the same city as our father. My Dad had just moved all of us to Calgary from Ontario when they decided to split up. But instead of moving us kids back to Ontario, where all her support system was, my Mom made the decision to stay in Calgary as a single mom — just so we could be near our Dad.
In hindsight, I’m really glad she did.
For one of the most important things my Dad did teach me was his love for words. Literature was where his heart was. He was constantly correcting my grammar and challenging me to increase my vocabulary. If I wanted to understand what the heck he was talking about, I needed a dictionary close by to look up the words he was using.
My fondest childhood memory of my Dad is him telling me, over and over again, variations of my favourite bedtime story, The Enormous Egg, by Oliver Butterworth. It’s about a kid who finds a huge egg one day in one of the hen’s nests. He watches it grow and grow until it hatches into a dinosaur and then chaos breaks out.
My Dad would tell me a made-up shortened version of the story and then at the very end, he’d always have the baby dinosaur walk up to the edge of the cliff and look down. Then my Dad would look at me and say, “And do you know what he said, Maryanne?”
“Yes!” I’d cry. “He’d say, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary!’”
My Dad would smile and nod and then he’d sing me the song…