Attic Salt June 21, 2009

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 21, 2009

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Not until a man becomes a father does he realize that the perfect outing with dad is something that can’t be made to happen. It’s a wonderful thing, if it happens at all.

A man who is always chasing “quality time” with a son or daughter better be in good shape. It’s a marathon.

A father who holds down a job, who helps provide a secure place for a child to live, and who is just around is a good dad. Anything more than that is a bonus.

My father entertained me with things that he’d always wanted to do with his dad who’d died young.

Sometimes, fathers try to learn both sides of the father-child relationship when they should be working on being the adult. It’s hard enough being a father without trying to be the child, too.

When my father and I flew kites, what should have been fun became a mission to succeed, to get the kite airborne despite there being no wind.

When we ran an outboard motor in a barrel of water in the backyard, my father became frustrated when the motor kept stalling. It would have been better to have fished off a dock.

I understood my father only after trying with my own children to make perfect afternoons and to teach “life lessons” while fishing when the fish weren’t biting.

When my son was little, we took a walk in the woods. Even as a child, his sense of direction was better than mine. We got lost.

Not lost, lost. But for a few minutes I wasn’t sure which way to take to get back to camp. There was plenty of daylight, so I let my son’s instincts take over. He got us back on the right track.

Years later, we talked about that walk. He remembered feeling secure because he thought I knew where we were.

We don’t have to wait for our children to grow up to help us become better people and parents. The best piece of advice I ever got on being a father came from my wife who reminded me that I was the adult, like it or not.

 Rearing children with a wife makes me realize what a tough job it must be to rear children alone or to live apart from one’s children.