Counselling

   When I walked away from my first marriage, my wife at the time was pretty adamant that I needed counselling. At this point in my life, I was facing a lot of "how could you?" from many different corners and the fact that I might need counselling almost made sense, even to me.
   My ex was pretty sure that the counselling I required centred around my relationship with my mother. This was probably the easiest conclusion to come to based on the number and types of mental, psychiatric and emotional issues my mother had to deal with in her later years. Once again this seemed to make sense, even to me.
   I was still left, however, with the nagging feeling that there were actually no unresolved issues between my mother and me that still (or ever) needed to be dealt with. Of course, a lot of people who need counselling around an issue don't know they need counselling around that issue so I had not totally dismissed this as an area requiring attention. At the same time, however, I never went for counselling.

   Then I began golfing with my Dad.

   As I have described in previous blogs, Dad and I got together every Monday morning for a round of golf. Afterwards, he and I would sit in the clubhouse over a beer or a pop and we would talk. We talked about a lot of things, most of it being stuff that had happened years ago, when I was kid and sometimes even before that. He had stories to tell about his childhood, his summer jobs, his adventures in the Navy, how he met my Mum, the places he worked, all the moves we made from city to city, his two marriages, right up to the present.
   This also gave me the opportunity to ask questions about things that had happened when I was a kid, why we moved so many times, what was wrong with my mother, and those kinds of things. We often compared memories and, generally, Dad was surprised that I could remember as much as I could.
   Slowly, after many post-golf sessions, certain small realizations were made apparent to me. I guess the first and foremost was that my Dad was never there while I was growing up. This, unfortunately, was mainly due to the nature of his job in the insurance business. There were many times when he was away for days at a time, off on business trips, adjusting peoples' insurance claims. If he wasn't off doing that, he was taking a training course somewhere. This pretty well left my Mum and my brother Bob and I to fend for ourselves, or at least it felt this way. So this is what we did.
   At the same time we were fending for ourselves, we were being moved around, almost constantly, until I was eleven. At this point we ended up in London but prior to that we had lived in nine different houses in four different cities in two different countries. Fending had become a life skill by this point.
   During one of our reminiscing sessions, Dad asked me if I'd ever played ice hockey. For once, I just stopped and kind of looked at him. I remember thinking to myself were you to remember anything about your son growing up it was likely that whether he played hockey or not would have been one of those things. It wasn't even something I could credit his Alzheimer's with, at this point in his life Dad's short term memory was the pits but his long term memory was dead on. It felt to me that somehow or other he had either relegated this memory to the "unimportant" bin or perhaps had simply and intrinsically been "uninvolved" with large sections of my youth.
   My Dad loved cars and boats. I grew up disinterested in both. This has never really bothered me but at the same time I have often wondered what the dynamic was in all of that, I have seen other examples (most notably with one of my stepsons and his father) where the dad's passion for something has somehow been passed on to his son. This didn't happen in my case. On the other hand, my mum loved poetry and writing and now so do I.

Love of poetry and lack of dickering.

   Another telling moment--when I bought my first car I, of course, was all excited and couldn't wait to call Dad and tell him all about it. We got into a discussion about the cost of it and my interaction with the salesman. I had not "dickered" with the salesman and had paid full price for the car. Dad pointed out to me that, essentially, I had been "taken". This completely deflated me, naturally. Dad, to his credit, realized right away what he'd done and tried to make amends but the damage had been done. In later years, though, I went over this many times and it finally occurred to me that if you are going to learn to "dicker" over cars then who's the person most likely to teach you that? Your dad. Now in the lifelong relationship between a man and his son I'm not sure if there's a course called Dickering 101 but I had certainly never been signed up for it. I also don't think you need to drag your kids along with you every time you're purchasing a house or car but if you're really and truly involved with your kids then it's one of the subjects that somehow or other should come up. (Note to myself: Check to see of your kids know anything about dickering...)
   One of the things I did pick up from my Dad was a love of sports and I have all sorts of fond memories of being taught how to fish and throw balls and shoot pucks and all those kinds of things. As strong as those memories are, though, the memories of having to beg him to do those things with me were just about as strong. As an adult, I became involved with organized sports and I offered him all sorts of opportunities to come and watch. I offered him opportunities to come and watch both his son and grandson, at the same time. But he never took me up on those chances to be involved, even as just a spectator.

   Getting back to counselling. What I think has happened is that I have self-counselled. My ex thought I had issues with my mother and she also thought I had issues with being a Dad. I truly believe she was wrong about the former. I also truly believe I had a dad who didn't do a lot of  "Dad" teaching when I was growing up, likely for a number of reasons, one of them being simply not being able to be there enough. I don't know for sure but I also suspect that both he and I were probably much closer to our mothers. Whatever self-doubt I have about my role as a father, I think, likely stems from my father. That is my way-too-simplistic conclusion from all the self-counselling I have done.
   My Dad, as many of you are likely aware, has passed away and now there is little opportunity to address any of this, not that I likely would have anyway. When he passed, there were nothing but wonderful things said about him and I imagine I have somewhat tarnished some of that. I cannot emphasize enough, though, that by the end of his life he had more than made up for anything that had happened or not happened when I was a kid. He ended being a man who demonstrated no end to his wisdom and profundity and showed how much he loved those around him with no reservation. Anyone who met him liked or loved him in return. His grand kids loved him particularly so and this was reciprocated in full.
   For myself, I have way too many things to thank him for. I did have the opportunity to express to him almost all of these before he passed and that is just another reason why I am thankful. My self-counselling has, ironically, been somewhat of a joyful thing. I think I now have a better picture of my relationship with my father and, warts and all, it has been a very self-fulfilling process insofar as I believe I now have a better understanding of myself and a higher comfort level in that regard.
   This is not to say that I have totally eliminated the possibility of engaging in counselling at some point. It might be nice to sit down with someone and say,"I did this and I did this and then I did this and what does that mean?" And then go from there.