I have two sons. Hill is 6 months and Blake, 3 years old. They have caused my wife, Dale and I many happy days with much pleasure, as well as many sleepless nights and much anxiety. I know that I spend far more time with my sons than my father spent with me, through no fault of his own. Men of his generation (he's 65) left much of the early care of the children to their wives. This is less common in my generation. I've had to train myself how to be with my boys; it's something I taught myself. I've had to reach deep inside to extract a workable model, sometimes skipping a generation to remember my grandfathers.
Recently when I was fishing with Blake from our tiny boat one laid back afternoon, I remembered a dream I had before he was born, in fact, when I was deciding whether to become a father at all in my early 30's. The dream, though simple in itself, revealed complex generational layers of father-son interaction and helped give me the boost I needed to brave the waters of fatherhood. I dreamt:
A sad boy's voice calls out "My father never took me fishing".
I awoke with a deep sense of grief that stayed with me for days. I discussed my dream and feelings with Dale, my most trusted dream analyst. I told it to my sister, Anne, who is 4 years younger than I. I even shared it with my mother, perhaps not judiciously, since she still harbors resentment toward her ex-husband, who divorced her in 1969.
In order to get a handle on what the dream meant to me, I returned to my childhood and remembered my love of fishing. Give me a hook, some old string, any slab of bait and some water to throw it into and I was a happy kid. I loved fishing and still do, with approximately the same skill as that 9 year old and his funky equipment. The truth is, that my father rarely did take me fishing. My friends' dads took me, my two grandfathers and an uncle someimes took me, but rarely my dad. Sons don't want substitutes, they want their fathers.
The emphasis on the word "never" in my dream struck me. It wasn't literally or completely true, since Bob had on occasions taken me fishing. Perhaps the dream image was metaphorical? I thought back to my many dreams of fishing. A common symbol in my dreams is of fish... catching or losing them: big ones, sick ones; fish from deep or shallow waters, pond or rushing river. I believe fish refer to my inner creative life, just as the fish historically refers to the Christ as the source of all life. Fishing represents for me pleasure, relaxation, creativity, sustenance. In short, both physical and spiritual sustenance.
So what was it that my father never did with me? He never taught me how to use my spiritual life to sustain myself in the world. He couldn't teach me what he didn't know... he was trained to take care of others, to be a provider for his family... not to nurture his inner life. That's "selfish"! He was a decent father. He provided for his family the best way he knew how. I'm not angry with him for not giving me what I needed... he was preoccupied completely with his own marital, work and personal problems to such an extent that he couldn't teach his children the most important human function: how to nurture oneself ("self-fish"?). Without this ability, which I believe Dad lacked through no fault of his own, one cannot satisfactorily engage in relationships. Life to me is about relationships. The inability to relate to children is passed on from father to father until someone in a crisis recreates it through inspiration.
I was finally able to mourn and understand what was lacking in my childhood. Instead of being preoccupied with my loss, I was able to have the courage to become a father, to "take my sons fishing" in spite of my fears. I've still never told the dream to my father, though I've told him many other things in our working through to a communicative caring relationship. Perhaps he'll read this. I know his father rarely took him fishing. I sympathize with him.
It obviously takes time to learn how to be an effective self-nurturer and thereby a nurturer of ones' children. Many in my father's generation automatically assumed the responsibility of parenthood to be a by-product of marriage. I waited 10 years for fatherhood not in order to indulge myself in a selfish "me generation", but so that I might know myself a little better than my father knew himself, so that my children could benefit from my "self-fishing".
