Lessons from my Father

My Father was born and died on the same date. October 1st last year. The priest made a big deal about this at his funeral.

For his part, I think my Dad would have appreciated that living an extra 8 hours into the month of October, meant an extra month of his old age pension for my Mom. No one appreciated the value of a dollar more than my Father. He was notoriously tight with his money, a fact he attributed to his Scottish-bred Mother, who raised him with the mantra, "A fool and his money are soon parted." My Dad died with a closet full of barely-worn clothes that he kept "for good".

As his anniversary rapidly approaches, I've been thinking recently about the lessons I learned from my Dad.

For one thing, I always arrive at the airport hours before a flight. Hours. Probably hours before the pilot and the flight crew. My Dad worked for Air Canada for 34 years, and would regale my Mother and I with stories of flights missed due to carelessness and car trouble. Tardiness was a character defect never to be tolerated.

Working for the airline (or so he said) gave him an unnatural fear of changing climactic conditions. (He would have loved Al Gore.) He burned the weather channel into our TV. When you turned off the set, you could still see its outline around the periphery.

My Dad also taught me to fear: black ice, travelling at high speeds, economic downturns, roller coasters, my own potential, high electricity bills, bicycles, and honesty. It wasn't until after his funeral that I learned that he hadn't graduated from high school at all -- as he maintained his entire life -- but left school after grade eight.

Knowing this, I have more compassion for the things that irritated me so much when my Dad was alive. It just proves that he was afraid. He was afraid of everything -- both failing and succeeding.

Fear is the great immobilizer. Today I'm going to do something that scares me.