Dear Dad, Today is your birthday. I still think about you every day and regularly want to speak with you. Instead, I imagine what you’d say. The girls and I have a good time giving you voice (accent and all) in our conversations - often joking, sometimes serious. It was nice to wake up today and spend some time thinking about you with Jen. And then on the way to school, your granddaughter and I talked about you, and started listing things for which we’re grateful. Here are a few of mine: 1. I’m grateful that you always made your kids a priority. Not all dads (divorced or not) did this. We were consistently the most important people in your life. 2. I’m grateful that you were my friend as well as my father. You advised, sometimes nagged, but you helped me learn to think for myself. And you listened to our ideas - even when we were fairly clueless. 3. I’m grateful that you exposed me to many of my heroes - including King, Gandhi, Malcolm X, etc. You met many of my real life heroes and comrades with me and honored them as I did. 4. I’m grateful that you helped me learn how to learn. You expected big things and were willing to support as well as challenge. You helped me realize that I could be a decent athlete despite not being a “natural.” You helped me analyze technique. You supported me in facing my fears. 5. You encouraged us to stand up to bullies (both external and internal) - but not reactively or out of ego. You helped me distinguish between righteousness and self-righteousness, or at least helped me realize that there is a difference. 6. You helped me value education and honor the difference between education and schooling. When I decided to leave school to pursue a more experiential and activist-oriented education (and to seek to be as much of a full-time revolutionary as I could), you challenged, argued, and ultimately encouraged me. You helped me strike some balance between social change work and enjoying life. 7. You loved to laugh and you taught us to laugh at ourselves. You let us choose whether to laugh with you - or laugh at you for the silliness of many of your jokes. 8. You were a good friend to my friends. You listened to them, tried to help when you could, saw the good in all of them - even when we were delinquents. You were a “cool dad” without trying too hard. 9. You exposed me to much of the music I still love - 60s R&B, in particular. I don’t know where I’d be without Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, etc. Though I’m sad I never got you to a Solomon concert before he died (or a ‘boys game before you died), I learned from this. Carpe diem, yeah? 10. I’m grateful that you grew a lot late in life - that you kept learning, taking in new information and perspectives, and trying to align with them. There were probably not a ton of Quebecers with your background who opted for vegetarianism (for environmental as well as health reasons) in their fifties, for instance. Or a lot of entrepreneurs and salesmen who chose to call themselves “businessmen in recovery” and were willing to start to seriously questioning and critiquing capitalism - or doing civil disobedience to embody their beliefs and try to stop the ecocidal machine. I could go on, of course, but you wouldnt want me to. Thanks, pops, for rocking. Yves Gagne, presente!
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:04:17 +0000
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