Kittens, Babies, and Bike Racing

My dad loves kittens and babies. He’s not as good with kids (at least he wasn’t when I was growing up) and he does not like cats. An interesting dichotomy, to be sure. I had little interaction with my dad as a child, but I never grew up feeling like I was missing anything. I was never one of those adults who lamented the lack of this relationship. I never felt sorry for myself or felt like I needed to forge a relationship that never was.

Growing up on a small working farm, I saw clearly that my dad was extremely busy and very hardworking. He kept a full-time job, and in order to do all the morning farm chores and still make it to work on time, his days began at 4:00 a.m. When he got home in the evening, he went straight back out to the fields or barn for whatever work still remained to be done. When other dads in other cities might be enjoying a beer or a cocktail, a game of racquetball, or helping their children with homework, my dad was doing another three to five hours of work, depending on the season. During the summer, he would come home, jump straight onto the tractor and start mowing, raking, or baling hay—often until it was dark. As I said, I understood. He was busy. I didn’t feel like he was absent from my life. He had a lot of things to do. I wasn’t missing out on anything.

So, to my surprise, in the middle of a series of therapy sessions during a particularly rough patch in my life, I was confused when my therapist suggested I really take a look at my relationship with my dad. She asked me what I remembered doing with my dad when I was growing up. I thought about it for a minute—he taught me how to ride a bike. On rare occasions, he would shoot basketball with me. And I sometimes “bucked” bales of hay with him and helped change the irrigation pipes in the fields. “That’s heavy work,” my therapist said. “How old were you?” I couldn’t remember exactly, but my guess was around eleven or twelve years old. My therapist gave me a look almost as if she didn’t believe me, and said, “That’s extremely heavy work for a twelve-year-old. Why did you do it?”