“Fathers and Sons:  The Surprising Bond”

Neil Chethik

Sunday, 10 June 2007

Rev. Lynngood:  Believe it or not,  this morning I’m introducing the final sabbatical guest.  I have a feeling that when Rob returns I’m going to want to introduce him, just because I’m so used to it now.  [Laughter]  One final guest this morning is the author, Neil Chethik.  Neil is a co-founder of the Unitarian Universalist Men’s Network, and he is the author of two books, the first, which he’ll be speaking about extensively this morning, is entitled, “Father Loss:  How Sons Deal with the Loss of their Dads,” and his second book is entitled “Voice Male:  What Husbands Really Think of Their Marriages.”  [Laughter]  They like that title, Neil, what they really think.  Neil lives in Lexington Kentucky with his wife who happens to be a colleague of mine, the Reverend Kelly Flood.  He himself is not a reverend, even though we’ve ordained him in our order of service this morning.  They live there with their 13-year-old son, Evan.  Neil will be signing his books at our book nook after the service, so if you want to pick up one of those for Father’s Day for someone in your lives, or just for yourself, they will be available.  Please join me in welcoming Neil Chethik.  [Applause]

Neil Chethik:  Thank you, Shana.  And good morning.  It’s truly an honor to be here, in this pulpit where so many people of principle and passion have stood before.  I want to thank not only Shana but Rob, from the other side, who welcomed me several months ago when I contacted him, and invited me to be here today.  I do miss him.

One short reading, and it’s a quote from a 48-year-old man who had recently lost his father.  I had a chance to interview this man and he said these words about the death of his father:

            When my father died, it was as if I had lived in a house my whole life, a house with a

            picture window looking out on a mountain range.  Then one day, after he died, I looked

            out that window and one of those mountains was gone.

I think of my Grandpa, Willie, as a Yiddish-speaking Santa Claus.  He was this roundish man, thick, white hair.  He didn’t have a beard, but he had these rosy, red cheeks and a big belly laugh.  He’d come from Russia in 1920, through Ellis Island, to Brooklyn, New York.  He was 16 years old at the time and, like so many others with him, he ended up settling in New York and spending 50 years running small businesses and doing errant other types of work, and then finally retiring to Miami Beach.  That was in the 1970s.

Prior to that, one of my favorite times as a kid was going to the airport to pick up my grandfather.  In those days you could meet him in the gate area, and he’d fly in to visit us in Michigan.  I could always tell it was him getting off the plane because he was the guy carrying big shopping bags full of food.  I’m talking whole, roasted chickens, salamis, this long, poking out, fresh rye bread and bagels.  There was something about New York City food that he couldn’t leave behind and that he knew he couldn’t get in Michigan.

Well, I have two brothers.  One is older and one is younger and my grandfather, when he came off of the plane, he used to line us up and then he would come up to us and he’d put those shopping bags down and he’d say, “Let me see your muscles.”  And the three of us would spring into action and he’d go down and squeeze those little things, little pebbles, and he’d ooh and ahh about how big and strong we had gotten since the last time he saw us.  He wasn’t a hugger, but in the process of this hello, he would shake each of our hands and slip a five or a ten dollar bill in.  He knew how to get to the heart of a young kid.

Now I remember Grandpa made a special trip to Michigan two weeks before I turned thirteen.  And I know when it was because on that visit he bestowed on me what I now warmly call my “shotgun bar mitzvah.”  My parents were not religious Jews, but Grandpa was Orthodox and he couldn’t have lived with himself if I had gone through my thirteenth birthday without a bar mitzvah.  So, two weeks before, he showed up with his bags in hand and he started drilling me on the Hebrew letters and the Hebrew words and the Hebrew prayers.  Now, I don’t know if any of you have tried to learn Hebrew in two weeks . . .[Laughter]  Grandpa was scaling back his expectations.  But then, on the morning of my thirteenth birthday, he quite literally grabbed me by the hand, and he walked me to the local synagogue where he had greased the palms of the minyan, the elders, made sure they were there, and he coached me through this ceremony.  I felt awkward and silly at the time and, when I look back on it, it still seems a bit bizarre, but I’ve always appreciated what Grandpa Willie did, that he took my salvation, you might say, so seriously.

Years went by and I grew up and Grandpa grew old.  And then in 1984, when I was 27, I had the chance to move to Miami Beach, just a few blocks away from where he was living at the time.  Now, he was 80 years old; his wife, my grandmother, had passed away.  But Grandpa was still feisty, and he took great advantage of the under-supply of men in Miami Beach.  [Laughter]  He was married and divorced twice in the last seven years of his life.  [Laughter]  When I first arrive there I had trouble fitting into his social schedule.  But he and I were both unemployed at the time, so we’d often spend our days together and then he would invite me over to his house in the evening and he’d cook one of those succulent meals of brisket or chicken, and we’d while away the evening with schnapps and stories about his childhood in the old country.  And these were some of the really, truly closest times that I had with Grandpa.

One day, shortly after one of those dinners, I got a call from a man who identified himself as my grandfather’s doctor.  I remember the exact words he said; he said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your grandfather has had a heart attack and he has expired.”  The next day, my father, my grandfather’s son, flew to south Florida from his home up in Michigan and I remember picking him up at the airport, the quiet in the car on the way over to the hospital.  We went there to identify my grandfather’s body and then make arrangements to ship it up north to be buried with my grandmother.  And then my father and I went into my grandfather’s apartment and we began sorting through the material remnants of my grandfather’s life. 

My father and I worked in different rooms and occasionally, we’d call out to each other about some find that we ran across in a drawer or a cupboard or a closet.  We kept at it until the glow of the afternoon sun began to wane.  It began to get darker and darker in the apartment, but for some reason, neither of us wanted to turn the lights on.  We just kept sorting and letting it get dark and finally we couldn’t see what we were doing anymore and so we took some glasses with ice and scotch from my grandfather’s liquor cabinet and collapsed in my grandfather’s living room chairs.  My father and I shared memories for awhile, and then we were quiet. 

Finally, as the rooms faded into this near-total darkness, I heard this guttural groan.  At first I was alarmed by it and then I realized what was happening.  It was the first time in my life that I had ever heard my father cry.  I didn’t know what to do exactly.  I ended up getting up from my chair and kneeling by his side.  As he cried I remember, even today, putting my hand on his shoulder, feeling the movement and the warmth of his body.  And then, after a couple of minutes, my father became quiet.  When he spoke, he said two things that have stayed with me over the last 23 years.  First he said, “I’m crying not only for my father, but for me.  His death means I’ll never hear the words I always wanted to hear, that he was proud of me.  That he was proud of the family I’ve raised and of the life I’ve lived.”  And then my father paused and directed his voice toward me and he said, “Neil, so that you never have to feel this way, I want to tell you now, how proud I am of you, of the choices you’ve made, of the life you’ve created.”

I tell that story, with the permission of my father, because I think it goes to the core of what fathers can give and what they can withhold from their children.  Over the past 20 years, as a writer and researcher, I’ve had the opportunity to interview hundreds of men and women about their fathers.  In honor of Father’s Day next Sunday, I’d like today to share three elements of good fathering that emerged out of those conversations.  Perhaps you will see your father in these words and images, and perhaps you’ll see yourself.

The first element of good fathering can be summed up in one single word:  affection.  Both daughters and sons told me that their fathers were at their best when they were being physically affectionate in some way – wrestling with their kids, tossing the kid in the air, carrying that child piggyback, bouncing him on his knee.  Those were the memories of closeness.  I remember one thirty-something man who told me, “On Saturday mornings, when my dad had been gone all week, I’d climb into my parents’ bed.  My father had horrible breath in the morning.  We played a game where he tried to breathe on me and I hid under the covers!”  [Laughter]  And for this son, this was a happy memory.  [Laughter]

Now I wondered after hearing such stories why, you know wrestling and piggybacking and bad breath, would be considered fondly by sons and daughters.  I learned that for some it was crucial to boys to experience in their bodies, in their bones, how a man moves and feels and smells.  It was his chance to tune his body to a man’s body.  Just as importantly, when the father’s touch was playful and loving, the son felt protected.  He learned that men are strong but that a man’s strength can be harnessed and used in a safe way.  Man’s strength can be harnessed and used in a safe way.  That was a lesson for a lifetime.

Likewise, for women, touch is so important.  From a father’s touch daughters learned what was appropriate and acceptable touching from a man.  If a father’s touch with loving, the daughter felt safe.  If the touch was harming, the daughter learned that men are not to be trusted or, worse, that she was in some way deserving of harm. 

Not every father is capable of safe physical affection.  And in those cases, other kinds of affection were also highly valued by sons and daughters.  Primarily this kind of affection involved a father’s loving attention.  Loving attention toward the child.  The father might play catch, or dolls, with his child.  He might coach a child’s sports team or guide the child through a religious ritual.  He might take his child camping, or to movies or concerts.  The key here, I learned, was not merely doing something with the child, but doing with the child what the child was passionate about.  Fathering isn’t a man’s opportunity to live out his frustrated dreams.  Affection is about affirming in the child what she or he is most passionate about.  It’s about saying “yes” to the essence of this particular child.

So affection was the first element of good fathering.  The next element I found is what I call “blessing.”  We saw that here today.  Blessing usually happened a little later in a child’s life, usually in his or her teen years or early adulthood.  My father’s words to me upon the death of my grandfather – “I’m proud of you” – that is a classic, straightforward blessing.  The fact that he suffered because he never got that blessing made it even more powerful and poignant. 

But blessings don’t have to be quite as direct as my father’s was to me.  A woman I spoke with said she felt blessed by her dad when he welcomed her choice of a lesbian partner in her life, and also welcomed their child when she was born.  A son says he felt blessed when his father, after being diagnosed with a serious illness, asked for help and advice on medical options and finances.  Blessings, in a way, are like a hand out or a hand up, when the father says “You are equal to me; I’ll always be your father, but we are both adults.” As we mature, we do know more and more and a father who sees that and affirms that is fulfilling his role as a bestower of blessings. 

And it’s never too late to bless a son or daughter.  One man I interviewed had had a terrible childhood relationship with his father.  The boy had dropped out of school when he was seventeen; he’d gotten into drugs, angered his father and then, when he was eighteen, he move two thousand miles away, and he cut off contact with his father for 20 years.  And then, in his late thirties, he invited his father to come visit him.  In those 20 years they had been apart, the son had become a carpenter, actually a craftsman of bookshelves and cabinets and sweeping staircases.  When the father visited, after all those years, the son took him on a tour of one of the houses that he had been involved in building.  The son told me that he remembered only four words that his father said as he walked around that home:  “Son, I’ve underestimated you.”  And that was enough.  The son forgave and in the years that followed, the father sent his son wood tools as gifts and he called on him for advice on how to build things around his own home. 

Sons and daughters who are not blessed by their fathers often carry a hunger that cannot be satisfied.  When my Grandpa Willie died, my father was 54 years old.  He was a successful teacher and psychotherapist.  He had a 30-year marriage.  He had four reasonably good kids.  And yet he still ached for the simplest of phrases from his father, “Son, I’m proud of you.”  He still ached for a blessing.

So the first two elements of good fathering – affection begins with an A, blessing begins with a B – of course the third one begins with a C.  And that element is something that I learned, actually, from my own son, Evan.  When I was finishing the writing of “Father Loss” a few years ago, I got up the courage to ask Evan, who was five years old at the time, the question I’d been asking so many adult sons. “Evan, what makes a good father?”  Don’t try this at home.  [Laughter]  Actually, he was brilliant.  First, he said the things that I expected.  He said, “A good father plays with you, he takes care of you, he reads you books.”  But then he added one trait that I hadn’t thought of after months of research.  He said that a “good dad waves to you before he goes away.”  Waves to you before he goes away.

I knew what he was talking about.  Every morning at that time we lived in a house where the driveway ran right past the breakfast nook, and so as I drove backward out of the driveway, I would stop and look up and I would roll down the window and, if Evan was there, I would wave to him.  For me this was a satisfying little ritual, but for Evan it was evidently more than that.  If I forgot to stop and wave, which occasionally happened – I’d get into the car, I’d be on to the day’s events and I’d whiz by that window – when I got to my office, there was a message waiting for me on the answering machine:  “Dad, you forgot.  Goodbye.”  [Laughter] 

In a way, Evan spoke for all sons of all ages when he cited the importance of the wave goodbye, when he cited the importance of the third element of good fathering – closure.  Whether we’re driving away from a five-year-old to go to work, or dropping our college-age child at her new dorm, or getting on a plane after visiting our forty-something son, our children know that one day we won’t be there anymore, at least not in the flesh.  It’s our job as fathers, and also as mothers, sisters and brothers of all kinds, to say what must be said, to do what must be done, in essence, to wave before we go away.

We might think that the closer a son or daughter feels for a father, the more difficult it is when the father dies.  And that’s true in the short term. But the reality is that those who struggle the most and for the longest time with the death of a father are those who are still angry or distant or resentful or unresolved.  Those who struggle most are those who did not get the wave good-bye. 

So if you are a father, or if you have father energy within you, I invite you, in this Father’s Day week, to look around your world for those who need your affection, for those who need a blessing from you, for those who need to resolve with you, to forgive you, to close a chapter.  And then, in the spirit of holy fathering, the spirit of holy fathering, do your best to give them what they need.   Amen.     [Applause]