Opinion Articles

SOUL MATTERS: Father's Day without a man ahead of his time
By Tracey Edstein

For the first time in my 48 years, I am (at time of writing) anticipating Father’s Day without my father around. I know where his spirit lives, but nevertheless, it will be different, as so many other special days have been this past year.

The advertising blitz hasn’t troubled me, as few of the usual suggestions ever suited Dad. He would always insist, “I don’t want anything,” not because he had everything, but because he needed little. He was a man who loved a project, and gained great satisfaction from planning and executing – a new garden area, improvements to the chooks’ abode, home maintenance, repairs at the church where he had worshipped for 81 years. He was more likely to ask, if pressed, for a particular tool than a new tie or a bottle of something special.

Fatherhood these days is oft discussed and debated, and I believe that much is asked of fathers (and mothers, but that’s another story). The old divide between ‘work’ (ie breadwinner’s paid employment) and ‘home duties’ is long gone, and the tasks of child rearing, household management, earning and budgeting, maintaining relationships with extended family and friends, no longer belong to one gender or the other. Studies however indicate that many of the stereotypes remain – Dad works on the car and Mum buys (and wraps) birthday presents.

When I think back to my childhood, I realise that my father was ahead of his time, although he would have scoffed at the idea. He was the breadwinner, he did look after the car, the lawn (although collaboration with Mum was necessary on matters horticultural) and there was little he couldn’t repair when many would have simply replaced.

Dad was also quite a good cook, and his younger sister maintained that he had taught her to cook. In his mind, there wasn’t a divide between ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’, there was just ‘what needed to be done’. On the other hand, he knew how to relax, and work-life balance came naturally to him.

When my sisters and I were young, he would occasionally take us to work with him for a day. This was long before workplace childcare was a phrase, much less a reality. His employees were like family to us, so we felt very comfortable with them. I am one of three daughters, and never did Dad indicate that he might have wished for a son. He liked to point out that he was outnumbered, but he couldn’t have spent any more time with us, or done more for us, than any father of sons.

He wasn’t a Mike Brady kind of Dad. He wasn’t given to platitudes, although he had lots of amusing and unique expressions. He wasn’t always cheerful, sometimes he was impatient, and he was reluctant to question the values that were close to his heart. We knew what those values were because he lived them, rather than talked about them.

So while I’m not looking forward to this Father’s Day, it will be an opportunity to reflect on the goodness to me of a God whom we often call ‘Father’.

Tracey Edstein is the editor of Aurora, the magazine of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.