I am not looking for a guru to answer my questions on life. I am looking for the experience, knowledge and understanding of other men. There are a lot of men who have a lot of experience which they do not share with those of us who crave for it. Maybe they don't think it of any worth. Maybe they need more experience in the telling of it. We all need to make the effort, because I feel that so many men are so emotionally repressed and underdeveloped because of the lack of stories of experience. Even finding out what is normal or what happens when can be of great help and enlightenment to most men. You would be surprised.

For this reason, I have written up the story of my experiences with my father. 'groan' I hear some of you say? - don't read it then. Its a long story, but I think worth a read. I thought I would write up the story of my father and my interaction with him during my life - partly to share my experiences, and partly to try and understand it myself. I would also like to hear from others who have the time and inclination to write. Do you have a story you would like to share? All it takes is the time to write it - don't have time? write it in bits. I am sure there are many men out there who would benefit from your experience, and, who knows, maybe you will benefit from re-living the experience and putting it into words. I hope so.

blessings,

Wyrmwood

The earliest memories I have of my father were his enjoyment of a good rumble and his fearfully displaced discipline. He used to enjoy playing rugby union and drinking beer - lots of beer. His usual approach to discipline was a thrashing, even for the simplest childhood mistakes. And this is when I developed a sense of justice. I certainly didn't consider my father's sense of justice very fair at all.

Birthday and Christmas were always a problem for him. He didn't believe in giving presents and was extremely anti-Christian, to the point of not even accepting Christmas presents that me and my sister gave him, or birthday presents for that matter. He would at first refuse them, and when we left them for him he would leave them unopened. If we 'helped' him to open them, they would lie around in their wrapping paper until either my mum, my sister, or myself removed them. This became more and more distressing for us kids who didn't understand why he wouldn't accept our gifts. Our expressions of our love were constantly rejected by our father. I know that he loved us, but why didn't he understand?

He worked for crane companies in managerial positions, argued and fought with my mum, drank lots of beer, dealt out punishments out of proportion to the 'crime', embarrassed my mum regularly, enjoyed swimming in the family pool, enjoyed rough and tumble games with me and my sister (although he often forgot his own strength and weight and inevitably we kids usually got hurt), enjoyed BBQs, news, tv, rugby. He was overweight, drank too much, and never displayed any emotions other than boyish humour and furious anger. But he never showed any of the person beneath his exterior.

He went through periods where he wouldn't talk to me or my sister when we had done, in his eyes, something wrong. There was one occasion where he didn't talk to me for a month for something that I had allegedly done. Whenever I would ask what I had done, he would reply that 'I should know'. It was extremely distressing for me as a kid. When I eventually found out what it was that I had done to experience his silence, I was amazed - it was partially misunderstanding and mostly blown out of all proportion. It made me lose a lot of respect for him.

I suffered 'father hunger' - where I visited and hung around 'father figures', trying to gain acceptance, involvement, love, trying to get older males to take notice of me and what I was doing in life, and trying to learn from them. Unfortunately, I was unable to find many males I could relate to on some level. Most of the fathers in my street were just like my dad - angry, abusive, juvenile - seemed all they cared about was sport and yelling at their kids.

I withdrew from social involvement at school - tried to do well and concentrate on my work, and was generally considered a loner with few friends. I was often depressed and spent a lot of my free time down the bush - exploring with my dogs or sitting on a rock, thinking about my life and life in general. I spent a lot of time down that bit of bush.

My father was a bit of a workaholic - mostly burying himself in company work. There were often times when surprisingly, he would help out at school or scout working-bees, and do a considerable amount of work there. On the other side of things, though, he would do nothing else - my mum often despaired at getting him to do even the simplest house-chore. He would come home, having done his work, and watch tv and drink beer, while my mum busied herself with cooking, washing-up, preparing our school lunches, and everything else.

When I was about 17, my father suddenly started going through redundancies and periods of unemployment - during which times he got extremely depressed and his alcohol consumption became a problem. He never really became violent, just ridiculously drunk - during which times he usually embarrassed my mum (sometimes in front of her friends who she quickly lost), embarrassed us kids that our father could act in such a way, and probably lost a lot of dignity for himself.

There was one incident which caused me to grow up very quickly...

Dad had been drinking constantly all evening. He had gone through 5 bottles of wine and had gone on to port. He was extremely drunk and mum was getting excessively worried. She had asked a couple of times if he would stop, that he had had enough. When he got onto the port, she decided that enough was enough, and after he had poured himself a glass, she took the bottle off him. I was standing next to her, really worried that he would do something rash, adrenalin pumping through my veins because I was so scared of this man who had become such an ogre. I was 17 and very much a pacifist - in other words, I had never learnt to fight - but I was ready to protect my mum. My dad, when he realised that mum had swiped his bottle, made a lunge at it. Due to his drunken state, he missed the bottle and hit my mum. I reacted. Everything seemed surreal and distant. I hit my dad - for the first time in my life - square across the face - hard, and said something like 'don't you hit my mum!' After that, everything went slow motion - he looked astonished, then got angry - staggered over to me and hit me several times. Fortunately he was so drunk that his blows were weak and I fended them off easily enough. Mum was screaming - absolutely terrified at this stage - that dad was going to hurt me. She eventually got him to stop hitting me and he staggered up the stairs to bed. The next day, he acted like it was all a big joke. No apologies. No acknowledgments that there had been a problem. He had a bruised eye for a week.

Mum threatened to leave him several times before and after this incident, but he would beg her to stay, plead with her, tell her that things would change, that he would try harder - the whole sob story. But of course - he didn't change. He just got worse. Mum had often stated to us kids that the main reason she didn't leave our dad was because of us kids. She felt extremely insecure of going out on her own, working a full time job and getting us through school. Dad eventually got a job, but the problems didn't go away.

Mum tried arranging marriage counselling to try and work things out, and although it helped her, dad often refused to go. The only time he did go, he was aggressive, moody and refuse to acknowledge that there was a problem.

While I was in the final year of high school, I was often asked by friends and teachers, what I was going to do when I left school. My father had often stressed that he wanted me to get into accountancy or business, and so that was what I often replied. It was just easier to say that, although I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Closer to the time I would have to make a decision, I began to question what I wanted. Eventually I came to the decision, after much research, talking to people, and thinking about the things that I enjoyed, that I liked science and decided to follow a career there. When I told my dad, instead of being supported and happy for me that I had chosen what I wanted, he was disappointed, angrily saying 'that won't get you a career'. Needless to say I was upset, but I decided that it was my choice and stuck with it.

Finally, mum had had enough. She was afraid of letting dad know her intentions about her leaving him, so she decided to move out when he was at work, taking only what she needed, trying to be more than fair, taking what she felt was 'her share'. She left it to us kids to decide where we wanted to live, and if we wanted to live with dad, she would not begrudge us. My sister decided to stay with dad, as she was close to him and was worried about him coping on his own. I decided to go with mum. Mum went back to the house to meet him when he came home to let him know why half the furniture was missing. He was furious. He didn't want to talk to me or mum. So we left and started a new home. My sister reported to us how he was going. She often got annoyed with him, but she was incredibly stubborn and refused to put up with any shit. She became an expert at bullying him to do the right thing. And so he 'coped'.

The time came when the family house was to be sold, and my dad started preparing to move house. My sister happened to mention to him in passing one day about moving out on her own, and he became extremely possessive and angry - threatening to keep all her stuff if she tried to leave. She was astonished by the ferocity of his reply, and decided to definitely leave. Eventually, after suffering his moodiness and bad temper as long as she could cope, she moved out (and in with mum and me) without telling him. Again he was furious. Again he felt betrayed, and consequently refused to speak to my sister. As far as he was concerned, he didn't have a family. He felt rejected and betrayed, and so rejected everyone else.

The family house was sold, and he moved, not telling us where he had gone. My sister knew as he had told her before she had decided to move out - he was not too far away, and she tried to visit him. He didn't want to know and locked the door. I tried to visit him during this time when I had worked up some courage, but he wasn't home.

Then one day we got news from my family overseas that he had left Australia for the UK to try and find work there. He lived with his mother for a while, sponging off her, then tried to get work in Singapore, where we had lived before. He had no luck there. Eventually he bought a backpackers hostel business on Magnetic Island, Queensland, with the help of his brother and mother, and ran that for a while.

Meanwhile, I had just finished Uni, and had the time and money for a holiday having worked hard part-time in a Camping store, so I visited northern Queensland, eventually making my way down to Townsville and Magnetic Island....

It had been about 4 years since I had seen my dad, and I was extremely nervous and afraid of rejection. My mum had tried to get me to change my mind on visiting dad, saying that he would just reject me and I would just get hurt. I knew it was likely that she was right, but I felt very strongly that I had to try. I knew that if I didn't try, I would probably regret it for the rest of my life.

I firstly tried him at his home address, but he wasn't there. A neighbour informed me he was at work, at the backpackers. So I hiked back down the road to the 'Aquarium' - the backpackers was also a bar/restaurant, aquarium (with a live shark!), and offered sailboat hire. Not a bad place. I nervously walked in to the reception and asked to speak with the manager (for that's what he was). He came out to the reception desk, and not recognising me at first, said 'yes?' He looked like he had aged a lot since I last saw him, with wrinkles and grey hair before his time. I said to him 'don't you recognise your own son?' He went pale, turned around, and walked quickly away. I was upset, but was determined to keep trying. I found him out the back. He had sat on a folding chair with a newspaper and a beer, and was reading. I went up to him, and he furiously retorted that if I didn't leave him alone, that he would get a restraining order out on me. I replied that I only wanted to talk to him. I told him about mum, about my sister, about me, what had happened in our lives since we had seen him last. I told him I was sorry the way things had worked out, that I was still his son, and he was still my father. He just sat there pretending to read his newspaper and I trembled within and talked. I talked and talked until I ran out of things to say. When I had stopped, he told me to go away, that he didn't want to see me again. I had been prepared for this possible reaction, but was still devastated. I went for a long bushwalk and a long think, eventually ending up at a cafe where the proprietor and I ended up chatting late into the night over a few bottles of red. I spent a few days at Magnetic Island, taking in its sights and its beauty. When the time came for me to leave, I went to visit my dad one last time to try to get him to talk, or to eventually just say goodbye. I found him in the same spot. He angrily threatened me again, but I just started talking. I told him that I hoped that we could one day have a father/son relationship, and that I was sorry that we hadn't been able to at least talk civilly to each other. I told him that I was leaving for Sydney (where I lived at the time), I wished him success in his business, and I said 'goodbye'. To me, that word was the hardest of all to say. It felt symbolic in a way, and as I walked away, I knew in my heart that I would never see him again.

When he eventually moved to Brisbane, my sister tracked him down and visited him. Again he didn't want to see her, but she waited outside his door, demanding very loudly to be let in, refusing to go until he saw her. Eventually he let her in but didn't talk to her. She talked and talked to him, but he just sat in a chair drinking beer.

A few years later, news reached me that he had died of a heart attack. The news didn't immediately affect me - it was like hearing the death of a stranger. I didn't go up to Brisbane for the funeral - I felt that I had already said my 'goodbyes'. My sister and my mum went up, and my father's brother came over from the UK. Together, they discovered an astonishing revelation.

My father had sold his business a few years previously - it hadn't been doing too well, and had moved from there to Brisbane. He had got work in Brisbane, and commuted to work on a Vespa (motorbike scooter). His workmates who had gone to the funeral said that he was friendly and a good worker, and said that he had even mentioned his children. His house was relatively tidy and it seemed like he had really made an effort for a new life. I was sad, but not upset. I didn't cry, even though I don't normally think of myself as emotionally suppressed. I just did not feel a need to cry.

A year or so later, I was talking matter-of-factly to a friend about my father and the person he had been, when I was overwhelmed by a sense of grief. I fought it off at the time, feeling that it was not an appropriate time or place to express it. Later, I analysed my feelings about my father, and found I still had a lot of emotions about him, some 'positive' and some 'negative'. So I 'felt them out' - I went through in my mind all the events to do with my father that I could remember - all the good stuff, all the stuff where I had been frightened or angry, everything - remembered all the emotions I had felt at those time - and I began to cry. I cried and cried for a good ten minutes, feeling my suppressed emotions being released. Afterwards, I felt drained, but also, happier. I felt better about my father, my feelings towards him, and I tried to understand why he had been the person he was.

At a later date, I reminisced with my sister about him. It brought up a lot of emotions for both of us - although for me none as powerful as I had previously felt. It felt really good to go over the horrific events with someone who had been there and could really understand.

Today I find that I miss him - its not that I romanticise how he had been, or forget that unpleasant side of his personality, its just that I miss that part of me that was my father. I sometimes wish he was still around, so I could try again to communicate with him, and eventually get him to talk about his feelings. He may not have had a great deal to say or to teach to me as a kid, but I felt that I would have liked to have been able to try and understand him as an 'enlightened' adult.

Maybe he would have eventually acknowledged me as his son, but I will never know. Maybe my needs are to try and understand the part of him that is within me. So in that light, I still honour my father, and acknowledge my love for him, even though it felt like it was one-sided. Now that I am a father to my own kids, I can be all for them that I felt was lacking from my childhood with him.

Thanks for hearing my story of my father.

blessings,

Wyrmwood