Fatherhood, revisited

“Dad?" I look up from my laptop to see my six-year-old son with the TV remote in his hand.

"Yes, Braeden?"

"Can you put on Scooby-Doo for me?" Suddenly, my mind goes back to a Scooby-Doo rerun of another time and another child. Jason, my eldest son, is 27 - a full ten years older than I was when he was born.

I have four children now. The two older boys, from my first marriage, have long since left the nest, while our youngsters remain at home with me and their mother, Sherrie, my wife of 12 years. Like many families with young children, our lives are a whirlwind of Brownies and Beavers, hockey, piano lessons and homework.

Learning how to ride a bicycle. Runny noses and scraped knees. Such are the joys and the trials of raising children that put every parent on a pathway of discovery. It is a path I know intimately. I have been here before.

At a time when many from my generation are preparing a return to life without children in the house, I've started all over again as a middle-aged dad. I was a teen dad, too. And a single dad for a time. Actually, I've been a lot of different dads, and every one of them had something to teach me.

That April day in 1975, when the doctor exclaimed, "It's a boy," I was no more than a boy myself. I was a parent and a child. As Janis Ian sang, "I learned the truth at 17…”

But, perhaps, my parenting journey really began with the pseudoparenting role I was forced to adopt when my father left home for good. I had just turned 13.

My mother was lost and dysfunctional without her husband around to take hold of the reins. As the oldest child and surrogate man of the house, I was called on to do everything from grocery shopping to laundry. I interceded when a bill was due. While other kids my age were out goofing around and doing what adolescents do, I was thumbing rides into town with the classifieds sticking out of my pocket, the For Rent offerings neatly circled.

You can imagine the look on the landlord's face as the child before him tried in vain to get him to knock a few bucks off the rent. But I wasn't really a child; my childhood had drawn to a close long before. In my mind I was an adult, with the responsibility of holding things together for my mother and siblings.

I was effectively serving an apprenticeship for the day when, all too soon, I became a boy-husband and teen father. I thought I was ready to handle that, too. And I managed. But any sense of satisfaction was hijacked by the competing demands of education and career. One of them had to give, so I dropped out of school, a few months shy of graduation, to pursue full-time work.

The shame I felt for abandoning my education compounded my panic at needing to provide for home and hearth without the proper tools and skills. I was just too young. But I didn't know any better, and, without a father (or father figure) to guide me, I was left to my own devices.

Our decision to marry so young (I was 17; my bride, 19) did not spell disaster, but life was difficult and very limiting. Our second child was born when I turned 21. Now we had another mouth to feed on a single income. A promotion at work helped bolster the bank account, and we eventually bought a house, but we did everything - including parenting - the hard way. We were full of self-doubt and second-guessing.

Then tragedy struck in 1986, when I was in my late twenties. We had purchased a lovely rural property that summer and eagerly anticipated the fall colours and the more subdued pace of country life. It wasn't to be. Less than two months after moving into our new home, I was driving to work through a heavy predawn fog when my vehicle left the road and rolled into a field, throwing me from the car. I came within 10 minutes of losing my life and was hospitalized for nearly a month. Thanksgiving was celebrated at the foot of my hospital bed. But at least the family was together and I was making progress (my youngest son's loaned teddy bear helped). Soon I would be going home.

But home would change before I could get there. Two days before my scheduled release, my wife Laurie was killed en route to the hospital. Driving alone in a rented car, she lost control on a curve along the same road in Peterborough County on which I had been travelling. Our accidents were separated by three weeks and half a mile.

My doctor broke the news; I had wondered why all the nurses were crying. Jason, who was 11, was angry and confused. He felt betrayed. Eight-year-old Kenny, meanwhile, took comfort in knowing that his mommy was up in heaven with the angels and that she would like that. And then there was me - heartbroken and alone, weak from the trauma of my own accident and scared.

The next two years were a whirlwind of emotion and activity as I attempted to master - or, at least, learn - the roles of cook, chauffeur, disciplinarian and teacher. I obsessed about being superdad for the boys and immersed myself in work, in domesticity, in anything to distract me from the loneliness and the despair. Outwardly, I appeared courageous and in control, but inside I was a wreck. More than once, the kids caught me crying. And then the three of us would start bawling. It was altogether touching and sad.