But no, selfish as I am, I find myself worrying about what kind of father I will be. This is not a question that has occupied me much over the years. I don’t recall ever giving much thought to what kind of father my own father was; he was simply Dad. The relationship with Mom, on the other hand, was always a bit more complicated.
So where do you look for guidance on being a father? There are, of course, invaluable gems of wisdom and advice picked up from our own dads over the years, things like:
"Always shave upwards, against the stubble; it gives a better shave."
"Make sure you say something nice about your mother’s cooking."
"Never try to change your pants while driving."
"Don’t call it porno, son; just call it porn. Who decided all of a sudden to add an extra ‘o’ to ‘porn’? That just ain’t right."
These are the kinds of lessons that build character, that remind us what it is to be a son: a willing receptacle of largely useless nonsense.
Consciously or unconsciously, we do end up becoming our own parents, to some extent. But much as I’d like to simply pattern my fatherhood after my own father’s, I have to admit there are a lot of other role models out there to choose from. Take the movies, for example.
Movies set impossibly high standards for fatherhood, from Bing Crosby to Spencer Tracy (people who, in real life, were never in the running for Father of the Year trophies). There’s Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life; Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer; Steve Martin in Parenthood and Father of the Bride.
Then there are the TV dads: the always-chipper, relentlessly sober patriarchs of generations past and present, like Ward Cleaver and Mike Brady and Dr. Huxtable. These dads were allowed the slow-burn, the moment of incredulous exasperation, but they never lost their tempers or reached for the belt. They just chuckled, mussed the offensive kid’s hair, and went to a commercial.
I wonder what kind of lessons I will end up lavishing on a child – and which ones will be kept hidden away for as long as possible. In the name of disclosure, does a child really need to know how difficult or challenging life can be at an early age? Or should you let the kid enjoy his or her blissful ignorance up through adolescence?
I know my bad, annoying habits are something I will try to avoid passing on: my aggressive driving tendencies, for instance, which I justify by pointing out how much worse the other drivers are; my insistence on tackling as many errands and tasks in a single day as possible, which drives my wife bonkers; my quick temper, and my slow learning curve. These are all bad, bad, bad things, and I hope not to leave them as a legacy to my child.
But, while I may not turn out to be as perfectly Brylcreemed and pipe-smoking and wisdom-spouting as those paternal role models from TV, I can at least take comfort in the kind of movie dad I probably will not end up becoming:
• I probably will never force my family to eke out a pestilent existence in some South American rain forest, like Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast.
• I doubt if I will ever end up personally pruning my family tree of unwanted members, like Al Pacino in Godfather II.
• I certainly won’t take up weight-lifting and buy a muscle car, just to impress a virginal cheerleader like Kevin Spacey did in American Beauty.
• I don’t think I could be as supremely crusty and conniving a father as Gene Hackman was in The Royal Tenenbaums.
• As far as I know, I don’t have it in me to chase my family through a snowbound hotel with an axe, all the while leering insanely, as Jack Nicholson did in The Shining.
• And, if all things go well, I don’t see myself emerging from the dark side to inform my offspring that "Luke, I am your father!" as Darth Vader once did in The Empire Strikes Back.
So, all things being equal, the odds are pretty good that I won’t end up being the worst father on the planet. There’s simply too much competition out there for that.
In fact, once you rule out the kind of father you don’t want to be, it seems easier to settle for the imprint of fatherhood handed down genetically: at least, you tell yourself, it got you this far in life.
And for all the misguided advice, clueless indifference, grouchy haranguing or dangerous tasks routinely dispensed by fathers throughout time and history, there is one surefire, homegrown antidote.
That’s what mothers are for.