Any man can be a father, but it takes something special to be a dad. Murray Silby says he was lucky to have a special dad to show him how to be a good dad to his own sons.
It is easy to underestimate the value of a good dad — when you have one.
I recently lost mine. Parkinson’s weakened him and then the flu took him from us, but before then he had 83 years to influence this earth for the better. We were lucky, for he was a thoroughly good man.
I’m one of the projects he worked on, but never quite finished.
As a journalist, you come across plenty of examples of bad dads — the news is full of them — so sometimes the good ones fly under the radar.
But when you lose them, it brings into sharp focus all the great lessons, laughter and love they gave you.
Having lived through a period of transformational change in the world, my dad was a little bit old school and a little bit new school.
After all, when a child himself, his dad worked the paddocks with a horse-drawn plough, and by the time my dad died, space tourism was within sight and self-propelled tractors guided by GPS did the tilling.
He started out with the view that a woman’s place was in the home, and finished up carrying the greater share of the washing up and ironing for my mum, who found it hard to stand.
Much of my dad’s evolution can be put down to extensive efforts to retrain him by my mum, who was a working mother until retirement.
Thankfully for my wife, I am almost perfectly trained.
Now a father myself, like every father’s son, I’m borrowing a bit from my dad and working my own theories into the mix. After all, there was much we disagreed upon, although he always let us air our views.
It’s one of the great lessons he taught me, that my opinion was valued. We did not have to agree, but we had to be fair and respectful to all, and there’s always more to learn.
My dad was a hands-on type of dad. He was involved in the discipline, read us books and gave us ‘elephant rides’ on his back. He took us up the paddock on the tractor, to sport, attended school events, and it was a rite of passage when his sons could wrestle him to the ground.
His culinary skills were slower to advance, with his repertoire almost entirely limited to fried sausages and eggs. Although, again later in life, he did try to ease the burden on my mum a lot more in this field as well, expanding to include vegetables.
I took Dad’s evolution as a father from old school to new school to another stage, though, by becoming a stay-at-home dad when our boys were young.
It was not a difficult decision at the time, as I had reached a professional plateau, my wife earned more than me and, fortunately, that was enough for us to choose that path.
I had no problem with the concept and nor did my wife, but I was not ready for the workload and the fatigue, and perhaps, the irony of sometimes feeling my work was undervalued or under-appreciated.
Being a stay-at-home dad taught me a new appreciation for the role women have played in our society for thousands of years, and I did not have to do it in a long dress with multiple petticoats or slaving over a wood fire in 40-degree heat — all while a man told me I had it too good and that I should not vote.
There were days when my wife walked in the door from work and I handed her one, or multiple, children as soon as she stepped inside, and then promptly left the house not to be seen for a few hours.
There were days when we bickered over whether I was achieving my KPIs or not.
There were days when I begged a child to sleep during the day, simply so I could.
And, there were days, blissful days, when we got a cleaner-come-babysitter in.
I do not claim that I was good at being a stay-at-home dad, and my dad would probably have done it better, had his evolution continued on the trajectory it was on, but I loved it and would not hesitate to do it all again.
The lessons I learned from my dad, that I noted most of all, were to help people if you can, work hard, enjoy life and be positive.
They are hard to fault. I might also add, in this time we live, that as the father of boys, I have a role in helping them to also become thoroughly good men.
We have a problem in society with some of our men and their treatment of women and vulnerable minority groups. We all need to continue to change our society for the better and I need to play my role.
No doubt my sons will value some of my methods and eschew others, like I did my dad’s, but that is fine too.
My dad’s life and death has taught me, an aspiring good dad, something key to my role, and my time as a stay-at-home dad reinforced this.
It does not matter if you earn the most money, are able to build a gazebo on to the back of the house or even if your billy cart rolls — your kids just want to be loved, hugged and for you to chase them around the house or yard before they then wrestle you to the ground like a wildebeest being taken down by a pride of lions during migration.
I’m loath to give advice because I am sure I am no better than any other dad — I am just muddling through — but given I have been asked to put some thoughts down, there is a lesson I try to live by as a father, stay-at-home or not.
As we rush from commitment to commitment, work and social, shopping and gardening, I try to ask myself, “Did the boys and I wrestle today?”.
This story originally appeared in Don Magazine. You can find the full publication at https://www.sheppnews.com.au/features-and-magazines/don-magazine/