A letter to a son before his wedding
Dear Kieran,
Your impending wedding June 10 with Holly precedes Father’s Day by a week, so it seems an apt time to write something about it (having declined an invitation to deliver a weepy address at your reception) as you are our first to tie the knot.
Let me congratulate you on finding Holly. You’re a great pair. You will be an exemplary father, should you two choose it, because you have a sense of what’s right. That’s about your only guide.
There is no handbook. The role was defined for me by Ward Cleaver, who bore Wally and the Beaver greetings at supper, and Pat Cullen, who instructed me to go comb my hair and get out of his as he sat in his chair listening to baseball on the radio. Look it up in the World Book, he said when I asked.
Too bad you couldn’t have known him. He was a nice and witty man, not keenly ambitious after having survived World War II, and terribly proud of his brood of six. He was not a helicopter parent. “You signed up for Boy Scouts. I didn’t,” he said. He liked Grain Belt by the six pack and Marlboros by the carton — you didn’t need an alarm because the cloud of smoke would wake you in the morning.
He wore wingtips and a tie at all times, probably in the shower, but I never saw him in the shower. He did not take us on vacations after our only excursion, when the ’59 Chevy station wagon broke down in South Dakota and I pooped in the ditch. He did not take us fishing or confide in us. He went to Bill’s games, because Bill had a little talent. He did instruct us on the greatness of John F. Kennedy and Harold Hughes, and took us to Mass on Sunday.
He was my lesson in paternity.
A good guy. His one-liners would zing right over your head if they didn’t hit you in the gut. He was reliably there when you needed him.
He worked until he died.
A “B” was never as good as an “A” with him. He would remind you as he congratulated you on not being held back a year. A firm handshake and then a signature on the report card.
That’s sort of how I approached the role, in a spirit of benign neglect.
I always thought I would be a husband and father but had no idea what it really entailed, or how to do it. I knew how to write a strong editorial.
I could have been better. I took you and twin Tom fishing once, at the Marathon Park, and it was a tangled disaster. I could have been more “present,” as they say. But there was a paper to get out. The newspaper supported the family, so the newspaper must survive. That’s how John and I were programmed: Pat Cullen was not Warren Buffett, but he worked it and expected that we would do the same. When we were on the rocks, I would lie in bed and think that I could get a job at the pack and survive, since I could not work for an editor other than John. You and Tom would wake up crying in stereo, and I could imagine justifying infanticide. Then I would get back into the office. The press of deadline got me out of many family obligations, but at least I was not sitting aside the AM radio listening to Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall. That’s how I rationalize things as I collect Social Security now, looking back into the fog.
Roles and expectations have changed, mainly for the better. Dolores was able to stay home when you were little. We did not have to rely on daycare. It was tough on her and I just sort of flew by. I regret that, and my bluster. But we got you what you needed, and you have taken it from there. You have worked it.
You will do better than me. Each generation does, I think.
Listen to Holly. She is usually right. When you can’t bear that fact, find a suitable place to wait it out.
She’s a natural with kids. Her mom was a teacher. She’s a teacher. She likes dogs. You are lucky. Listen to her dad, an engineer and farmer who has enough respect of his peers to be a tractor pull referee. He grows peas near Boxholm along with his corn and beans, which is interesting and unconventional and, I understand, highly profitable. He has insights.
I don’t really know what to tell you as you celebrate your wedding, other than to be there and be grateful, that I am terribly proud of you, and if you have kids try to point them to the light. If you apply my behavior on husbanding and fathering in the inverse, you should do just fine. You figured that out awhile ago, I suppose, because you are smarter than I am.
Love,
Dad
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Love reading your columns. How can there be so many good intelligent writers in Iowa and yet have so many ignorant politicians (and voters I suppose). Is it all based on self interest. When did it all become such a “me” world? Thanks for inserting some sanity along with humor.
John
Well written, Art. You got to be a certain age to recognize who Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall are. It kind of sucks they tore down Met Stadium for a freaking mall, but thats progress...
God bless Tony Oliva!
-craig