Last week, as I spring-cleaned, I came across an essay written by my son Chris.
It began:
“My dad was the only dad who drove my brother and me to school every day from grades 1 to 12. He took so much pride in this because it was usually just mothers who drove their children to school. We always had a routine. My mum would make our breakfast when we were kids, and my dad would be the one to drive us there. Then bring mum to pick us up afterwards.”
Funny, because I remember a kid who was always late to get into the car of a morning, stressing me out every day to get him to school on time. Chris would be grumpy in the morning and an angry complainant when collecting him of an afternoon. It was always against someone—a teacher who hadn’t given him the mark he deserved, or a kid in the playground who fouled him at basketball. It didn’t help that Alex, his older brother, was a star at Delta West with ne’er a complaint to pass his lips. After years of putting up with Chris’s churlishness, I once stopped the car halfway and ordered him to walk home.
Perhaps the kid wasn’t waving but drowning.
Perhaps the trouble wasn’t with Chris. The trouble was with his father.
