Usually, we use this place to tell you about walks and hikes that we have done recently. As it is Father’s Day soon, today’s post is different. It is about a trip I have not done and may never do. But hope, as they say, dies last.
Back in 2012, when this blog was young and so was I, we published a Father’s Day post about a hike that had actually happened – in fact, the post was based on several hikes that I had done with our then teenage son and, more to the point, on a few things that I had learned from walking with him.
One decade and a half later, I find myself browsing through a catalogue of Father’s Day gifts on the suggestion of the same son, who told me to pick something “nice and useful” for one of my forthcoming Adventures For Beginners. I cannot help thinking that, in a perfect world, I would use these things on an outdoors adventure with him. Dare I tell him that?
Our son and I – like billions of fathers and sons since the dawn of time – have always bonded over physical activity, either the physical activity of others (watching or just talking about our favourite football team) or our own. Sounds familiar? Of course it does. Guys have been doing this since the days when men were men and mammoths were nervous.
Here is something else that is familiar: boys grow up into men, girls into women, they move away from home, establish their own families and groups of friends. Dads tend to look back on the old days with nostalgia – but their adult children, for all that we fathers know, may do so as well: nostalgia for a joint hiking trip, perhaps, but even if the two of you have have never undertaken one before, for a life that was safer and simpler. When Dad was the man in charge, when sons and daughters could rebel without running the risk of having to take over any responsibility themselves. Lives got a lot more complicated since then.
Ah, for the golden days of childhood – and of being a young parent! For most people, those were the two happiest periods in their lives. Are these times gone for ever? Not necessarily. A hike of several days can provide both fathers and children with the perfect opportunity for bringing back what has been … no, not lost: just misplaced. As long as they respect the following rules.
Avoid anything that can spoil the experience
Then and now, this is the Hippocratic Oath of all father-and-child outings. Do not make things worse than they are. Back in the old days, the responsibility for this (like all other responsibilities) largely fell into Dad’s lap. Now, both of you must work together.
Do not try to step into the same river twice
Life is a constant and continuous process of change, but few things change as quickly as the dynamics of intra-family relationships. Dads in particular may find it hard to accept that the grounds have shifted.
Back in 2012, I advised them not to compete with their children by demonstrating superior strength and stamina, out sprinting them on uphill slopes in their climbing shoes and outlasting them on the flat. Now, this is much less of a risk. If your child was a teenager then and you were a man in your forties, twenty years or so later … well, just do the maths.
But what’s more: back then, you were the master of life, the man with all the experience, your child was the apprentice. Now, you are on a downhill slope, while they are nearing the peak of their powers.
So far, so easy. But there are other, more subtle ways for telling children that their dads still have one over them. Like playing the weather-hardened, wise guy. “When I was your age”: this is a line that should be excised from all conversations between father and child. No good can ever come from it.
And please: no criticism, veiled or not, of career or lifestyle choices, from any angle. Dads all over the world: learn to shut up. What is so difficult about that? Do not make your children regret that they ever agreed to go with you. I said that in 2012, and while many things may have changed since then (in the world, in your relationship), this is the one Don’t that is still carved in stone.
But hey, sons and daughters, you also have a job to do. Dad does not expect you, if ever he did, to follow his instructions blindly and to hang on each and every of his words in silent rapture when he goes on a monologue about birds, trees or whatever else. Start on the assumption that he accepts you as a fellow adult. Dad is ready, no, eager to relate to you on that basis, so do not be the one who falls back into old patterns of behaviour that were rooted in what was then an unequal power relationship.
Vulnerable children have a right to be thin-skinned, adults much less so. Do not pout or throw a tantrum over each “attempt to dominate you” – sometimes, disagreements and difference of opinions can be just that. No pointless rebellions, please, against an authority that is no longer claimed. You are an independent, self-reliant adult now: your dad is well aware of that, believe me.
This should be a new experience for the both of you: a premiere, not the revival of old domestic dramas.
Make this an adventure …
The past was a time of responsible leadership, paired with a willingness to let a level-headed adult make the decisive calls. Now, a dose of irresponsibility may be what is required. The former teenager is no longer a frail little fawn who needs to feel safe in a pair of firm hands but an adult of early middle age who is afraid that his or her life, having once held out a limitless promise of wonders, has somehow narrowed down to a series of routines: work, domestic chores, ballgames and barbecues.
So leave the beaten track. “I wonder where this route leads …”: this is how all adventures start. Back in 2012, I would not have advised Dad to follow that route. But this is a different situation. An adventure may be exactly what your child needs.
And to give your children what they need most in life: isn’t that what has always made you most proud of being a Dad?
… and a journey of discovery. Ease Your Pains
Here is something that has not changed in the last 20 years or so: You are still not “just good friends”. History and memory cannot be erased at will. You don’t start your relationship at Point Zero. An adventure this may be, but neither of you is any longer a beginner on the route of life.
Both of you are seasoned travellers now. Back then, a child needed a father. Today, it is less clear who needs whom more – or for what.
It is a good guess that neither of you will be able to say with confidence what exactly that might be. In a way, it is the entire point of your trip to find out. Wherever you may be going: this is the true destination of your journey together.
