Having men involved in my life was critical for developing my character, my values and molding my behavior.
My father was one of those men for the first 5 years of my life – until my parents divorced and he disappeared.
When my father was around:
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- I was never afraid because he would protect our family.
- He could fix our car. He could change a flat tire on side of the road. He showed me how to change the oil.
- He taught me how to cook great meals: hotdog and potato chips casserole, baked beans with ketchup/mustard/brown sugar, scrambled eggs with ketchup.
- He held me to standards. When I acted up in church, when we were at friends’ houses or in public, I got swatted. He quickly taught me how I was expected to behave.
- He worked everyday. On weekends, he spent time on projects and with the family.
- He had cool friends. Mr. Fujiyaki and his wife had a Koi pond. Huck and Willie were the teenage sons of another friend who had us out to their country farm. Frank was kind of a sourpuss, but he was rich and had a swimming pool and strawberries growing in his backyard.
Luckily I had other men in my life besides my father:
Uncle Bob and Uncle Russ went to work on the railroad every morning. When they came home at night, they’d change out of their work uniforms, read the paper and then join the family for dinner. After dinner, we’d sit together on the back porch and talk for hours. These brothers maintained their old family house. Russ was a widower who lived in the upstairs apartment alone. Sometimes his daughters and granddaughter would visit. Bob was a bachelor who shared the downstairs apartment with his sister (Aunt Es). Together they took care of the family home, their cars, each other and generations of nieces and nephews. They lived simple lives filled with family and friends. Bob and Russ would sit with me for hours on the porch telling me stories, listening to my adventures and laughing.
My Grandpa was retired but worked as the custodian for St Jerome’s school. Grandpa could fix anything. He taught me how to replace tongue and groove porch planks, how to paint and how to hang a screen door. I watched him repair cars, windows and build a bathroom in the basement of his house. He would bring home pizza from the bar on Friday nights. On summer nights, I’d sit on the back porch with my grandpa, sneaking sips of his ice cold beer, watching the fireflies in the back yard and the blinking lights on the radio tower on the distance mountain while we talked about football or life or just listened to the crickets in silence.
My stepfather Allen came into my life after we moved to Pittsburgh. He was way different from my relatives. First off he was Black and had an afro. I had never even seen a Black man except on TV before we moved to Pittsburgh. He was a radio newsman who was very image focused. He had a deep baritone voice, was a great singer, bathed in cologne and wore 3 piece suits with platform boots. He liked to pretend he was was an educated, successful business professional from the upper class. But he was raised in the projects, had a drunk for a father and was self-taught after high school. Even so, he sounded great reading the news on the radio, was a voracious reader and was quite eloquent and knowledgable about the world.
We’d talk for hours after dinner about politics, space travel, the Caribbean Islands, solar powered cars and science.
Allen was also a skilled craftsman who installed a drop ceiling, custom hardwood and tile flooring in the kitchen, refinished our living room floor and built 12 foot tall freestanding bookshelves for my bedroom. During the 10 years Allen lived with us, I was never once afraid that someone would get into our house and hurt us. Allen had guns. He knew karate. He was strong, sinewy and had whiplike speed. I always knew he’d protect us from intruders. (Unfortunately, he was mentally ill and abusive. At times. we were terrified of his explosions, moroseness and weekend disappearances. Although he supported us and had many good qualities, one of the best days of my life was when my mother left him for good.)
I was thrilled in the 5th grade when I had my first male school teachers. Until then, all of my teachers had been women. In 5th grade, my homeroom teacher was Mr Carr. He had a handlebar mustache, curly long hair and made jokes. On Friday afternoons during last period, he would put on sneakers and sweats so he could run track as soon as the dismissal bell rang.
My science teacher Mr. Clarke was a serious hard-ass who lived just down the street from me. I’d see him walk to school every morning. He taught us the entire taxonomy of life beginning with single celled organisms and progressing to the human. I learned so much from him that I actually referred to my 5th grade notebook when I was in high school biology. I loved his class.
In high school, college and work, I found other role models. Most probably had no idea I was carefully observing them, learning and copying their behavior. Friends’ fathers and uncles, teachers, professors and bosses all showed me how to handle challenges, how to treat women, how to work hard and how to live.
I often wish I had a father present for my entire life. I think I would have learned how to be a better man. I would have been learned how to fix things like my car and house. I would have gotten advice on money, college, work and women. I would have been learned how to throw a baseball, how to join a team and how to fish.
I would have been taught how to be a man.
Instead, most of what I learned in life came through trial and error.
Like many men, I was raised primarily by a single working mother.
My mother worked hard to make sure we had a roof over our heads and food in our fridge.
But she couldn’t replace what a father would have contributed. Nor would it be fair to expect that from her – or any other mother.
This got me the thinking about men and boys today. According to the 2020 US census, 17% of children (~12.5 million) are being raised by a single mother.
I would have guessed 50% of kids were raised by single mothers. I suspect this is due to my experience of growing up poor, living in the ghetto and knowing many kids raised by single moms.
Who will teach these boys how to be men?
Will they find mentors like I did? Will they look to their peers? To TikTok? To Instagram?
Will they learn meaningful lessons about substance and character on their own? Or will they travel paths which won’t lead to success?
Could we do anything to help them? Should we? Is it time to rethink what family means?
I long for the days of my childhood when I was surrounded by family and immersed in a tight knit community in my small town.
I some wonder if it’s possible to recreate this today.