My father was a man of few words. I don't remember hearing him laugh, and even thinking about it very, very hard, I don't remember seeing him smile. He was a man of his time. Raised with seven other brothers, a mother who single-handedly ran an entire hotel, and a father who only came home from the construction site on weekends, he left home at 15 to discover the world. Hired as a waiter on an ocean liner, he became a maître d' within a few years. Then he found meaning in his life. He changed direction.
My father had a serious expression, thoughtful eyes, a broad forehead. He was tall and thin. As a little girl, I loved to go see him sitting at his desk reading, a red pencil and a transparent ruler in his hand -- because my father neatly underlined the thoughts that spoke to him. Having inherited his library, I was able to see that often, he only read the introduction and about sixty pages of these books in French, English, German, and even Italian. My father was a very intelligent man who quickly understood where an author was going... I would stay there, standing, sometimes for quite a long time. We rarely spoke to each other, but I think we understood each other!
I grew up. I must have been 16. One summer afternoon, my father said to me, "Danièle, put on a nice dress, and come on, we're going for a walk." I didn't ask any questions. I obeyed, intrigued. I chose a dress that was fashionable... at the time. It was—according to my aunt, who hadn't been able to sell it in her shop and had mailed it to my mother—a cutting-edge model: in a brand-new nylon fabric printed with large dark red peonies on an almost creamy white background.
My father was waiting for me in the entrance. He watched me go down the stairs. Once on the sidewalk, he said, "Take my arm." And without another word, we strolled along Grande Allée and Saint Louis Street in Quebec City. From time to time, I looked at our reflection in the shop windows. How good I felt! Almost back home, just as I was crossing the street, my father whispered to me, "Danièle, did you see how people were looking at us? They must have wondered what such a pretty girl was doing to my arm." He added gravely, "You are a young girl now. Take care of yourself."
For a single glance, in his steely blue gaze, I grasped the assurance that my father cherished me… the certainty that I was precious in his eyes. A great pride filled my heart. I accepted his advice. I gradually decoded all the unspoken things. And keeping it deep in my heart, it served me well. My father, in this simple rite of passage, had given birth to the joy of being a woman.
In 1998, the Canadian Parliament declared that fatherlessness was a serious form of child abuse. 2 Since then, numerous international studies have continued to establish that the role of the father is never incidental but always fundamental to the balanced development of boys and girls , from conception to adulthood, and... well beyond. A strange time that must "prove" what a simple soldier who went to war in 1939, in a letter written to his wife, generously stated: "Darling, if I am going to die at the front, remarry. Our young son needs a father if we want him to become a man..."
I know that fathers are often awkward, because their fathers were awkward... And from fathers to sons, we can thus go back very far in many genealogies. But being awkward, being silent, even being taciturn, does not mean not appreciating, not caring, not loving.
Father's Day is coming soon. A holiday that, like Mother's Day for mothers, is often more heartbreaking than joyful for many fathers. I wish it weren't so for you, the fathers who read me. Allow me to whisper in your hearts two simple ways to succeed in your fatherhood, and make this holiday an event that will remain on your family's calendar. I took them from an author3 who respects men and desires for all their manly success.
So, he tells us, boys, in fact, only ask their father one fundamental question: "Dad, am I capable?" Little girls, too, only ask one fundamental question: "Dad, am I pretty?" And when, and if, day after day, or one day, a father answers these questions by saying to his son: "Go ahead, you're capable! You're a man." And to his daughter: "Yes, you're pretty. You deserve to be loved," he is, he becomes, quite naturally the best father in the world for them.
The recipe is simple. I testify to it. For me, it was miraculous. The voice of the father—for his child—is the most powerful voice on this earth. By answering these fundamental questions affirmatively, it has the power to release in every human being who hears it, their full potential. Freed from the fear of living, from the anguish of being, from the anxiety of doing, healed of the toxicity of ambivalence, all of us, boys and girls, women and men, can then hitch our plow to the stars and begin to plow a straight furrow in our lives.
But, whether we heard this voice in our youth, or later and even very late, in the course of a conversation or a reading – because there is no guy who is incapable and no girl who is not pretty – the first kilometers of our furrow will be for singing and crying, for crying and singing: Papa…thank you! Danièle Starenkyj©2016 www.publicationsorion.com
1. Starenkyj D., What a Woman's Heart Wants, Orion, 2012.
2. Starenkyj D., Becoming a Parent – Living a New Paradigm, Orion, 2014.
3. Eldredge J., Wild At Heart, Nelson Books, 2001.
4. Starenkyj D., Reflections for a Better Life, Orion, 2015.
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