There's nothing like sharing a hobby with your dad

[Gilberticus 374]

My father and I don't have a lot of common hobbies, which my fiance finds interesting, being that we both have similar aptitudes and personalities. Dad doesn't share my interest in minerals and semi precious minerals, until yesterday when he learned that he found one on his own. I was at his farm , helping him to move farm equipment. I discovered he was using a piece of petrified wood to keep the four wheeler wagon hitch off the ground, one of the biggest, coolest pieces I've ever seen. I thought he had done this purposely, like he bought me the wood as an early birthday present, but he claimed that he almost busted his tractor on that while plowing the field last summer. I told him it wasn't just a rock and hosed it down, and dad was astounded. "You mean that's....." Yup. "Do you know how long that process would...." Yup. "This has to be one of the coolest..." Yup. So, now I've created a rock hound. In fact, today brought a huge crate of rocks he found around the farm. Granted, there was nothing else special he's found so far, but he hasn't let that diminish his enthusiasm. I'm really happy, after all these years, dad and I finally have a mutual hobby

[SX255 630]

And if he doesnt find anything, he can still make a cool rock wall out of them.

[Schot 407]

Sharing a hobby with Dad is pretty cool. It's often said, I experienced this myself, that the father/son bond is a difficult one to develop. My Dad and I were never close though that's primarily because my parents split when I was two and so I lived a province away from him and only saw him twice a year a total of 3weeks a year. My Dad enjoyed building projects and one particularly large project he worked on was building an entire Oak Kitchen Cabinetry set. And this was a fairly large kitchen. My Father was a teacher and so during the summer he had access to the schools wood working shop. Plus, the wood working teacher was a friend of my Dads. In that summer I got to work with him on that project. It was a great experience. It may have been the first time I got to experience the satisfaction of working hard on a large project and seeing the result.

 

If I had to guess I would say that a father shines most when at play and at work with his son. I never got to see a playful side to my father but I did get to see his ability to take on daunting tasks and I think that part of him, with such little time interacting, was passed on to me.

 

I almost want to say that it's imperative that mother, father son and daughter find a way to share a hobby. Not many of us are farmers anymore so it's even more important for parents to find a way to teach children life skills and for children to remind parents about how to play.

 

Oh yeah... And that rock your father found Gilberticus? Was it petrified wood?

[Gilberticus 374]

Yes, it was petrified wood, it's awesome

[chattius 2,526]

My dad died 18 months ago. And I noticed that it takes distance to see all he did and why he did. I have a 4 year older sister, a three year younger sister and a four year younger brother.

Till I was 8 I rarely saw my father because he was always working as an high-voltage-electrician in buiding powerplants at different places. He did this to earn more money to settle in an own house with his family. When I was older we used to move with him, but then I was at a school which needed much train and bus traffic together with running from 8am to 6pm. So I really saw him not that much. And when our family finally started to build our house he often asked me to help him with the work and I preferred playing soccer with friends in my free time. It took some debates with my sisters to notice why he asked me to help: he just wanted to see all of his family more often before we would leave for universities. My younger siblings he was driving to their sports, my older sister got driving lessons from him...

And the only spare time my dad had and which was in a time I wasn't at school was when working at the house. Took a time and some help from my sisters to notice that. Being a rebellious teenager at this time didn't help probably.

 

And now there are moments memories get alive:

The washing machine didn't work and I was away for work in france. 4 hours later my wife called it is repaired, our daughter said she learned it from her grandpa when he showed her how to repair the LP-disc player and there wasn't much a different except the size. He was really good in teaching. He was born in 1937, my grandpa being POW till 1954. He had to visit a local school with 120 kids in a class because of no teachers in the afterwar years. When being 16 he had to start working because grandpa was still POW.

Don't know what would have been without the war, would he had visited an university, becoming a teacher or an engineer? He was really proud when all of us visited universities, a chance he never had.

 

Another tradition

Each easter we still put eastereggs in anthills, something my father showed me. The ants attack the eggs and their acid changes the colour of the eggs. They are then spotted, blurred like marble. Then we place some sugar at the anthill for their work.