Arc

My dad worries. He can’t help himself. Long after such an emotion would serve a useful purpose, he continues to worry. There is no good in it now. Yet he worries anyway. I want him to be satisfied. To be at peace with his life. With his family. His friends. I want him to know we are okay. There is no need to worry.

Robert Alexander Conroy was the youngest of three boys, the second youngest of six kids altogether. They grew up on a farm not far from the St. Lawrence River in Glengarry County. His dad passed away after a long illness when he was 13. Boys suddenly became men. There were new responsibilities—higher expectations. Some responded. Some didn’t. Some stayed. Some left. My dad stayed. He worried about carrying his load. He worried about measuring up. He worried what people would think if he didn’t.

His primary household duty was managing horses—pulling himself out of bed in the early morning and staggering out to the stable, feeding and watering the animals, and fitting them with harnesses in preparation for a day of pulling. Doing it all in reverse in the evening. In the retelling of these stories he would wince when his siblings offered an alternate, less flattering version of his contribution.

He was 26 when he met my mother. He was working for Ontario Hydro as they burrowed tunnels under Niagara Falls, seeking electricity. When they learned I was coming—my father and mother married. Appearances mattered.

Ontario Hydro’s ambition then turned to harnessing the electricity generating power of the St. Lawrence River. Whole communities had to be picked up and moved. Or inundated. Dad was proud of his role in the largest construction project of the day. Both the Queen of England and the President of the United States came for the opening.

Dad and Mom built a new home, on a hill on five acres overlooking farmland stretching in every direction. The breadman came on Tuesdays. The milk came twice a week. And if we left a sign in the window, another man would collect our dry-cleaning. We were modern. We attended newly built schools. We shopped in plazas. We drove two cars.

One, unfortunately, was purple. A 1966 Pontiac Parisienne. Purple. Mauve, he said. He hated that people called it purple.

My dad had realized the post-war dream. Yet he worried. He worried when the Seaway project was finished. He took on projects farther from home. In the arc that would be his life— this was surely the pinnacle. But he worried it wasn’t enough—that it wouldn’t last. I saw him on weekends. Then on occasional weekends.

As a teen, however, that worry proved useful. To me anyway. When things got hairy, or borderline felonious, I always turned to Dad. No matter where he was, no matter what I was doing, he would come—to do what was needed. I know he was disappointed. But he didn’t want to talk about it. Nor did I. We never would.

The first time I heard my dad swear was on a rock cut near Minden. He had secured a summer job for me on a road reconstruction project he was supervising. On this morning, he was giving the hung-over grader operator the whatfor for showing up late again. He had raised his voice with me plenty of times—but I didn’t recognize the man hurling this torrent of obscenity at the beleaguered grader man.

Years later, I carved out a career in the capital markets in Toronto and was raising my own family. Yet he worried. This house of cards that was my life was sure to collapse soon. I assured him otherwise. But it made no difference.

Leaving the city for Prince Edward County was off-the-charts reckless. Four young children. No marketable skills. He shook his head in disbelief.

For a decade, his first question upon seeing me has always been about the newspaper— ever fearful his prediction of doom and sorrow had, at last, befallen my irresponsible midlife crisis.

Whether it is the cocktail of pharmaceuticals he now consumes to combat a cascading array of illness, or simply his weakening mind giving way to a more insistent emotion, Dad has been consumed by his worries these past two years. If ever they had a purpose, it is long gone now. He worries about delusional events. About made up crimes and misdemeanours.

I realized while still a child, we had much in common, my dad and I. Little things like our handwriting, near identical physical gestures and a constant low level anxiety about the challenges and vulnerablilities that lay ahead.

We weren’t particularly close. Certainly not in the way some fathers and sons describe themselves. There was too much time and space between us.

Yet, I often feel I am walking down the same path he is—just 25 years later. It is very easy for me to project myself into his shoes—into his ever shrinking. constrained and darkening world.

Others will seek to learn from their elder’s experience. They will work to reshape their own—to cut their own path. I like the idea, however, of seeing the world the way my Dad has done. I like this path. I wish he did too.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca