My father passed away when I was 26. My son, his only grandson at the time, was just a year old when nature took it’s course with a man who had never taken care of himself physically, nor had the tools to find an underlying source of happiness during his short 53 year old life.

During those 53 years however, he learned a lot of things that he attempted to pass on to me, and the rest of my three siblings, in our years together.

There were the things we learned that were useful…like how to fix stuff, put stuff together, take stuff apart.

There was the ever valuable ‘think that through’ skill that he and our mother constantly invited us to nurture and develop while we were young…in their differeing ways, of course.

There are ways of being, as well as ways of NOT being, that I learned from my father as well. All of it has turned out to be valuable during my life so far, and I’m sure it will continue to be valuable until the day I decide to leave the planet.

Since yesterday was Father’s Day here on Planet Earth, June 20, 2010, I thought I’d say Happy Father’s Day, Dad and give him a little of the tribute he earned.

What my father taught me…

——————————————————————-

Skill: How to find small pieces of things in the world.

You see, my father was an HO Gauge Train fanatic…OK, he probably wasn’t a true fanatic, but to my Mom and the rest of us, he sure liked to put those silly little trains together. He took a room outside of his huge workshop in Michigan when I was young and turned it into a veritable train memorial. There were engines (my favorite because they were heavy) and cars and cabooses and little green fake trees and conductors and houses and fake grass. He’d get so excited when he’d have the chance to take someone new into his train den.

My skill to see the small things in life, and recognize them as important, was honed because my father insisted on putting his little model trains together at his office desk…he was an architect…which had, are you ready? SHAG CARPET on the floor.

I have vivid memories throughout my childhood of here, “TWIT, (that was my nickname and hang on because I’ll get to that in a moment also), come here and help me find a …..” More often than not, he had dropped one of those little springs that went into the wheels of the train and you know, without those springs, the whole train just won’t work!

During the school year, he’d wait the entire day for me to get home from school to find one of those silly little springs, or whatever it was. I’d walk in the door and my mom would say, “Your father needs you to find something he dropped.”

The Lesson: To this day I see little things everywhere and appreciate their significance in the world.

——————————————————————-

Skill: How to build things that lasted

Being an architect led my father to being a contractor which led to being a builder of all things. Now I didn’t say a completer of all things…I said a builder of all things.

He constantly had ideas of how to change the house, build new fireplaces, replace the counters in the kitchen, change the barn, etc. Now the problem was that though he loved to create and start things, he had terrible timing. My mom still rants on when we’re all together about the time my father decided to redo the fireplace in our kitchen/eating area right before Christmas. She was pissed at him for years over that! It took him forEVER to finish that fireplace so you can only imagine what our kitchen area looked like during Christmas while she was cooking and making the candy and cookies and holiday goodies that somehow seemed to just show up every December!

The First Lesson: What I witnessed, time and time again, was the joy he got from creating and how much he loved the process of building and changing things. I’m not sure if he was unhappy with the way things were (which is what I suspect) or just liked the process of creating. Either way, it sparked a creative process in me when I was about 25 and hasn’t stopped since.

The Second Lesson: What I didn’t learn, necessarily, was how to finish things. I have this joy of creating and doing but finishing has never been important to me…until now. As I have gotten deeper in the business world and am having to depend on MY ideas and MY processes and MY skills, I have realized that finishing projects so that you can affect change with those project and actually support yourself, is the piece I missed and have had to teach myself.

——————————————————————-

The Skill: Thinking Through Stuff

We were raised on about 15 acres. Those acres contained a sweet herd of Quarter Horses, a couple of Saint Bernards, a few farm cats, a HUGE garden, a riding circle that doubled as a skating rink in the winter, a big old pond at the bottom of a very long hill in Michigan and a big old pond at the base of a three story deck in Oregon, lots of wild critters, a barn full of equipment and a whole lot more.

If you grew up on a farm, or have ever spent time on one, you know there is an unending opportunity on farm to hurt yourself. We rarely did.

You see, as we grew up, my mom and my dad constantly were teaching us to simply think through stuff before we did it. Now that in itself was a splendid gift but there’s an added bonus. They taught us to think through stuff WITHOUT being afraid of it at the same time. There wasn’t much we weren’t allowed to do, shown to do or made to do while we grew up…and this is probably why people tell me they can’t understand how I know how to do some many things. It’s not ME, it’s that I was taught HOW to do things and empowered with the belief that I COULD do anything.

The Lesson: I grew up knowing that most anyone can do anything they want if they just think through it, learn how to do it and then…and here’s the biggest piece…practice doing it!

——————————————————————-

The Skill: Speaking What Is

My father was a big man…6 foot 6 inches to be exact. Even as a fairly tall teenage girl, he was still big to me and when he spoke, well, you can just imagine, we ‘usually’ listened.

While I was growing up, I used to tag along with my dad to meetings and occasionally on a shopping trip or just plain ole’ visiting with the neighbors. What I started to notice early on was that he had a propensity to embellish. I could say just flat out lie, but it was different than that.

If something was a mile, he said it was 5. If something took 10 minutes, he’d say it took an hour. You get the idea.

A few times when I was little, and didn’t know any better, I corrected him in front of the person he was talking to. Boy, was THAT not a good idea! Many of you may know exactly what I mean. It didn’t take me long to log internally not to make things appear something they weren’t.

I realized in my 20’s that he did this for attention, but still, I drove me nuts. To this day I say exactly what is and have a difficult time when people tell a story one way when I know for dang sure it wasn’t that way at all.

The Lesson: When you tell a story or explain something, repeat exactly what happened to the best of your ability. This way you never have to remember what you said and no one will ever correct you.

——————————————————————-

There were plenty of other lessons of course but these were just a few of the most powerful ones that shaped who I am as person. There were lessons in the garden, lessons fixing things, plenty of horse lessons about patience and bonding and relaxing and a whole lot more.

For now, I’ll just say, “Happy Father’s Day” to my dad and everyone else’s. I hope your day was great and you had a chance to reflect on the lessons your father gave you.

P.S. No, I don’t have a picture of him handy.