You can learn to be a surgeon, electrician, florist, land surveyor, butcher, astronaut. It is taught. How do you learn to be a father? It’s the most popular job in the world. However, there is no school where you can learn to be a father.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
We learn by example.
The first example is his own father. From mine, I learned presence. He was there. It’s later that you realize it, when you become a man, when you become a father. When you understand that in our crazy lives, just being there, present, is more complicated than it seems.
I have the image of my father behind the goal, at the arena, always there.
I wish he had taught me the words. I wish we spoke more. He couldn’t give what he didn’t have, man of his time. He loved me, and I’m rich for that.
There is no school where you become a father, no University of Paternity which distributes diplomas that you hang proudly on your wall. We learn by example. That of his own father, whom we want to emulate or from whom we want to move away. There are also other fathers…
I met Yvon Creton when I was preparing a series on I don’t know what, in Montreal Journal. Was it about love or fatherhood? That was a lifetime ago, don’t ask me too many details…
But someone had directed me to Yvon, for a fatherhood anecdote straight out of a movie. I called him.
It goes as follows…
Yvon had two young children, of whom he had primary custody, after the divorce. Yvon had a new girlfriend one day. Everything was fine. The blonde lived with Yvon and the children.
Everything was fine ?
Yvon believed him.
The children weren’t doing so well. Did not answer questions about their discomfort. But they had… They had changed, that’s it.
And one evening, one of them ended up opening…
“Your girlfriend, dad, she’s not good with us when you’re not here. »
Oh, nothing to call the DPJ. I’m just saying that Yvon’s children made Madame sweat, and she didn’t hesitate to make the children feel it when Yvon worked at his restaurant in Old Montreal (and he worked a lot).
I’m talking about little abruptness, nasty words dropped here and there.
The confession shook Yvon to the depths of his soul. He didn’t know what to do with that, maybe he could parley with Madame, reason with her…
He loved his children more than anything.
He loved Madame, very much.
In his soul and conscience, Yvon took the matter under advisement, not really knowing what to do. What are you doing in that time? There is no University of Paternity. One day, Yvon was driving his car, all in his thoughts. This was when cell phones were starting to become popular. Yvon had one in his car. Madam was seated at his side. The light was red.
A truck from Clan Panneton, the moving company, passed in the street.
And there things became clear.
Yvon took the receiver, he phoned Clan Panneton – he had memorized the phone number – right there, at the corner of the street.
“It’s for a move… What day? Tomorrow. »
His girlfriend looked at him, curious.
Yvon turned to her, asked her:
“At home, do you have your clothes and your chest of drawers?”
– Um yes… “
Yvon returned to his conversation with Clan Panneton:
“A chest of drawers and clothes. »
He hung up, he looked at his girlfriend:
” You leave tomorrow. »
It had been a very strong piece of chronicle, let’s say.
This story informed my learning as a father. Not so much on the management of post-separation love affairs as on the primacy of the well-being of children in the order of priorities of your life as a father. If your children are not well, you will never be completely well…
Act accordingly. And in the absence of an obligation of result, you have an obligation of means.
(I add a postscript here: this is not a gendered comment about mothers, I’m sure mothers do the same. Only, I’m not a mother, I can only speak from a mother’s point of view. ‘a father.)
Yvon therefore loved this woman, but this woman was not top with his children… The Clan Panneton did the rest.
Yvon’s two children grew up, became adults. His relationship with them, as with his two other children, is like all father-child relationships, full of ups and downs. He did his best.
Yvon sold the restaurant in the Vieux, he founded another in Westmount a few years ago, where his children worked. He wanted, with this restaurant, to leave them “something”. But the restaurant never functioned, rather it left a considerable hole in Yvon’s heritage. Restoration is an expensive priesthood. Yvon ended up closing the doors.
Earlier this spring, I went to have a coffee in the Vieux, with Yvon. He had come from his distant countryside to see his son Raphael one Saturday morning. Raphaël has opened an adjacent bakery in the Bonsecours Market, the Cave à manger.
The young man arrives in the early morning, around 5 am, he prepares the baguettes, the fougasses, the croissants, starts the coffee machine, cleans the terrace…
Like his father, Raphaël chose restoration, this crazy priesthood.
I watched Raph go, very busy preparing the trade for the day…
Yvon watched him go too, with immense pride in his eyes.
Yvon didn’t say much to Raph. And vice versa.
But Yvon was there, as he has always been there.