LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON Sometimes life lessons are delivered by the most peculiar of causes. A particular teaching moment burst on the scene in way of a public service announcement in September of 1967, when I was six years old and in the first grade. It was a television spot that ran for the following 16 years, perhaps the first of so many anti-smoking campaigns that continue to this day. But, for me, the grand lesson had nothing at all to do with the addicting power of nicotine or the danger of tar. youtube/watch?v=cmzDLzqQ-A0 A few weeks ago and quite out of the blue, this old PSA came immediately to mind. So clearly did I recall it, that I could hum the old song and rehearse not only the narrated lines, but the scenes themselves. I thought it would be fun to see if I could locate the clip online. A quick search of “Like Father, Like Son” quickly delivered the original spot. Before I played it, I told my wife, who did not recall the original campaign, what she was about to watch. I wanted to impress her with my remarkable memory… or perhaps I wanted to convince her that at the age of 52, I still possessed one. I whistled the tune, explained scenes and narrated lines. Then, puzzled, she watched over my shoulder. An Indelible PSA The public service announcement opens with a dad on a ladder painting a side of the house while his son, perhaps three years old, works his smaller brush from ground level beside him, face slightly smeared with white paint. A small jazz orchestra, featuring a prominent xylophone, plays what today could only be characterized as very dated and cheesy music, but the melody is likely still stuck in millions of minds. A narrator’s voice enters with a line that will give illustration to each passing scene. “Like father, like son.” Cut to the next scene and the dad and his boy are enjoying a little trip in the family convertible, the dad driving and the son behind a toy wheel of his own in the passenger’s seat. Next they’re washing the car, dad with a hose, boy with a squirt gun. Then they’re taking a walk. Stopping periodically, they spy a couple of stones which they pick up and hurl into the weeds. Evidently this is something boys never outgrow. Finally, and this is of course the point of the PSA, dad and son are relaxing under a tree. The dad reaches for his pack of cigarettes, and lights one up while his son studies him intently. The boy reaches for the open pack, now lying in the grass between them, and the narrator repeats the line, except this time it is offered in the form of a question. “Like father, like son? …Think about it.” Perhaps you remember the TV spot. For me, what was so interesting about this exercise in recollection was not that I could recall so well its contents. Also rather un-notable, I think, is the fact that I never took up smoking. What is interesting, even remarkable, is the reality that the message of the ad, as incessant as it must have been during my rather formative teenage years, served to direct my life in ways I can’t begin to account for. Like a sixty second sermon, a harbinger for the hellfire that awaits those who pass the sins of the fathers onto their sons, its message of accountability was indelibly branded on my brain. My Backstory I was the third born of eight children, the first of six sons. We were raised Roman Catholic. I was an altar boy. My father was a businessman who did pretty well for himself in time, winning national awards in his industry. We were a proud and respected family in small town, USA, where dad presided as president over the school board, and mom kept all the little Frenches in formation. I don’t know if family dysfunction phraseology was in use back then, but if it was, we knew little of its meaning and recognized even less of its reality demonstrated in our home every day. Without belaboring this point, I will skip ahead a few chapters, landing on the great implosion that greeted me as I was entering my teen years. We knew something was up. The increasing arguments. The tears. Then there were the rumors and the gossip. There’s nothing like a classmate telling you the details regarding your father’s choice in women, because his dad, and evidently the rest of the town knew all about it. My father fell into the trap of which no man has immunity. A client would become a lover, but not a home wrecker. Home wrecking is an art almost exclusively attributed to a husband and a wife, who struggle and fall short, and ultimately refuse to honor their vows. Those vows are first breached in the mind, in attitude and interaction, long before they are ever breached in someone else’s bedroom. It’s a process of slow debilitation. And as much as it takes two to come together, it very often takes two to fall apart. They tried to work it out. Tears, repentance, forgiveness, counseling. After eight reboots, my parents’ operating system gave up the ghost. Dad moved out on Mother’s Day. I was twelve years old. I am purposely glossing over the worst of it. To elaborate more would serve no purpose. But in a strange way, the events of these very formative years heading into my teens served an immeasurable purpose. Within a year and a half, Dad remarried. Mom remarried. I gained seven more brothers. Yeah… that’s not a typo. Seven! We changed parents and houses and schools and friends. The French boys had always sported crew cuts and were not allowed to wear jeans to school. My new step brothers had hair draping over their shoulders and this funny blue smoke followed them everywhere they’d go. That year and a half culminated with the tragic loss of my nine year old brother, to drowning. I was there. My dad was there. And there was nothing we could do. Some cultures refer to the early teen years as the age of reason. There was nothing reasonable about my life. What was cultivated by pain was fertilized by tears. What could possibly grow from such a string of heartbreak? Always the analytical observer, I sought to tie the fruit of our family life to seeds that had been sown along its path. Does one really reap what he sows? Is there a price to pay for bad decisions, and is that price as unbearable as the decision itself? What about good and evil, ethics and morality? We are generally rewarded for doing good. What is the reward for sin? These were some of life’s deepest questions, converging on a boy entering high school. Once penetrating the soul, the pain of my youth would not be silenced. I didn’t noticeably rebel, quite school, run away. I didn’t even take up smoking! But the damage done brought me immediately to places that shaped me. It seemingly propelled me from carelessness to pensivity, from apathy to passion, from introvert to extravert, from being a follower to becoming someone with something to say, with somewhere to lead. It took me from the rhythm of percussion to the notes of the guitar and to an expression of my innermost thoughts uncontrollably pouring out in song, poetry and essay. It was like everything about me suddenly changed. And that change was not a bad one. It was welcomed. All the while, I determined in my heart that what I had experienced in eighteen months of hell on earth would not be revisited upon my children. It has been my observation that kids often have one of two reactions to the divorce of their parents. They repeat it or they defeat it. They reflect it or they deflect. Seeing my parents’ marriage die was like watching my brother die. There wasn’t really any difference. I was determined that the sins of the father would not pass on to the son. Relationships were too important, because relationships are between people, and people were too important. Having A Son Now, there were a great many qualities demonstrated by my dad as I was growing up. Many of those qualities, I am happy to have inherited. But there is in all of us some measure of failure, some weakness or character flaw that we wish not to pass onto our children, though we may sadly recognize it none the less. It’s like that old public service announcement warning a dad on the dangers of smoking. It’s a sobering reminder of one of life’s most foundational truths. Behavior is best taught by example. As juvenile as the idea may seem, a son will very likely idolize or at least look up to his dad. Without even thinking about it, he may mirror attitudes, ideologies and behaviors. He may even do so if he thinks little of his father. That reality struck me in an overwhelming way the morning my son was born. Standing there weeping in the delivery room, I held Cameron in my arms, profusely thanking God for a son. And in that moment, I was shaken by an epiphany. To whom much is given, much is required. What kind of boy, what kind of man, what kind of father would my son be because of what I would now commit to impart? Like father, like son. The message of that old idiom was front and center that glorious morning. I could not shake it. I did not want to. Of all the earthly experiences I have enjoyed, of all the challenges I have endured, I know of nothing and can imagine nothing that compares to being a dad. I know that it has been God’s grace that has kept me, his kindness that has encouraged me and his mercy that has redeemed me. I know that even the desire to do what is right when it would be easier to do what is wrong, is authored by the only perfect father that is over all of us. When I was six, an anti-smoking television spot demonstrated how, by mere observation, sons can grow up reflecting their fathers. Many years later, I would learn that the more I sought to observe the tenderhearted character of Christ, the longer and more intently I examined his behavior, the more I might reflect it. It has been my life’s endeavor, though I am far from the pure reflection I seek. Still, God has blessed me. With His Son, with an earthly dad that also learned better who to reflect, and with my own son, who has learned and is learning by example the beauty and the power of relationship. Happy Father’s Day. May our Heavenly Father apprehend our hearts, so that we come to reflect his. ~André
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:19:43 +0000
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