Updated Jan 15th, 2023

When the Engine Light is Red

 “You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway.”

– Roger Brault

What did you learn from your Dad? 

Years ago, when my Dad was still alive, I heard an announcer on the radio – he was a new father – give a couple of examples of how his own father still helps him out.

“When the engine light on my car is red,” said the announcer, “I can call my Dad and he’ll come right over and check it out. Or if I have stuff to take to the dump, my Dad will let me borrow his truck.”

The announcer then asked listeners what, as Father Day approaches, our own Dad’s mean to us.

And I must confess that when it comes to my Dad, being on hand to help me out with mundane tasks is not what first came to mind. For starters, we didn’t even live in the same province. Plus he was in a nursing home now and couldn’t remember what he had for lunch, never mind what a red engine light might indicate.

But even at the best of times, those sorts of everyday tasks weren’t what I would associate with my Dad anyway. My Dad didn’t teach me to fish or drive or mow the lawn. My Mom and my brother’s did all that. I was six when my Dad moved out and my parents divorced shortly after. I usually only saw him once a week for dinner.

Though the divorce was a bitter one, to put it mildly, my Mom felt it was important that she keep us kids in the same city as our father. My Dad had just moved all of us to Calgary from Ontario when they decided to split up. But instead of moving us kids back to Ontario, where all her support system was, my Mom made the decision to stay in Calgary as a single mom – just so we could be near our Dad.

In hindsight, I’m really glad she did.

For one of the most important things my Dad did teach me was his love for words. Literature was where his heart was. He was constantly correcting my grammar and challenging me to increase my vocabulary. If I wanted to understand what the heck he was talking about, I needed a dictionary close by to look up the words he was using.

My fondest childhood memory of my Dad is him telling me, over and over again, variations of my favourite bedtime story, The Enormous Egg, by Oliver Butterworth. It’s about a kid who finds a huge egg one day in one of the hen’s nests. He watches it grow and grow until it hatches into a dinosaur and then chaos breaks out.

My Dad would tell me a made-up shortened version of the story and then at the very end, he’d always have the baby dinosaur walk up to the edge of the cliff and look down. Then my Dad would look at me and say, “And do you know what he said, Maryanne?”

“Yes!” I’d cry. “He’d say, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary!’”

My Dad would smile and nod and then he’d sing me the song:

My Dad also shared with me his passion for physics and poetry.

My mom took me to see plays; my Dad encouraged me to take a playwriting course. As it turns out, because writing plays is the most technically challenging form of writing for me, it is where I have learned and grown the most – as a writer and a person.

In contrast to my Mom, who had a strong faith in a higher power and took me to church every Sunday, my Dad was an atheist who taught me to doubt everything – and that when it came to organized religion, he reminded me the importance of paying far closer attention to people’s actions, than what they say their beliefs are.

I had to find my own spiritual path, of course, and perhaps not surprisingly the road I am traveling is pretty much right down the middle – with blind faith on one side and healthy skepticism on the other.

My mom wasn’t afraid to die. She knew if it was her time to go, she would be in good hands. My Dad on the other hand, was really struggling near the end of his life, because without booze to ease the grief of losing both his memory and his comprehension skills – and no faith in a higher power or life after death – his old age was shaping up to be one of sorrow and frustration.

Though tragic, one of the greatest gifts my Dad inadvertently gave me was to show me the impact of alcoholism.

Or, put another way, when your engine light is red and you choose to ignore the warning signs and simply drive faster – or deal with whatever crisis through whatever coping mechanism suits your fancy – at some point, your engine will seize up. Your heart will cease to function properly…and therefore so will you and your life and the lives of those around you.

As difficult as this was to write, my father ended up doing me a tremendous service by showing me how not to deal with hurt, loss and grief.

For just as I have my Mother’s fierce and compassionate heart, so, too, do I have my Father’s inquisitive mind and passion for the written word. Although my parent’s marriage wasn’t meant to last, the attributes and love they gave us kids live on in all we do.

Fatherhood in its more conventional and practical form came late to my Dad. A few years after he and my Mom were divorced, he married a younger woman and they had a son – my half-brother. But when that son was 10, his mom died of lung cancer. So my Dad, 60 at the time, was left a single Dad to raise him. And raise him well he did!

For it was that half-brother who became my Dad’s primary caregiver and was responsible for all decisions on his behalf.

Whatever your relationship is – or was – with your father (or the father-like role models in your life), I hope you, too, will have a chance to reflect on the good and the not-so-good…for there are often hidden gems in both, should we choose to see them.

Maryanne Pope is the author of “A Widow’s Awakening.” She also writes screenplays, playscripts and blogs. She is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and a co-founder of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive Maryanne’s blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here.