Summers are for Fathering

We live a very seasonal life here in the Dykstra household. The life of a teacher always will be, particularly a teacher who coaches a little as well. There are ebbs and flows to our seasons; but for my daughters and I, the summer is ours.

Summer is for fathering. I do not ignore my responsibilities or excuse away the other seasons; however, I know that the summer is prime time. Our time to eat breakfast together on the patio. Our time to play in the yard. Our time to grill and bike and swim and hike and read every day in the recliner right after lunch in a pile that I hope never gets too sweaty or too crowded to change locations. It is summer when we will talk about everything and nothing, when I challenge them to grow, and when they challenge me to slow down.

Summer has always been the season of fathering in my life. While my father is not a teacher, I was a student, and the place for a boy out of school in the summer months, whether he is a young boy or a boy old enough to think he is no longer a boy, is on a farm. I never really thought about it until discussing my opportunities with my girls in the summer, but I know now that so much of my time with Dad was from the summer months when timed slowed down and we were suddenly together for most hours every week.

A lot of summer was for work. I know that at first my "work" was tagging along and serving essential management duties, but eventually I was taught (and told) to get my hands dirty. Dad bought me a couple of bottle calves to take care of one summer, a precursor to eventually being charged with upwards of 30-40 young calves at a time. There was work we did together, and work I simply got pointed to. We shoveled our share of manure together. I walked beans a time or two. We baled hay on many a July afternoon, the equitable distribution of labor involving me on the rack stacking, Dad curating my language with every baler breakdown. Eventually summer was for factory work as well, as I worked with Dad on the midnight to 8 AM shift the summer before college. Farm work is where I wanted to prove my worth, and factory work is where I wanted to prove my manhood.

I worked, and Dad worked harder, but summer was also for play. On some summer days there was enough margin to randomly shoot the BB gun together, competitively mocking each other's accuracy. We took aim at sparrows, tin cans, burned out light bulbs, glass pop bottles, fence posts - whatever was handy. There were evenings of wiffle ball in the backyard. There were church softball games that I tagged along to, playing catch with Dad in between men and learning how to talk the game, and compete, and that Dutch Reformed blood runs the hottest, and that even sometimes pastors say shit under their breath after a bad at bat. And there was the annual end of summer trip to Adventureland, where there were no responsibilities, just play, and Dad daring to do what none of us could - the vomit-inducing Silly Silo that makes me dizzy just writing about it.

Summer was for setting an example. I learned by watching, never aware at the time that I was learning. The summers were not centered around keeping me entertained, they were scheduled based on what needed to be done. So I learned how to ride in the truck, sometimes talking, sometimes not, always with the volume up for "The Rest of the Story." I learned how to patiently wait for a cattle tank to fill with water without needing to be entertained. I learned how to talk to men, hard-working blue collar men, the kind who weld and run hardware stores and farm on neighboring land, and I learned it's important to be willing to have the time, to slow down, to shoot the breeze and listen to gossip and stories and rumors and weather reports with these men rather than demand a service and then move on. I learned how to raise a single index finger on the steering wheel to greet oncoming traffic.

Summer was for shared meals, primarily lunch. Most days that was on the farm, with grandma cooking. But some days, lucky days, days I never saw coming, were diner days in town. It was the Maid-Rite for years, later the Mustang Diner, and I knew the magic of summer when the truck pulled in there. We shared the paper as we waited, taking turns between the comics and the sports page. I don't remember anything in particular happening there. Just a man and his son, and sometimes that man's father as well, taking in the local flavor (both in calories and conversation). But I knew it was a good day, a day of significant value, to get to be there.

And sometimes summer was as simple as a surprise bottle of pop from the gas station, swilled down with great satisfaction and strangely a feeling of importance and maturity, particularly if it were after a remarkably sweaty, dirty day in the sun.

And so here it is, another summer, the season of fathering, and I fondly remember being fathered well through many summers of my own. And I am grateful, knowing that being a child in summer under my father's fathering prepared me for these most important summers of my life that I live now.