No Fear!

The theme of everything my dad has taught me is "No Fear!"

Whenever I talk to my husband about "my dad" I have to be specific. As soon as I mention him, Brandon's automatic response is, "which one?" to which I either respond "Grant" (my birth father who I met when I was six) or "Ken" (my step-father who I thought my birth father until I was six).

This story is about my birth father, Grant.

The first time my twin brother, Jordan, and I came to visit our father and his wife, Julie, we were mannerless and terrified of everything. We sat down to have dinner, spaghetti, and they watched in horror as Jordan and I bent our heads downt to the edge of the table and, using our forks, scraped the food off of our plates and into our mouths. The knife by the side of my plate wasn't neccessary, in my mind. I could simply use the edge of my fork. And as for the spoon next to my plate... well I had absolutely no idea what that was for.

I suppose the very next instant was when all my formal training began.

After that I knew how to set a table, which hand to put each utensil in, and how the rules applied in reverse for those who were left-handed, such as my father. That was also when I learned why he would never let me sit on his right-hand side at the dinner table.

Every moment with my dad was a learning experience.

My father is a carpenter and his father was a carpenter. During one of my childhood weekend visits, I noticed a wood carving hanging on the wall in his bedroom. It said "STUD". I didn't know what a stud was so I asked him and he went on to explain what a stud is in the carpentry world and then explained what the slang term meant. I had no idea what slang was and after he finished talking, I still had no idea why he had carved that specific word and put it up on the wall. Though I did get the impression that my father thought pretty highly of himself.

After that my dad taught me how to do all sorts of things I never would have thought of doing, like building a bird house. I was scared to do it and dug my heels in a little because I was afraid of what I did not know. What if I did it wrong? What if I hit my thumb with the hammer? What if I didn't know what to do? My dad was probably blown away by the sheer amount of 'what ifs' and the completely illogical fear I had displayed. But he wasn't about to back down. He was going to make me build that birdhouse for my own good! And build it I did.

After that I had an elated sense of accomplishment and every time I looked at that little birdhouse I beamed and thought to myself, "I did that...I did something I had no idea how to do. And it was fun. And it is beautiful." Almost everything my dad taught me had to do with being outside.

I, like my father, was born and raised on the west coast, where it rains...a lot. But it wasn't until after I had met him that I truly discovered snails. I'd always known they were out there but I never really noticed them. Until one day while I was visiting my dad, I complained about being bored. So my father sent me outside to go and look for snails. Snails? What an odd thing to do. Where do I find them? He told me to look in the bushes and the plants.

I figured this was probably going to be a pretty fruitless task. Bushes were huge and had so many leaves and branches. But it had just rained and it wasn't very long before I found my first snail. I was addicted after that, and all the little creatures that came out after the rain (except spiders, never spiders) became a part of my love-life. I was their guardian and their watcher. I would collect them and watch them crawl along the cement steps to our house and cry out in horror at anyone who prepared to squash them with an eager foot.

Since I moved to Alberta, I haven't seen a single snail. I have seen more than my share of Daddy Long Legs, Lady Bugs, and Dragon Flies, but not a single snail. Then a few months ago we went on a trip to California and it rained for four of the eight days we were there. One morning on our walk to Disneyland, I spotted a snail on the sidewalk. I was so happy and excited that my heart almost brimmed over with love. I quickly picked it up and put it back in the bushes between the sidewalk and the road. Brandon stopped and looked back when he realized after a few paces that I wasn't beside him anymore. He looked at me absolutely perplexed and said, "What are you doing?" "Rescuing the snail!" I said. And then we continued on, until I found another one. And another one and another one until at some point Brandon almost lost it on me.

"They're just snails! Why does it matter?" "They're important to me! And it's not like we're in a hurry." He was frustrated with me after that because he didn't understand why I would spend the time picking up tiny critters. But I couldn't make him understand.

There was one day when I was about ten that my dad had taken us to Langley to visit his mother, Grandma Lou. She lived in a little cottage surrounded by woods, fields of tall grass and her own planted garden. We were about to leave and it had just rained (surprise surprise) and I was outside looking for critters. The first one I found was a big fat black slug. I crouched down on the concrete path and stared at it close up, watching it slowly muscle its way across the path to the other side of the garden. Noticing the rivets running down its body, I also noticed my Grandmother's sandaled foot come into view and land flat overtop of my little garden companion.

I was mortified.

I looked up at my Grandma Lou and discovered that she was completely at ease, totally okay with having just squashed my friend. "Why did you kill it?" I asked. She told me they get into her garden and wreck the plants. I figured that was a pretty logical reason. And after all, there were so many other slugs. But I still died a little on the inside.

My dad was and still is all about new experiences. He pushed me to try new things and I am eternally grateful for that. I stopped visiting him when I was twelve and reconnected with him when I was seventeen. But I wish we had never stopped visiting and talking. I learned so much from him and I think I would have been a more fearless person if I had spent more time with him. But we're close again now and he is still an enduring example to me of "No Fear!"