There used to be a public service announcement on TV. The first scenario showed an adult hurrying his child into the car. The parent then raced away to a local arena. There, in a moment of false sincerity, Dad smiled, opened the door, nudged his son out the door, waved goodbye and zoomed away. The voice-over announcer scolded the parent. Then, in the second positive scenario, Dad helps his son gather his hockey gear, parks the car at the arena and joins others in the stands watching his son play.
“Don’t just drop your son at the rink,” the voice-over announcer says. “Take your son to the rink.”
The moral of the story was that both the father and the son profited by taking in the experience of the recreation together. It suggested that the time the father expended to join his son at the arena was time well spent. And it was recommended that the shared minor hockey experience could become something called “quality time” enriching the lives of both parent and child while bringing the two closer together. As my own children were growing up in the 1980s, my work – as a freelance writer – didn’t allow as much quality time as I would have liked.
Last week, I learned that it’s never too late to search out and share quality time with your offspring.
For much of last week – because my wife was out-of-town – I had been splitting my life between meeting obligations at the college teaching and rushing home to take care of pets and the upkeep of the house. Then one night, our younger daughter, Whitney, said she was coincidentally at home alone and wouldn’t mind catching up. I stopped by her place in the city and for most of the evening, we just sat and listened to music. She played and talked about her favourites. I played and talked about mine. Coincidentally, many were the same.
Not only was the evening an education about the kinds of music she and her generation find compelling, but it also gave us a chance to reminisce about our mutual musical mentor – my father, Alex. As I wrote a few weeks ago, Whit recently found sheet music and recordings of her grandfather performing some of his original compositions that dated back to the 1940s in New York City. We sat listening to vinyl discs, CDs and even the mp3s she’d assembled. Hearing his voice and going over his old sheet music, it was as if my dad were alive and there with us.
I remembered how dedicated my father had been to the notion of always sharing his passion for music with us. As the entertainment columnist for the Globe and Mail and later the Toronto Telegram (and often forced to miss supper at home in order to take in artists’ performances in the city), Dad regularly took the family to the theatres, lounges and hotel ballrooms where those acts he had to cover were performing. That was his form of “take your son to the rink.”
By coincidence the next night, last week, I was able to share an evening with our other daughter Quenby.
Thanks to my son-in-law, we came by a pair of tickets to the Air Canada Centre to see the Leafs play the Oilers last Saturday night. That both teams are miles out of a play-off spot didn’t matter. Quenby and I had escaped whatever had preoccupied us that day – my assignment grading and her household tending two infant children – to hop in the car, drive to the ACC, grab a couple of sandwiches and beer and take in our favourite game.
But like my musical evening with one daughter, my escape to the ACC with the other, proved to be both a glorious distraction and an emotional elixir. In fact, in addition, booing the refs, cheering the goals and exchanging high-fives with fellow fans in the stands may well have been a benefit to our mental health too.
I can remember a time when Quenby and I were both younger and perhaps more stubborn in our ways. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye on things. In recent years, I sense the distance between us has shrunk, in part because we both love (and play) our national game and regularly watch each other in those recreational games.
So, while as a young father I may not have been able to share as many of those important parent-child times as I would have wanted, today I’ve learned I can still enjoy “quality time” with my daughters as adults.
You’re never too old to “take your kid to the rink.”