Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters

by Lt Col Mark Weber

  I don’t remember how many times we “got the Stick,” but if it happened five times, it happened fifty. Just the idea of the Stick was breathtaking. We once tried to hide it, but that didn’t work.

  As a carpenter, it’s unlikely my dad was ever introduced to the academic concept known as the “prisoner’s dilemma,” but he was a natural: “The first one to find the Stick won’t get a swat with it,” he’d say. Or, “Tell me who hid it, or you’re all going to get it.”

  Threatening to cry child abuse was fruitless. “Pack your bags. If you think this is abuse, I’ll drive you to the foster home myself,” he said, with Mom’s approval. We only played that card once, because we knew he never hit us hard enough to leave a mark.

  “I love you” was neither something my dad said nor something I would have believed if he had said it. He spent most of his time in the garage working on his race car, fishing or hunting, or playing softball. He wasn’t an absent father; he was just always busy with other things. We were welcome to tag along if we wanted, but there were no fond entreaties from him.

  And if we went along, we’d better bring lunch and a roll of toilet paper, because it was going to be a marathon.

  When I was about twelve, I went ice fishing with him. I started feeling ill. I knew better, but I asked if we could go home. “You can wait in the truck if you want,” he said, “but we’re not going anywhere.” (He told me years later the fish must have been biting.) As I sat in our truck in that mid-January Minnesota cold, my colon started to rumble. I leapt from the truck and peeled off my coveralls as quickly as I could. Too late. The lumpy diarrhea bounced off my leg and flowed straight into my pants. No toilet paper and no spare clothes. My choices were to sit in the poo or strip off my clothes and sit in the truck half-naked. The cold left me no real choice. There was little sympathy when Dad finally returned to the truck.

  I suppose I should have learned my lesson from that incident, but several years later I went with him on an ice-fishing trip to Lake Mille Lacs during a fairly warm winter. We drove out onto the ice. The weather was beautiful. We were so far out on the lake we could barely make out the shoreline. Imagine my horror as I watched our family car sink into the ice up to the middle of the wheels. He calmly explained why we had nothing to worry about, and we did drive off the lake, but that was the last time I went ice fishing with Dad.

  Deer hunting was no picnic, either. While early November is not technically winter in Minnesota, it can stand in until winter arrives. When I was fourteen, Dad decided to take me on a hunting trip, and put me in the same clothes he wore when he was young: a couple shirts and a jacket, long underwear and jeans, wool socks, and a pair of tennis shoes with rubber galoshes stretched over them. (Hey, it had been good enough for him at that age.) And that was the last time I went deer hunting until I could purchase my own cold-weather gear.

  As much as these things bothered me in the short run, I couldn’t help but be inspired in the long run. Nothing seemed to faze my dad—physically or emotionally. His single-minded sense of purpose was something I came to greatly admire as an adult. But as a teenager, the virtue was lost on me, so I nicknamed him “Psycho Daniel Boone,” a title he still wears proudly.

  I don’t recall any philosophical father-son talks. My sense was that he instinctively kept a distance to prevent appearing soft or getting too familiar.

  Nurturing and loving were Mom’s jobs.

  * * *

  There’s certainly something to be said about the differences between men and women, or boys and girls, in all of this reflection about choices with words, actions, and parenting. Kristin had no brothers, and she would frequently admit to being at a complete loss about how to judge the behavior of you boys.

  It would be irresponsible to leave the descriptions above as examples of what I think are good or bad qualities in a parent. As you can see, there are tradeoffs with parenting styles, as I learned when I practiced them with you.

  As rough as my dad was, the soldier in me saw virtue in his approach. Familiarity does breed contempt, so instilling a healthy sense of fear and distance counted for a lot when dealing with an immature, undisciplined, or ill-reasoned mind.

  But did he—or I—need to abandon affection and playfulness altogether?

  On the one-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis, we tested this question together while we played a board game. But not just any board game. This was Risk, a game that carried some personal history for us.

  When you were much younger and we played the same game, I would don some sort of military headgear and use different accents of the region or country being attacked or invaded. You would always look at me like stunned fish—half confused, half amused, and always a little embarrassed for some reason. Obviously you were curious, but you never begged me to do the voices, and I never really could tell if you liked it.

  Part of the reason for my playacting was to show you, with my actions, that you’re never too old to let your guard down, be playful, and laugh—and that I wasn’t hesitant about sharing some familiarity with you.

  For this year’s game, I explained that each of you was going to dress up with your own headgear. The initial response was skepticism. If I wanted to act like a fool, that seemed to be fine with all of you, but that didn’t mean you had to do it. Matthew, you broke the ice with some suggestions, and your informal leadership quickly brought Joshua and Noah in tow. Within minutes, you were arguing over the available characters.

  I made you all generals and gave each of you a name. Never one to miss a teaching opportunity, I made sure to share a little culture and background about the meaning of the names.

  Josh, you were a Kurdish Peshmerga general named Mustafa Zibari. Peshmerga is a term used for Kurdish fighters; its literal meaning is “those who face death.” Zibari is the family name of General Babakir Zibari, the Iraqi officer I worked for in Iraq. Mustafa is the name of the “Kurdish George Washington” of the 1930s and ’40s, a man who was largely responsible for maintaining a Kurdish identity within the mostly Arab Iraq.

  Matthew, you were an African general named Kujo Khat. Kujo is the name of a gospel singer in Africa (fitting for you, of course, as you sing and play the guitar). Khat is the name of a flowering plant in the Horn of Africa people of the region chew like tobacco, but with a far more potent effect.

  Noah, you were a Saudi general named Prince Ali Sultan bin Mohammed al Quadari, a name that provided an illustration of Arab culture. Prince Sultan was the name of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia when I was deployed there in 1996. Arabs traditionally do not have first, middle, and last names, but instead carry a string of names, with bin meaning “son” and al meaning “the.” So, Noah’s name meant “Ali Sultan, son of Mohammed the Quadari.” (An Arab scholar might quibble, but I was close enough for this game!)

  Finally, I made myself an Australian general, complete with the requisite accent and larrikin attitude.

  Our three-hour Saturday epic went by fast, until, as with real war, someone had to suffer the humiliation of defeat. The heartache surrounding Prince Ali’s demise was pronounced—Noah, you wanted to quit.

  I put on my best Aussie accent and offered a lesson with a little humor and grace: losing didn’t need to be shameful, but quitting would be, and it wasn’t going to happen as long as I was at the table. “Ya gonna have to play through, mate, that’s the only option!”

  This all resulted in cackles from Matthew and Joshua, but only scornful looks from you, Noah. I recognize this may seem like cruel teasing, but the lesson was sound. And it is a testament of sorts that many months later, all of you recalled the details of the interaction with clarity and pleasure.

  Playing Risk made me realize how I am both like and unlike my own father.

  Like my dad: The my-way-or-the-highway nature of the enterprise, the demand that Noah finish the game, the not knowing—and ultimately, not caring—if you enjoyed the game.

  Unlike my dad: The decision to take the time to do it all in th
e first place, the playful theatrics, the humor, the cultural curiosity, and the willingness to help an immature mind process emotions in a mature way.

  * * *

  A different father-son experience provides a more intense illustration of the question regarding familiarity. When we returned to Minnesota and experienced our first real winter, my mind wandered back to my childhood. I remembered seeing huge, carved-out snow forts big enough to walk into—projects that required a dad’s help. I didn’t regret that my dad didn’t do this with us, but I wanted to do it with you.

  Snowfall is tricky. You can get thirty inches a year, but if the weather isn’t cold enough, or it all doesn’t fall at the same time, it’s difficult to build a snow fort of any decent size.

  In December 2009, we hit the jackpot—the fifth-largest snowstorm on record in Minnesota, with seventeen inches of snow in one day. Within a week, we got another sixteen inches on top of that. And the timing was perfect—Christmas school break.

  I gathered you together as if we were planning the D-Day invasion. “Boys, this is it. This kind of snow comes along once in a kid’s lifetime.” In fact, a search of Minnesota records revealed only two times in my life when this much snow fell in one day or one month, and one of those times was in December 1982, when I was just one year older than both of you, Joshua and Noah.

  Your eyes burned with excitement at the time. But I was not naïve. I knew it would not be easy to keep you motivated as the work got harder.

  It took me two days to gather the snow from our driveway and our neighbor’s. At one point, the snow became too tightly packed to move by snowblower, so I used a wheelbarrow. The pile stood eight feet high, fifteen feet wide, and fifteen feet long—enough snow to bury two full-size SUVs.

  The digging began at 7:00 a.m. the next morning with a sleepy crew. Matthew, you developed an ingenious digging technique that produced dense blocks of snow, which we used to build a six-foot-high corridor around half the fort and a brick-like castle façade.

  The temperature was below zero, which was great for building, but not for nine-year-olds’ morale.

  By the end of day three, the sight was impressive enough to stop traffic in the street. But the chill and the workload had sapped the spirit of my once gung ho little troopers.

  By day four, it felt as if I were running a Russian gulag. “Come on, boys. We said we were going to do this. I told you it was going to be tough. But it will be worth it!” At fourteen, Matthew, you were my biggest supporter, but even you began to question the wisdom of the project. It was eating away your Christmas break, too.

  I spent many hours of those next few days working alone.

  When the snow fort was complete, it was a neighborhood spectacle. Kids and adults stopped by and asked for tours of the “two-bedroom bungalow” with two entrances. You all enjoyed a week of celebrity before it was time to return to school.

  Days later, we got a call from KARE-11, our local NBC news station, asking to do a story on the snow fort. When that cameraman showed up, you put on your snow gear faster than ever before. The TV appearance was a great moment of pride for me as a dad, because I had always told you hard work pays off—and this time it really had.†

  Snow fort, like my dad: The decisive demand that everyone fall in line, the fanatical determination to finish what you start, the excellent results we achieved.

  Snow fort, unlike my dad: The very idea of a snow fort; my understanding that you were losing your Christmas break, that it was miserably cold, and that this dream was more mine than yours.

  * * *

  It’s not lost on me that I’m heavily focused on fathers and sons and discipline here. Nurturing was a part of my equation, but it came second to discipline. Plus, I knew Kristin was providing it to you in the same way my mom provided it to me, so I’ve been less conflicted about that.

  I’ve been much more conflicted when it comes to thoughts about my own dad and what kind of dad I wanted to be. He taught me in an imperfect and somewhat unintentional way about what parenting and leadership really is: an example that inspires or deters, encourages or discourages, empowers or weakens—or, as I’ve learned in life, a little bit of all the above.

  I turned out to be a pretty decent person. Does that mean my parents had it right?

  You’ll meet people in life who were gentler parents but had kids who turned into criminals. Did those parents have it wrong?

  I’ve had decades to test, prove, and disprove what I liked and didn’t like from my youth. I spent most of my undergraduate work in social studies and teaching, digging into child development, sociology, and psychology. And yet, I still have more questions than answers.

  That said, I propose to you that although there are few things in life more complex and uncertain in outcome than child rearing, we do know that some techniques work better than others. We also know that kids get a deciding vote in the equation by way of their personalities and life choices.‡

  In the final analysis, my story is an acknowledgment that no father or leader is perfect, but that every father borrows the best of what he’s observed and tries his hardest to ditch the rest. It’s my hope that you do the same and that you do it at least as deliberately and carefully as I have.

  When I think about my own mixed emotions and imperfect memories of my dad, I do wonder what you all will remember about me. This is a timeless consideration that was best explained by Mark Twain when he quipped, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

  Unless there’s a cure for cancer, you won’t see me when you turn twenty-one, and that’s the age when I was only beginning to understand the virtue in my dad’s actions and words, even if I didn’t always adopt them.

  As an adult, I was able to see him build his own four-thousand-square-foot home. Working with him on that house gave me a hundred glimpses of a simple wisdom I was blind to in my youth.

  For thirty years he worked in construction, and I saw him exercise responsibilities commensurate with an army brigade commander. Despite a healthy pension and a body worn hard by dozens of years working in Minnesota winters, he picked up his tools and went right back to working ten-hour days, this time for himself.

  He heats his home with wood, and he cuts and splits every piece of oak that goes into that furnace, which is no small feat for a northwest Wisconsin home.

  I’ve seen him climb trees with his bare hands and feet, and I’ve heard about him climbing right back up after falling out of them.

  When the fishing is good in late winter, he uses a ladder to cross open water to reach the receding ice.

  He’s a perfectionist, and his sense of pride is often too much for his ego to handle, but when he takes on a task, you can bet your life it will be done exceptionally well.

  When I hear people call him crazy for ignoring a warning or advice about what can’t or shouldn’t be done, I can only nod in agreement and smile, because I’ve heard those same words as a cadet, a student teacher, a soldier, an officer, a husband and father, and a cancer survivor.

  Our man-to-man experiences helped me temper my immature, youthful memories of him. His “madness” was actually all about taking calculated risks, often choosing a path of difficulty and challenge over comfort, being literally and figuratively willing to walk on thin ice, and relying on actions over words to get things done.

  I know your memories of me may be dominated by visions of the same hard hand my dad held over me, and naturally I want you to see virtue in my madness. I can only hope my stories about his actions will help you see the wisdom—and love—in mine.

  Words mean things. Words, mean things. MacArthur didn’t say to disregard them; he said to make sure you don’t substitute them for action. My experiences in combat and with cancer, and the conversations that resulted, have taught me that too many people seem to think sentiments are strong eno
ugh without action. Don’t you believe it.

  Or as a drill sergeant once told me, hope in one hand …

  * * *

  * www.caringbridge.org. Site name: “markmweber.” This is a free-access website where all visitors can read updates and leave comments.

  † The news story and photos of the snow fort can be seen at www.tellmysons.com.

  ‡ One of the best conversational works on the complexities of child rearing I’ve ever read is David Brooks’s The Social Animal. I recommend chapters 3 through 9, which give a far richer account than what I think about the subject.

  Chapter Three

  … TO BE PROUD AND UNBENDING IN HONEST FAILURE, BUT HUMBLE AND GENTLE IN SUCCESS.

  1977, with Dad’s number 26 race car

  SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 2010

  When the day finally came to leave the hospital on September 8, five weeks after I went in, I felt like a baby bird being pushed from the nest with no feathers on its wings.*

  I had only been eating solid food for a few days, weighed 130 pounds (down from 165), and could barely walk. Bullah was still a fist-size drainage pocket inside my body, and Buford was still a quarter-inch-wide slit across my abdomen that leaked digestive juice 24/7.

  Oh, and I still had cancer.

  When we got home, my eyes misted at every turn. Everything was just as I had remembered it, but I was not, and that mismatched feeling was intense.

  I glanced at the massive half-acre garden that had taken me three years of backbreaking labor to create—completed just two months before my cancer diagnosis. Now I was so weak and feeble I couldn’t even trim a rose.

  On my way to the bathroom to take a shower, I walked past our bedroom. Intimacy of any kind with my wife would not be possible for the foreseeable future.