Most people don’t like
going to the dentist. Me, I’m fine. It’s not a hobby or anything but it’s not a
fear I have to conquer either. And this is due to my childhood dentist, Mr
Roberston (Later it on it was more chummy and I called him ‘Col’.) He and my
father, a GP, worked in the same
building and shared the waiting room. He would make jokes, pretend that the
sight of teeth made him sing, and generally made going to the dentist, if not
something to be looked forward to, at least something that could be fun.
His son Ben went to
school with me. Apart from the
fact our fathers worked in the same building, (so did we, come to think of it)
we didn’t have much in common. Ben was a good sportsman and I was not, always a
major division in a private boys school, and to the best of my recollection, we
didn’t have any of the same classes. So while Ben and I had nothing against
each other, we never became good friends either.
I’ve just read Ben’s
book Hear me roar: The story of a stay-at-home dad. I probably came at this book from the wrong angle. I’d
heard that Col ‘didn’t come out too good’ in this book, so I was reading mainly
for that story. But the main thrust is Ben’s experiences when he suspended his journalism career to become the
stay-at-home parent, first with one, then two sons, and the effect it has on
his life and his marriage. It’s a journey that takes him from the euphoria of
new fatherhood through to depression and all stages in between.
He’s also worried
about the effect he has on his children. And this is where Col comes in. As a parent,
it turns out, my funny childhood dentist was angry, violent, foul-mouthed and
deeply unpleasant for his wife and children to live with. When the book begins,
he is merely a bad example for Ben to react against as his own children take
him to his limits, as children do. But when his estranged father rings him and
announces he is dying with cancer, Ben chooses to go visit him, and resume
their difficult relationship.
This is the central
section of the book and for me the strongest. But as I say, I was reading from
the
This is no ‘Daddy
Dearest’. Ben forces himself to remember the good times, when his father was
the father he wanted. There is one incident when he is explicity trying to make
his son feel as safe and protected as his father made him feel at a similar time.
And he knows his father was a good provider and ensured his childen lacked
nothing material. But it seems it was like how a friend of mine described
having an alcoholic parent – you never knew which parent you were coming home
to. I cannot imagine what that was like. The older I get, the luckier I realise
I’ve been.
And it made me think.
What Ben is talking about is, in the main, a common experience for stay-at-home
mothers. I’ve always been sympathetic to parents but obviously I have no idea of the experience. And I begin to get some idea of the vehemence behind my
mother’s resentment every time an official form compelled her to say she didn’t
have a job.
One of Ben’s mantras
as a parent is I’m not going to be like
him, which helps him contain his anger and frustration. Studies tell us the
most abused children do not become abusers themselves, becaust they cannot
imagine doing to others what was done to them. Ben is a good example of that.
In the end, I believe, no matter our background, we all choose who we are.
And so it turns out I didn't know my childhood dentist at all well. But I do remember him as a man in a mask. It's heavy-handed imagery I suppose but not at all inaccurate.
