My Father's Hands

Why Brilliance Often Goes Unnoticed

I’ve always channeled different people in different situations, but with the new je ne sais quoi that I seem to be experiencing, the experience is so much more intense. I have a catalogue of different people in my mind, and I pull them out when I need them. I can become them while still being myself — my wife’s empathy, a teacher’s way of speaking. But today, it’s my dad.

I’m 47, and I finally understand my dad completely. My dad and I are the same person. And it took me until this very moment to fully understand that. The only difference between us is that he was never given the chance to explore himself. He always said, “If only I was born in this country.” I understand what he meant by that.

My dad has a fourth-grade education but is one of the most intelligent people you’re likely to meet. His problem? His brain moves too fast for most people. He has nineteen different solutions to a problem you haven’t even had the wherewithal to ask the question for. This frustrates him — the people around him move too slowly to keep up. They can’t understand where he’s going fast enough, and he has a hard time explaining sometimes.

But look at this guy — yeah, he speaks English with an accent, but I know people who’ve lived in Canada for fifty years and don’t have the command of the English language that he does. But still, he struggles to be understood.

Today I channeled my dad. I am building a new closet for my wife — and heaven forbid I can’t get it done for her fast enough. But sometimes, if something is going to be the best it can be, it just needs to sit. The ideas need to marinate.

Back to my dad. I found myself holding two putty knives, working plaster the way I’ve seen my father do a million times while I held a flashlight in the garage as he worked body filler into the panel of a car. Taking gentle verbal abuses from my dad because I was holding the flashlight wrong.

I hated it — being in the cold on a February night. My dad would come to the door of the house, call me out to the garage to “help” him — to hold that fucking flashlight. I wasn’t helping. Today a son would probably just run down to the dollar store and buy twelve different work lights for like seven bucks and call it a Father’s Day gift. But this was the 80s and 90s.

Truth be told, he probably just wanted the company. From the son he knew wouldn’t complain (well, complain less — my brother would never be caught holding that flashlight).

I froze my ass off as my dad supported his family, and this was after he put in a nine-hour day at the shop. He would fix the cars of our neighbours to make extra cash. That money paid the mortgage in two years — at a time when interest rates were something like twelve thousand percent. Does everyone forget the 80s? He paid for vacations, karate lessons. As he put it about the garage at the back of our house: “That garage made a lot of money.”

That money came from the grind of a man who didn’t know how to realize the intellect he was born with. A man who had too many responsibilities too early in life. A man who, at seventeen, began his mandatory military service only to be shipped off to a war he knew nothing about. Guerilla warfare. Friends’ body parts in trees. What a fucking waste.

My dad’s garage is full of what I would call garbage. My dad is of a vintage where you couldn’t just run down to Home Depot or Canadian Tire and buy a tool. He fashions jigs and tools. He makes the most incredible sai (martial arts weapon) — no lathe, just some chucks from old drills and a motor from who knows where. But that’s my dad.

As I stood there today, working plaster between two putty knives like I myself have done it a thousand times before, I have my dad to thank. My dad learns things the way Japanese craftsmen do — through osmosis (though I’ve always hated that term; osmosis has to do with water and a membrane or something — but you get my drift).

Maybe that’s why my dad and I can work so well together. I trust his knowledge and experience enough that he knows what he’s doing. And he’s smart enough to listen to another way of doing things — because even if it’s wrong, he’ll take something from your idea. But people prefer to be right, to be in charge. My dad just sees a problem, a challenge that needs to be tackled. He wants to be the one to get his hands on it, to fix it. He doesn’t need to know where the knowledge came from or who came up with it. It’s the knowledge and getting the job done that matter to him.

I can only imagine how he felt when I got sick — a problem he didn’t have the skills or knowledge to solve. After all, cancer is a tough nut to crack. But he packed away the summer furniture for my wife, drove my mom (the nurse) to all my appointments, and even wiped my ass when it needed wiping.

If something needs to get done, and my dad is there, you better believe it’s gonna get done. His fingerprints are all over my dojo. It’s in the door closers to the change rooms. The floors you walk on. The mats. Every time your face hits the mat, you’re connecting with my father.

I’ve always admired my dad. He’s always been my hero. I never understood why until now. Of course, he loved me — but that’s not it. It’s because, given the right education, my dad could do or understand anything.

He’s not like other old men. His views of the world change as he learns more about it.

So if you ever have the chance to meet my dad, you’ll see a disheveled guy who doesn’t care about his clothes — they just serve a purpose. But know something: you’re meeting one of the smartest people you’re ever going to meet. You might just not see it.

So fact-check me if you like, but don’t come after my dad — because if you do, you come after me.
And the two of us? Fuck you.
No one can take on the two of us.