#4 Something of a Miracle

Five years ago today – June 17, 2012 Father’s Day - I planted a tree. It was a Maple that had decided to grow in an old wine barrel in our back yard. It might have been four or five inches high and had decided to stick around: a random survivor. As ordinary as it was it seemed very special so I took it from the barrel and planted it in the corner of our yard – just inside the six foot fence we built to replace the one taken out by the previous Maple tree; downed by Hurricane Irene. My wife’s due date was the 26th so I was not yet a Father but it was to be me and my future Son’s ‘Father’s Day Tree.’

The night of the 26th it was business as usual. We needed an air conditioner and Heather (my wife) wanted to go to Target to get… something. I don’t remember what. I think we both just needed a distraction so off we went. I dropped her at Target and headed to Best Buy to look for an air conditioner. When I mentioned to the women at customer service that it was my wife’s due date they were not impressed. ‘Are you out of your mind!? What are you doing HERE on your wife’s due date!?’ I told them she was just on the other side of the parking lot shopping and that it was in fact her idea but they were not having it. I felt aggrieved. I was not THAT guy. The one who would be at Best Buy on his wife’s due date. I was anything but that guy and I wanted to tell them why in great detail but… here I was. That guy. And then my phone rang.

All you know about this moment is what you’ve seen in movies a thousand times. Actually, that’s not true. You have probably read about what to do but that is gone and all you see in your head is the chaotic nonsense of… the thousand movies you’veseen. But that’s not what happened. We rushed home and got Heather into the shower. Her contractions were still far apart but she was increasingly uncomfortable and the shower helped. We walked around the house in circles, I rubbed her back, did whatever I possibly could and when the contractions got close enough we called our midwife who she advised us to head to the hospital. We were packed and ready – no chaotic nonsense – and it was an uneventful, even pleasant, ride to the hospital on a warm, early summer evening with the tunes up and the windows down. At least for me I guess.

I walked her in and then went to park the car. By the time I hurried back she had been taken through to a place that, apparently, I could not yet go. They put me in a waiting room and told me they would let me know if she was going to be admitted. If so, then they’d let me join her. I was not prepared for that. I didn’t want to be away from her for one minute and I was agitated.

They did admit her. They did let me through.

We had chosen to use the Alternative Birthing Center and were lucky that it was free that night. We set up the room, filled the giant tub and put on the two-day play list I had painstakingly prepared to welcome our little guy into the world. After that we pretty much took care of everything ourselves. I’m a pretty… intense guy in many ways and I think the midwife could see how much I wanted to be a part of things and that we had it all under control so she just left us to it; commenting once and a while about how good the play list was and asking ‘who sings this song?’ with regularity. Heather did not want any medication and yet through her twelve hours of labor she never complained. Not once.

At twelve hours it was time to start pushing. I have never seen anything as incredible as this in my life. For four hours – through pain I can only imagine – she did not complain. My tiny wife with the low pain threshold! In between the pushing, as she was catching her breath, she would apologize to the nurses as if she was being terribly inconvenient. I was full on crying and starting to get worried, even a little angry at the little boy who was putting my wife through this. There seemed to be so many people in the room. I remember catching one guy staring at me and then holding his gaze for an uncomfortable amount of time – tears streaming down my face. I just had time to wonder ‘what was he thinking?’ I still wonder. When the doctor in charge suggested it might be time to consider a C-Section I told her that Heather really did not want that. She couldn’t say it herself at the time but she had told me to speak for her so I asked that, after all of this, as long as she and the little one were not in any danger, that they not take this from her; that they let her see it through. To endure all of that with no medication, no screaming or complaining (only perfuse apologizing), it would have been unfair to have it end that way.

Very soon thereafter, all on her own, she did it. He was born: Luka Rae Dominey.

He had thick, thick black hair, exaggerated by the blood, and he looked so dark that in my own exhausted delirium I thought to myself ‘Who the hell is this!?’ I looked at my heroic wife – then back to him. Then back to her. I am not proud to say it but my first thought was ‘Who the hell is this!?’ They washed him clean, I came to my senses and as they attended to my beautiful, bruised and utterly exhausted wife I held him. I became a Father.

In twelve days Luka will be five years old. The tree I planted is now well over thirteen feet – after I cut at least two foot off it last year. To put that in perspective the five and a half foot Blood Maple we purchased and planted eight years ago at the opposite end of the yard is now only about nine feet tall. I know… the Blood Maples grow slower but still…. Our Father’s Day Tree is something of a miracle. My wife is something of a miracle. Being a Father is something of a miracle.

My son is a miracle.

Happy Father’s Day. 

#3 The Guy in the Picture

I met my Father when I was 24 years old. Most of what I ‘knew’ about him I had made up. One of the ‘benefits’ of having a Father you know nothing about is that you can make up the details; you can create him in your mind in a way that suits the life you are living. Perhaps you are angry so you create a ‘villain’? Perhaps you are idealistic or romantic so you create a ‘hero’? Or maybe, like most made up characters (or in fact most of us) you create a character that is a bit of both. The guy in this picture was always a bit of both.

All I really knew was that his name was Joe, he was Italian, and that back then he rode a motorcycle. For the longest time that was enough. I invented the rest and I didn’t need to look much further than this epic picture for inspiration. It’s easy to see how a young boy might romanticize this guy with his thick black hair blowing in the wind, straddling a motorcycle perfectly composed to look more thunderous than perhaps it was, all set against a dark, ominous sky. Like the previous image it was taken by my Uncle Henry – messing around at Melbourne International Airport in 1971. The year I was born.  I have had it either on my wall or packed away and travelling with me my whole life. I’ve never spent more money framing a picture than when I finally had a home of my own and framed this one to look like an artifact you might find in a museum. An exotic lost treasure - found and preserved.

Living on a farm in the last place you can visit before you hit Antarctica his being Italian was the detail I was fixated on. To me Italy was about romance, class and sophistication. I loved the food, the fashion, the cars, the football team and of course, Mafia movies. He became the swashbuckling Mafioso that was going to buy me a Ferrari for my 21st birthday. That’s what I told my high school friends and some of them actually believed me. I didn’t have the thick hair and olive skin; the ‘sexy’ accent or the romantic expertise but… I did my best to be that guy. I believed he was in me; in the blood coursing through my veins connecting me to the guy in the picture – who happened to be my Father. I would have this picture on my wall even if he wasn’t my Father, because it’s just that good, but he was and when I needed to escape my less exotic life, times that were a bit hard, or just imagine there was someone out there that might help me make sense of myself this picture was a window to another world.

I remember every detail of the day I flew to Australia to meet him. He still lived in Melbourne (or at least close by in a place called Emu Bottom – which didn’t sound like a place for a glamorous Mafioso but you never know) and he had an Italian wife and two young children. I tried to look as ‘Italian’ as I could: I wore a suit and had my hair slicked back. The whole flight I remember feeling like I should move as little as possible to remain as ‘fresh’, unwrinkled and unspoiled as I could for full dramatic impact when they all first saw me but the anxiety made me anything but. I don’t know what I really looked like when I arrived but the minute I walked through customs and saw him waiting there for me none of that mattered. There he was. The guy in the picture.   

Except, of course, he wasn’t the guy in the picture. He wasn’t wearing an Armani suit and bearing a box of cannoli. His hair wasn’t slicked back and he wasn’t driving a Ferrari. He was a guy just like me; as anxious as I was. He was very nervous – sweetly so - and spoke quickly. He helped me with my bag and we headed to the car. I don’t remember what we talked about on the ride home but it may as well have been gibberish. When the occasion is so overwhelmingly big, the talk has to start off very, very small. Words really just fill the space while your brain tries to catch up on what is actually happening: This man was my father. He should have been in a room waiting for me to pop out and start crying the first time we met… but he wasn’t. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me and suddenly here I was; his son but not a child. Two men trying to match their expectations with a hard reality and wondering how they should feel about each other. Whatever we spoke about words were just noise: a porous cocoon of swirling distractions while we caught our breath and wondered what might happen next.  

We got to his beautiful home. I met his beautiful family. And I wondered where would I fit in to all of this. I'm still not entirely sure.

That evening he toke me into his sanctuary – the large room where he listened to his music, watched his movies and his Formula One and invited me to sit down on the enormous couch while he put on some music. He didn’t say anything else, just turned the system up loud, pushed play and sat down beside me. The first sound was somebody exhaling into a microphone as if they were about to do something that would take all their effort; as if they were setting the stage for something epic. The speakers were crystal clear and just that breath filled the room from the floor to the high ceiling. The two seconds before the first note on the guitar seemed to last forever – and did as I feel that moment now writing about it. It was beautiful and haunting. Then the voice – even more beautiful, even more haunting: “ Well I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased The Lord but you don’t really care for music do ya?’* Without saying a word this was the first time my Father spoke to me. And there he was. For six minutes and fifty four seconds. The guy in the picture. Still full of drama and dreaming. Still the character in a story we had both been telling.

The story we are both still trying to tell.

Pictures are more than proof.

* Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen

#2 We Are All Fathers and Sons. Even When We Are Not.

I’ve said many times that I believe our photographs are – or should be – the ‘icons of our lives.’ This photograph is certainly an icon of mine. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. It is framed and hanging on my wall downstairs with all the other ‘icons’ I have been fortunate enough to inherit or collect; part of my life’s treasure. It is my Opa smoking his beloved pipe and was taken by my Uncle Henry a very long time ago. Family or not it is a brilliant photograph: beautifully composed, beautifully exposed and artfully dramatic while remaining natural and ‘real.’ This is not a pose. This is something my Grandfather always did: something fundamentally him. But I know that so my response to it will be very different from yours. Every time I look at it I smell that pipe tobacco; I feel the texture of that blanket hanging on the back of that rocking chair that now sits in my mother’s home and will one day sit in mine, then my son’s. I know that furrowed brow; I know the power in his silence and I am in his study wanting to be just like him when I grow up. As a child he was a giant: a big, friendly, giant. And I adored him. My mother and I lived with him and my Oma in their home for much of the first four years of my life. They lived the last ten years of theirs in our family home; their full lives having come full circle. I’m sure I knew he wasn’t my Father when I was little but until another one came along – and even for a while after that - I think I wished he was. And… so he was.

When that is what I needed, that is what he was. For the time there was an empty space he filled it. And it occurs to me that as men we are all Fathers and we are all Sons. Even when we are not. What do I mean? There is no perfect Father: No perfect role model; No perfect protector; No perfect teacher; No perfect nurturer. To expect this of anyone is to expect too much and it is unfair. To expect it of ourselves is to set ourselves up for failure and will only serve to convince us that we are not – and will never be - good enough at this ‘Fathering.’ This Fathering that is most often ‘taught’ to us by men who were never taught, by men who were never taught…. But look around your life. Feel around in your memory. It has only recently occurred to me that when there has been empty spaces in my life someone has stepped in. Someone has ‘Fathered’ me for the time I needed them to: my best friend at school; my best friend’s Dad; the fifty year old ‘mature student’ when I was an undergrad; my Martial Arts coach; my Artist friend…. Whether or not we have – or need – one particular Father as more traditionally defined, we absolutely need the things that are intrinsic to our beliefs of what that relationship entails and we are very resourceful at finding them. And just as we are resourceful at finding what we need we are fully capable of filling that empty space for others too – even though we may never notice we are doing so. Often it will be to many of the very same people on that list. Look around your life. Feel around in your memory. You have done this. We are Fathers and we are Sons. Even when we are not.

As I think of the sometimes unreasonable expectations I had of my Dad I wish I had known that he could never have done it on his own – and that that was OK. I wish I knew that most of the time I was getting what he didn’t always know how to give me – I just got it in other places; and that this did not mean that he wasn’t ‘doing his job.’ I wish he knew that when he was weary and the rope he was holding on to so tightly to keep me from falling began to slacken, somewhere else someone was taking it up – unknown to him, unknown to them, unknown to me – and I was getting all that I needed. I may have wished for it from him but until he knew how to give it… it was OK. I could always find it elsewhere. Just as he had had to do all of his life. As, no doubt, my Son will have to do in his when I don’t quite get it right.

To think of it like this doesn’t dilute the role of the Father at all. If anything it galvanizes its importance: confirming it as something we always need and will always find – if we have our eyes open. Something we are all capable of giving and receiving – if we have our eyes open. And in connecting it to this project, this work, it takes me back to where I always begin: it is within the relationship, the story, the grand narrative of Father and Son that we will find each other, find who we are, and recognize how we really want to be. We will see the world we would like our Sons to inherit and have them design. The very possible ‘impossible’ world I want to reveal in my Father Fotos.

My Opa filled my ‘empty spaces’ so many times throughout my life. For all my life. And in the later years of his life – when he needed me – I filled them for him. As I did for my Dad. As he did for me… as we all come full circle.

And so. Full circle. Back to the picture: I hear his voice telling stories about the things I did when I was little; I can feel myself sinking into the thick duvet on his bed as he sat me down to present me with my first watch; I remember the first time I said ‘No!’ to him and was afraid he might not love me anymore because when I hugged him goodbye he did not hug me back. I remember that the next time I saw him after that he was in a hospital bed after having had a massive stroke and that he would never again be able to walk or speak as he once did. I remember that even in his wheel chair, and his forced silence he was a giant. Always a giant.

Pictures are more than proof. They are the icons of our lives. 

#1 An Introduction: Don't Miss Your Moment

10 years ago today my Dad died. I was living here in America while he and the rest of my family were back home in New Zealand. I missed the last five years of his life. It is not something you adequately account for when you decide to live in another country. I think I had imagined the possibility of getting the call you never want to get but I never really believed it would happen. I was sure I’d have another twenty years with my Dad; that I would get to do wonderful things for him; that I would get to see him become all cute and old. It was midnight when the phone rang. We’d had a few wrong numbers so I didn’t answer it. It rang again at 12:30 but, again, I didn’t answer it and didn’t think much of it. When the phone rang again, first thing in the morning, I knew something was wrong. This time I answered. It was my Mum. I tried to pretend I wasn’t worried and as if it were any other phone call I just said - as I would any other day - ‘What’s up Mum!?’ Very quietly she said ‘Your Dad’s not well.’ She went on to tell me that Dad had cancer throughout his body and that he might have as little as six months to live. As it turned out, he had just three.

I was devastated and panicked. I knew I had to get home immediately. It took me a couple of weeks to get my life organized and get home but when I landed there he was. He had decided to pick me up at the airport himself – not knowing that people with tumors in their brain were not allowed to drive cars because of the risk of seizure – and when he saw me he took a long deep breath and just held me. ‘Now I’ve got ya with me.’ For a long while we did not move and we did not let each other go.

The next eight weeks were both brutally painful and unexpectedly magical. I had always loved my Dad but in this eight weeks I ‘fell in love’ with him. The language may sound odd but it's true. Our relationship had not always been easy but as I went through this experience with him I realized that I could never love anyone more than this. Even more than that I realized I may never love anyone as much as I loved him then. His cancer was aggressive and cruel but he never once complained. When we went to the hospital for his radiotherapy he would say how bad he felt for the ‘really’ sick people and would cheerfully thank the doctors and nurses as if they had just saved him and given him a clean bill of health – when in fact it was the opposite. I was in the room with him when he was told he probably only had about a month to live and that he should get his affairs in order. I wanted to punch the doctor – who seemed smug to me though I am sure now he wasn’t – right in his face. Dad laughed and said ‘I’ll see you in a year.’ The doctor said that he hoped Dad was right but he knew he wasn’t.

I tried to imagine what must be going on in his head. What does it feel like when someone tells you that you only have four more weeks to live? Four more weeks to spend with your family? Four more weeks to be in this world? I knew that whatever we said or did to try and help him there was a battle inside that he had to fight all on his own. We were all around him, loving him, but in some other inescapable way I knew he was totally alone.

I was with him almost every day. In that time the only moment of ‘weakness’ –  it wasn’t weakness... the only moment of vulnerability he shared with me was one day sitting on his bed. He was looking at the ground – or perhaps his feet – and very quietly, his voice breaking, he said ‘Karl. Nothing’s getting any better.’ I don’t remember saying anything in response. I don’t think he wanted me to. He just had to say it. We just sat and hugged each other. He never spoke about it again.

So many things happened in that eight weeks. I saw terrible things I will never get out of my head. I saw beautiful things in my Dad that inspire me to this day. I did all the things you would expect someone to do for somebody they loved and then many things I may not have imagined I could do – that you may not know that you could do. I got to know what it feels like to love somebody so much that you KNOW there is nothing you wouldn’t do to help them. And not to just say that. Not to just feel that. But to KNOW that. I learned that there is a difference between those things. I had always SAID that I loved my Dad but I didn’t really KNOW it until then.

The day I shot this picture - on a little Nikon D50 long before I would take myself seriously as a photographer - it was mild and overcast. A perfect day to shoot a portrait. As I was clicking away my Mum came past and asked me if I'd like a picture with my Dad. For whatever reason - probably because I was happy caught up taking pictures of him - I said 'No. That's OK. We'll get one another day.' "Another day" never came. With what went on in the next few weeks we never did. And today I do not have a picture of just me and my Dad. I regret that every time I look at this picture - which is every day as I have a large print on my wall in my home and in my studio. I am so grateful for this picture. There is nothing more valuable than this. But when I think of the moment I lost to be in it with him it breaks my heart.

My Father Fotos project is about giving people the opportunity to make sure that this does not happen to them. It is about recognizing that time is precious and that nothing is promised. It is to show that an image is of real value – in fact that it is priceless. It is to document and celebrate the good work men do in the act of Fathering and how vitally important that is. But even more than that it is about starting a conversation that allows men to think about their roles as Fathers and their roles as sons in ways most of them will never have done. It is about helping men tell and share their stories within this complicated relationship in the hope it will liberate them to connect with other men in ways they may not have imagined they could; ways that, in most cases, nobody bothered to teach them; yet they get blamed for not knowing how. This project is to help men ‘fall in love’ with their Fathers – no matter how difficult their journey together may have been – the way I did with mine. 

Don't wait too long. Don't think you'll do it another day. Know that this is of greater value than you can currently imagine. Don't wait until you can no longer do it to feel what I feel. Pictures are more than proof. They are the icons of your life. Don't miss your moment.  

Both this blog and this project are inspired by and in honor of my Dad: Raymond John Dominey. A beautiful man and an imperfect but wonderful Father. It is the beginning of a conversation. One that I have been having with myself for a life time. I hope you will get something from it. I hope you will join in.