Mike Strobel
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Happy Father's Day, mom
Fri, June 17, 2005
On Monday, I wrote about the inspiring comeback of Rob Wade, 36. Once Bubba the Bandit and a nine-year resident of the Don Jail, he has shaped up. Now he works at Dangerous Dan's diner and is an upstanding citizen of Riverdale. He wants to be a writer. Over to you, Rob. - Mike Strobel
Father's Day weekend 1988 and I'm in a hotel on the south side of Chicago. I'm 19.
There's a bunch of people, most of whom I don't know.
But my father is here, and his father and my uncle. Three generations of Wades.
"This is my oldest son," my father says. "He lives in Canada.
"Go on, Robert, say something in French."
That's how he always introduces me.
So I say, "Bonjour, comment c'est va." It's all the French I know.
My father wants me to impress these people, who want to do business in Canada. Big business.
They are gang-bangin' thugs, drug dealers, hoods.
So is my father. So is my grandfather. So is my uncle.
And so am I.
My father is pitching me as a Canadian drug outlet. I can't screw up this meeting.
But I do. "He's not hard enough," the strangers tell my father. Remember, I'm 19. Not cold enough, ruthless enough, whatever it was they wanted.
(Thank God. Or I'd probably be dead by now.)
"You're too soft," my father snaps at me when they've gone. Then he breaks out a bag of rock. Crack cocaine. We Wades pass around the pipe.
I broke my mother's heart
My father rants and raves. "If I'd raised you, you'd know this game. It's your mother's fault. You're just like her."
Well, not exactly.
In many ways, I exceeded my father's expectations.
After that hotel visit in 1988, I did eight robberies in and around Riverdale, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud, I lied and stole, fought a drug habit and lost nearly a decade to prison.
And I broke my mother's heart. Just like you did, father.
I never called him "Dad." He died in 1994 of hard living. His liver quit, aged 42.
I didn't go to his funeral, though my probation officer said I could.
Father's Day weekend, 2005.
Tonight, I'm going to a Toronto airport hotel to meet my mom.
She's in town for a conference. She runs group homes for kids in crisis in Windsor.
We will celebrate Father's Day together. Dinner, a little shopping, catching up.
Unlike my father, she is my dad.
She left him as a teen mom with two kids.
I never knew her to work less than 10 hours a day when we were growing up in the Bain Ave. co-op in Riverdale.
She hung with me in the bad years, tried to keep me straight by getting me jobs and to drug rehab.
She bailed me out of jail four times.
I got out for good in 2001.
She has dealt with more probation officers than most criminals.
"I will not watch you destroy yourself like your father," she told me again and again.
It was her mantra. Finally, I listened.
She did not teach me sports or how to drive a car, but she did teach me integrity, responsibility and compassion.
And persistence. She never gave up on me, until she got the son that she wanted.
She is no fool and still has doubts about me. But I will NOT disappoint her.
I would not be here, writing this article today, if my mother had not been both mom and dad.
I have no family of my own yet. I need to grow a little more. When I do, I am confident I will be a better father than mine was, and I only hope to be as good a dad to my children as my mom has been to me.
The nicest words my father ever said to me were, "You're just like
your mom."
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