The Secret Room

For the first time in… well, ever, I got my Christmas shopping done at least a week before the holidays.

How did I do it? Well, I highly recommend marrying someone full of good gift-giving ideas. If you can’t swing that, online shopping helps; so does taking a day off of work and away from small children.

Anyhow, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself, sipping eggnog and watching those local TV reports of last minute shoppers impaling each other with stilettos and slashing wildly through the mob brandishing an Extreme Elmo.

But there’s someone on my list who deserves something that can’t be bought at the Eaton’s Centre. At that’s what this post is about.

This post is about my father, Barry Arthur Gorbould, someone I’ll be fortunate enough to see on Boxing Day this year. And I can count on the fact that seeing my wife and me, along with his two darling granddaughters, is all Dad wants for Christmas.

See, Dad lives in a nursing home. There’s not much he really needs for Christmas, at least in terms of stuff. But it occurs to me there’s one thing he doesn’t have which I seem to have a lot of, and that’s a place on the internet.

Now, Dad never had much interest in the Internet, but I think he should be at least a tiny part of it. He’s from another era, but I live in a world where the ‘net sort of confirms your existence. But when I search for his name, it comes up empty, aside from the birth announcement for my youngest daughter (not a bad place to start, really.)

In hindsight, it’s remarkable that I’ve neglected to mention him in this blog until now. I want to fix that, in some small way, tonight. For better or for worse, much of what I am, much of what you read on this blog, trickled down from Barry Arthur Gorbould. I think he should be on the record.

There are many kind words people have used to describe Dad; in alphabetical order, some of them are: adventurous, handsome, impish, intelligent, kind, outdoorsy, patient, witty. On the negative side, his English schoolmaster once summed up his character by announcing to the world, “Gorbould, you are a lout.”

I’m not going to try to tell you Dad’s life story in one blog post. That can’t be done for anyone. So instead, I want to tell you about one single characteristic that has left a strong impression on me.

Problem is, I don’t have a word for it. So I’ll tell you a story instead, and see if I can spell it out.

When I was around 10 years old, I got the screwball notion that it’d be really cool to have a secret hiding place in our newly-constructed home. Now, I had no concept of architecture. I was 10. I figured maybe we could just build a trap door under my second-floor bedroom, and have a little fort under it. I was delightfully oblivious to the fact that the kitchen ceiling was a foot below.

“Dad,” I said, “Can we build a Secret Room in my room?”

And you know what he did? He got out the plans for the house – which he helped design – and took a look.

As it turned out, behind my bedroom closet was an empty, sloped overhang above the garage doors. Over the next few weeks, Dad cut a hole in the closet, built a plywood floor under the overhang, installed a light, drywalled the roof and added a piece of carpet and a cupboard door to cover the entrance. And I had myself a Secret Room.

For the next few years, the Secret Room was a great place to play with friends, escape when I was feeling angry, and hide stuff I wasn’t supposed to have. It was my very own place, where I was safe and in control of the world. It got pretty cold in the winter, and years later it caused mildew in the garage ceiling and had to be torn down. But it was there when I needed it.

Dad was always game like that. Whenever my sister or I suggested some crazy kid idea, he’d take it seriously and see if he couldn’t make it happen. I don’t know if it was devotion to his kids, or that sense of adventure, or his own barely-concealed childishness, or that stubborn, puzzle-solving part of the brain, but Dad was almost fearless in his commitment to giving anything a try.

Three more examples, revolving (like my adolescent years) around cars:

- On a family trip to Germany, I said it’d be cool to have a Porsche key-chain. Dad doesn’t speak German, but drives the whole family to the Porsche factory and buys half a dozen key-chains for me to bring home to my friends.

- When I suggested that our creaky old Volvo sedan needed to look cooler, we went down to Canadian tire and bought some ridiculous flame decals to add to the hood. (How mom survived, or spared his life, I’ll never know.)

- High school: Sitting at McDonalds, I pointed out a guy I knew who was always bragging about his souped-up Thunderbird. Dad left me there, walked straight out to the parking lot (wearing his tie and blazer) and in his best English accent, asked the bewildered Dave to pop the hood and show him the new headers he’d heard so much about.

These are all small things, to be sure. But I was a small kid. And a shy one: as my Mom likes to remind me, my McDonalds breakthrough was summoning up the nerve (age six) to go to the counter and ask for an extra packet of vinegar. To have a role model who was unafraid meant a whole lot.

So, what’s the word for it? Dad is brave, but not “throw yourself on a grenade” sort of brave. He’s adventurous and curious and devoted, but none of those quite sum it up either. So I’ll just call it a mental “Secret Roominess.”

Thirty years later, Dad’s lost a lot, and I’m still shy. But I try to keep that Secret Roominess in mind, and give it a try, whatever it is.

“Dad,” said my daughter last weekend, “I want to make a snowman. But it’ll be made of wood circles, and it’ll be as big as me and have a top hat and pointy arms.”

Ten minutes later, I was outside showing her how a jig saw works.

Thanks, Dad. Merry Christmas.

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While I’m at it, this seems like a great place to give a shout out to another brave man at Dad’s nursing home. Shawn Gaudier is a 33 years old and severely disabled, but he’s reaching out to the world through music on his two websites, ShawnRocks.com and Andrellica.com. He recorded the latest installment of his Webcam Tour on Christmas Eve. Rock on, Shawn!
 

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 12-26-2006 | 01:12 AM
Posted in: Uncategorized