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Creating Fatherhood

As artist and parent, Aaron Fein values time with his children.

By LYNN PRIBUS

Being a Dad has changed how architect/sculptor Aaron Fein sees the world. “It has new meaning,” declares the soft-spoken Charlottesville father of two boys aged 5 and 3. Fatherhood, he says, increases his concern for the world his sons will inherit even as he watches them grow in their awareness of the universe. As an artist, he believes art can help interpret life and so he naturally encourages their artistic awakening.

Fein was the primary caregiver for four years. “Art and parenting can be very complementary,” he says, reminded of his own childhood and the projects he pursued with his older brother Steven. “We’d use string and whatever we could find,” he recalls.
Today, Fein is creating things from available items with his children. “We use all the stuff that’s around to make something in a quick way,” he says. He isn’t pushing them to become artists, although he actively responds to their interests and delights in watching them use their imaginations.
“They’re into superheroes now,” he says. “They want to leap into an imaginary world and one of the ways we do this is by creating props using common materials—like masking tape and cardboard to make rocket ships or trains.”
He notes he must constantly remind himself that it takes very little to spark their imaginations and that he must let go of his own perfectionism. “The boys’ projects will be what they are going to be.”
Sometimes, he says, his older son gets stuck and pleads for help, but Fein believes it’s important for the boy to develop a way to solve problems. “Children,” he says, “can learn independence through ingenuity and becoming problem solvers.”
The payoff? “Sometimes my son will say, ‘I don’t want to watch TV tonight. I want to make something.’ But not always,” he adds with a grin.
He credits his wife Dahlia, a legal beat reporter for Slate.com and Newsweek, as a partner in developing the boys’ creative process. “She does the story telling and writing parts.”
When their older boy was only 3, he was using a digital camera. “We gave him a demanding tool and he’s able to use it to get the images he wants,” Fein says. “Then those images go into the computer. We can print and cut out parts and he narrates a story or creates a book.”
As the boys grow they are becoming interactive with Fein’s own work such as “White Flags.” “There is a greater give and take as they get older and are becoming artistic people.”
He enjoyed being the primary caregiver for those years, but Fein concedes it was also difficult. He wanted to stay connected with the world of art and architecture when opportunities arose, but always had to coordinate with Dahlia and up to five pinch-hitter sitters.
“The difficulty is the same one so many parents complain about,” he acknowledges. “I was wanting to work and wanting to spend these important years with my children.”
With his boys now in school part of the time, there is not so much all-day, every-day attention required. “At times it was frustrating because I couldn’t do it all,” he says today, “but in the end I definitely favored the children in those years. I just wanted to strike a balance.”

Freelance writer Lynn Pribus recently moved to Charlottesville from California, where she was a regular contributor to Sacramento Parents’ Monthly.

WHITE FLAGS
It was the aftermath of September 11, 2001, that inspired Charlottesville artist Aaron Fein to create a unique art assemblage. As he watched bumper stickers of the U.S. flag gradually fade, he was struck by the thought of all flags fading to white.
These musings evolved into his “White Flags” project. “I aim to do all 192 flags of the U.N.” he says.
He has completed about a dozen of the 3- by 5-foot cotton flags. The first was our Stars and Stripes, then Israel’s flag. He’s just finishing Canada, and Mexico will be next. Also finished is Germany.
More than ten others—flags such as Russia, the Netherlands and Sierra Leone—will be identical in white. That, Fein says, is exactly his point. “I want to blur the distinction between countries.”
He says his project is not strictly for art galleries and, in truth, he doesn’t know where he will mount the final assemblage.
“I’ve found myself crossing into the realm of performance art,” he says as he totes an umbrella-like rack mounted with eight flags to Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall one recent Friday. He sets his “umbrella” up there almost weekly—often near the Free Speech Monument—to interact with people who are drawn to the snowy banners of the nations of the world.
“I’m hoping for a time when our similarities might overshadow our differences,” he declares on his website, www.aaronfein.com, which also has pictures and a list of completed flags. “A day when we might all be united as one.”

 

 

For 10 Father’s Days in a row we bought you white size 11 Nikes with a blue swoosh. The following three years we inundated you with James Taylor recordings. The year after that was a laughing checkbook which you may have liked the best.
It is Father’s Day again and I have finally learned the value of a thoughtful present, so here goes:
It has been some time since I saw you. I miss so much about you, but what I miss most are the things that never happened. I miss how we would have sat around in your sunken den watching March Madness basketball and Super Bowl Sunday. A game is never a quiet affair for the Suder clan and much story interrupting and needless screaming would have occurred between the chewing of pretzel sticks like giant cigars.
I miss your steaks. We didn’t have any money those days but when you cooked, you always bought the best; and how you cooked.
My mouth waters at the thought of entire onions soaked all day in vinegar and oil; the double jeopardy of hotdogs wrapped in bacon; the rivaling textures of lupini beans and pretzel nubs; pork and beans with huge globules of fat to flavor things up; kabobs with tender lamb and tomatoes like rubies; giant bowls of fudge chocolate ripple ice cream.
(My kids miss it too. Genetics gave them a mom who cooks like your wife did. No labor of love to be sure—you know the routine: spaghetti Monday, Rice-a-Roni Tuesday, taco salad Wednesday, and blah blah blah.)
My husband misses you. He never met you, but he knows what your death did to our family.
He sees me frantically searching the Internet while self-diagnosing every catastrophe from cancer to the croup. He senses how scared we are at the beach, on a plane, changing lanes, on vacation, with our kids. Fear born of having someone you know die young and the fear of having it happen again. He works with my brother who can barely keep his head above water because he’s drowning in drink and the desire for someone to be a dad to him.
My son Beau misses you. You met but for a moment in the span of things. He was nine months old and had just learned to stand when you died. You were a grown man over six feet tall in diapers; in the last few weeks before you died, all you could do was fall.
Beau fell into sports naturally and even if he hadn’t, I fear we might have pushed him to. Every piece of advice I gave him, every time I hiked the ball to him, every time I caught his throw in my mitt, I thought of you. I heard your voice in my mouth.
But I don’t have half the charisma you did. You made mediocre teams win. You made small teams seem big. You made boys seem like men on a basketball court.
And then there’s D. He is your youngest grandson and may be your last. He never met you but he can point you out in a picture. It’s uncanny: no matter the picture, no matter the age, from your youth clear through to 50, he knows when it’s you.
He knows you’re not here, but heaven is a concept like delicious broccoli, unfathomable to him.
He’s your spitting image. You might have different cheekbones or his nose might be a bit small, but something about his being just screams “George.” He turns heads already. He’s handsome and clever with a twinkle of the mischievous in his eye— but the kind that people laugh off and say, “Boys will be boys.”
He has friends everywhere at age 5—people in line at the bank, the grumpy school custodian, the librarian who never smiles, the lifeguards at the pool, the cart boys at the local grocery store.
Whatever it is that people got…he’s got it. Unfortunately, he will never see you in action, and I’m a pale imitation of your personality at work.
What I really want to say, Dad, is that we all miss you.
There’s no way to get around the sentimental drivel; missing someone sounds like a Hallmark card.
So, Happy Father’s Day. I never forget that the only present I have for you now that you are gone is to remember you. I do, all the time.

Rebecca Suder is chief bread baker, joke maker, nap taker and baby waker at the Suder, Crabtree, Banks residence and sometimes wonders how she ended up with sixty thousand dollars in student loans and no actual income as of yet.