THUNDER BAY - After his son was moved half a world away at the age of eight, Rob Kozak didn’t know how his story of fatherhood would end.
“When I was living it, that ending, I wasn’t sure if it was a cliff or a valley or what was ahead, what was at the end of the road for me,” Kozak said.
Now, 18 years later, the journey to an ending that is still unfolding is recounted in Kozak’s new book, Finding Fatherhood: Lessons Learned from Separation.
Published last November, Finding Fatherhood was compiled with journals Kozak kept after his eight-year-old son, Bobby, moved to Australia with his mother.
“I had to figure out a way to keep that relationship alive,” Kozak said. “And Finding Fatherhood is about how I did that over the course of six years while he was away.”
Keeping the relationship with his son strong despite such a great distance between them was a challenge, but Kozak recalled when he said goodbye to his son the last time he was in Canada, he made a promise to see him again in the next 15 months.
“I had that goal and I made that promise to my son and I was going to follow through on that,” he said. “I just had to keep myself motivated.”
However, a month after saying goodbye, Kozak was in a car accident, but that brush with death only motivated him more to keep the relationship with his son as strong as he could.
“I focused on that and it gave me renewed purpose,” he said. “I started the journal and Finding Fatherhood is some of the lessons I raised to myself for ways I can be a better dad.”
The journals written during that time were boxed up for 10 years and it wasn’t until Kozak started a new family and raising a two-year-old son that he decided to return to those journals and relive some of the lessons he learned about being a father.
“Once I started raising him, this fatherhood part two, I thought I had learned some things in part one that I wanted to share and I opened up those boxes,” Kozak said. “Now I’m ready to share those lessons. They made sense to me back then and I know those lessons still remain true today.”
Finding Fatherhood is part memoir, part Australian adventure as Kozak recounts visiting his son during his summer holidays on the other side of the world.
Kozak said he hopes people who read the book will take away the lesson that there are many different ways to handle a separation, and taking the high road is one of the most important lessons he learned, one that was also passed along to his son.
And while it was emotional and difficult recounting this period in his life, the story has a happy ending, even if the journey was a rollercoaster ride, just like life.
“By putting the book together in the last 18 months, I know the ending, I have a healthy relationship with my adult son, so that was easier,” Kozak said. “But back then I didn’t know the answers, so it was scary looking back and it could have come out a different way. But at the end of this, as difficult as it was, there is a happy ending.”
Finding Fatherhood is available at bookstores and at the Friesen Press website. Kozak will also be at the Thunder Bay Country Market the last Saturday of every month selling and signing copies of his book.
