I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, went to college and left that world behind. After my husband died, I left retirement and went to work at an auto repair shop. I could not explain it, but it felt like coming home.

I had forgotten men could be this way. I had truly missed the way men talked and listened to each other, laughed and joked, showed up for each other, leaned on each other, counted on each other and cared for one another. The company of these men gave me the comfort and security I needed to heal. When my grief lifted, the carefree girl I knew before college had reappeared. My old self was my young self again.

I tell this story by way of saying, that only now, late in life, do I realize that men who work with their hands learn to be men from other men. From time to time, a customer would step out of line when addressing me. All it took to put him in check, was the expressions on these men's faces. They simply did not tolerate disrespect from anyone, towards anyone – inside that shop their culture ruled.

I recall so clearly now, how hard it had been to leave the wrong side of the tracks. I tried, but I could not understand the way men treated each other in the middle and upper classes. I felt sorry for these men; they knew so many people and yet they had no friends. No one showed up for them, they had no one to talk to and looked to women to fill emotional needs that men in my youth had looked to men to fill.

Several times across the years, I’d told a man to make some friends. “But I have you” replied these men. To which I replied, you need a man to help you sort those kinds of feelings out.

Something about working together builds bonds between men. When men stopped working with their hands, they left male bonds behind.

Today, I see bonds in young men who work closely together, but the absence of older men shows. Young men need older men to learn from, to model behaviour and talk them through their feelings. Fathers cannot do this job alone. It takes a lot of men to raise good men.

And that is my two cents.