Speaking for the vast minority

My father and I are a vast minority.

The concept of parents is such an interesting one.  Take a person with all of his collected bits of eye color, blood type, failures and mistakes,  generations of talent and addiction and temperament, mix them up and pour them into this one new little person, let's start out a new person with all of that, her DNA bearing the silent witness to a life not confessed.  

    My Dad intrigues me.

    I have not always said this.  His moods often got in the way of my ability to see their deeper meaning; how it sparked deep within me.  My father was at times angry, at times depressed, but I see too that he was not a guarded man, as so many learn to become.  He was always raw nerve, and always felt to the nerve ending.  There are some people who find the world to be too painful of a place; try to do the good that is in their heart to do, and feel every slight that comes back at them from a world that doesn't care about their backbreaking good deeds and hard work, done in the name of trying to serve the Lord their God and take care of their families.  Some people don't just play the game they see around them and are punished by it from those who wish they would just play the game already!  Some people feel very keenly throughout their bones the sense that "This world is not my home, and in it I do not fit." My Dad is one of those.  I see the lines on his face from how it plagues him.  I feel the sting of his every whip lash of rejection or the perception of rejection.  But His perception was probably right.  Sensitive types, we sense things, often with sharp accuracy.  The sharp accuracy of a paring knife to the heart of the matter and to the heart of myself.

     This does not excuse, it just does explain.  

My Father has never been a yeller, he is meek and mild and humble and kind.  He is soft spoken.  But there is a way of softly speaking your misplaced griefs that can sound like yelling, can feel like yelling to the young girl listening when you don't even know she is listening, and later she will say that you had just yelled at her, though you never had raised your voice.  

     (My mother, she was the yeller.  But that is another story I may never care to tell.) 

    I am like my father.

I did not realize this until very very recently.  My judgement and perception of the man were clouded by his layered years of pain and struggle.  But do you know that you can often lift a cloud or fog of confusion just by talking to a person in a gentle, kind voice, and drawing him out of the stream of his own self doubt?  And by doing this, you see to the heart, the golden heart inside the man shrouded, and you realize: all the things I like the best about myself are the things I inherited from him.

 All of the things I like best about myself are the things I inherited from my father. 

He was a consistent exerciser, believed in taking care of his body, keeping it in good shape.  I have memories engraved of him doing push ups and sit ups when he first woke up in the morning, still in his striped pajamas, the kind of pajamas men used to wear.  Lifting the free weights that lay scattered around the house, usually in a corner of his bedroom or the living room.  He never told me I had to exercise, but at night after dinner, he would take my brothers and I out to play football in the front yard.  I went to school and told all the kids, "My front yard is so big, you can play football in it!"  "NO it's not," argued a blond haired kid named Jeff.  Jeff had never seen my yard, had never played football there.  What did he know.  

Dear blond kid Jeff I-don't-remember-your-last-name, I never told you my front yard was NFL regulation size.  I said it was big enough to play football.  As evidenced by the fact that my Dad, three brothers and I would play football there every night.

Sincerely,

Michelle

 These were the early single digit years before the last heartache which broke my father's will and sapped his strength and left a shell of the man labeled "depressed" and 'bitter," who still worked hard though it took everything out of him without again refilling.  But during those pre-depression formative years, we played football, we ran and threw the ball far, we tackled hard, and I was first labeled a fast runner, and I have carried that name across my chest like an invisible badge. 

     I have been a consistent exerciser my entire adult life; caught, not taught.  Or taught, but by accident; the brilliant accident that is show, don't tell.

My father was also a man with a medal detector, and we would have beach days where he combed the beach for treasures, stopping whenever his metal detector beeped in his ears, which meant that there was something metal hiding right there, beneath the surface of the sand.  Then he would start to dig.

He found class rings, wedding rings, and was able to do a little research and return them to their owners.  Once, he found a gun powder flask from the Civil War. 

 My father also took the time to collect things like agates and rocks.  

I collect rocks, I collect sea glass, and I love to scour thrift stores.  My father and I both understand the appeal of thick glass, imperfect with bubbles inside of it, and of old glass that has turned purple with age.  My Father and I, we love those things, and can discuss the merits of a good rock, the kind we would love to have in our rock collection.  

      His kind of sensitive heart has always known the real treasure is with the LORD, and it was his passion to teach me this, but the sort of passion that looks like meekness and mild walked out.  

     "I'm scared at night," my four year old self told my father.

     "I have nightmares of scary spiders and things."

     My father went into the living room and took down from off of the wall a large picture that was hanging there.  It was a picture of Jesus, kneeling to pray right before he was about to be crucified.  Jesus at His most vulnerable moment of desperate prayer, and in the background, you can see his disciples, sleeping.  My father said "When you start to feel scared, look at Jesus."  as he placed the large picture at the end of my small bed. 

-XOXO,