Thursday, June 18, 2020

DAD AND I

                                                           

When I wake up in the morning, I find that’s the best time to stop and think. I’m retired so I have no job to rush out to, no reason to jump out of bed. The topics I think about, run the gamete from friends who are sick, to projects I might be working on, to the good old days. I seldom think about the troubles are country is going through. Those thoughts come later in the day when the newspaper and the media have unleashed their barrage of conflicting opinions e of what’s going right and wrong and who is to blame. They have every right to do that and if it’s unsettling, I don’t have to read or listen but somehow, it’s hard to escape it. No, the mornings are just a time to reminisce and try to have thoughts about things that once made me happy.

So often those thoughts go back decades because I tend to hang onto what made me happy and let go of what made me sad. This morning I thought about a trip I made to my home town decades ago to take my dad fishing. Dad loved to fish and so did I and even though neither of us had ever mastered the sport, we had the basics down and all that involved was a boat, some gear and making time to do it. That last part was the hardest part. Not for dad, who was retired and living by himself but for me who was working two jobs and raising a family. But every so often I would make the trip back to my hometown where dad still lived in a little apartment, leave the wife and kids at her mother’s place and Dad and I would go out to our favorite lake.

We always caught fish but that wasn’t important to this story. What was important, is the fact that dad and I were together in the middle of the lake in an aluminum shell of a boat and no one was around to interrupt us. In fact, as I reflected on it this morning lying in bed, I don’t remember how the fishing was on that particular day, all I remember was, I was with my dad. 

I have a son that I am proud of and I hope that someday he will think of me in the context of the love we had for each other and the good times we had and not the times we disagreed. I have always felt that I wanted my son to be as good of a man as I meant to be in my life. I have always hoped that I would be as good of a father to my son, as my dad was to me. My grandpa told me shortly after our son was born to always remember when you raise your son, you raise your sons, son. Grandpa died shortly after that but I never forgot his wisdom. It was the root of my own character 

Growing up, my father didn’t always have my hand, but he did always have my back. He was always content to let you find your own way in life but yet, he was always looking where you were going and what you were doing. He was never quick to judge, but in the end if you wanted his honest opinion you got it and it was sometimes unflattering. That could be a hard pill to swallow sometimes, because here was this ordinary man, who accomplished nothing that will ever be recorded into the annals of history, that I, by my love for him, had made my hero.

If I could have one wish in life it would be a chance to spend one more hour with those who shaped my life and have gone before me. Just a chance to say the things that never got said, that got lost in the moment and now seem to be so pertinent to me. But I’ll bet if dad and I got that one chance--- we’d just go fishing one more time.   

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