Maybe ... Just Maybe

 Hey Dad. It’s been a while. Father’s Day just went by so I’m thinking about you more than usual. You know if you’d asked me 10 – 15 years ago I think I’d of said you were mostly just mean. Seems like the memories of violence and drinking were what stuck the most.

 I've mellowed some. My boys are up big now and I’m flooded with memories of a different kind. Do you remember dragging us all to the Starlite Speedway in Monroe on Friday nights? I’d lean into the chain link fence and watch those old beat up cars bump and bang around the red clay track. When they came around the  fourth turn it’d throw mud in our faces and down the front in little specks till the front was a film of clay.

  Do you remember Uncle Benny driving that race car, biting his tongue underneath his black helmet til one night somebody finally bumped him back and he went over the far rail? I knew it scared you though you hollered and went on like you were mad. He sold the race car after that.

  Do you remember how you’d make me go down to Beaver Creek at night and fish from the boat? You’d put those Coleman lanterns out over the black water and we’d sit there for hours pulling in crappy. The mosquitoes would be so bad I’d have welps in the morning. You hardly noticed them at all.

  Do you remember throwing the baseball out in the front yard? You threw side armed like Don Drysdale cause you broke both your collarbones in a head on collision with a drunk driver. I knew it hurt cause you’d complain a little. To be honest I was glad because you threw it so hard it’d make me dance.

  Do you remember all those times we’d fly down two lane blacktop leaving the ground on the “tickle hills” singing old hymns? You’d be smoking Marlboros like a freight train and you, Momma and me would work out the harmonies.

  Do you remember the time you were working on an electrical problem with a vacuum cleaner at your workbench and little brother Stevie snuck up and banged a hammer on the bench? You jumped back so hard you slipped and had to catch yourself. Man did you cuss. It scared me at first but then we all ended up laughing. It was good to see you laugh, Dad.

  The reason I’m bringing all this up now is because I got to thinking. Maybe he just wanted to spend time with me. Maybe he just thought if he could teach me enough, life might not be so hard like it was for him. Maybe … just maybe you were trying to be a better father than you had.

  Maybe when we were fishing you were showing me how to be quiet and sit with nature in the dark.

  Maybe you threw that baseball hard so when I played with the big kids I’d be used to it and not be scared.

  Maybe singing those hymns was your way of taking me to church … of showing me what you believed and how you loved God.

  Maybe when you started laughing that time Stevie scared you, you were laughing at yourself. It made us all better … I know that much.

  I could go on and on because you see for the most part you were there after I turned twelve or so. It was hard to watch you fall. You were my hero when I was little so it broke my heart to see you destroy yourself.

  Well Dad I suppose I just wanted to wish you Happy Father’s Day and let you know that I see things a little different now. Having the boys grow up has changed me. I love them so much it hurts so it makes me think … Maybe he just loved me and it was the best  job he could do.

 

Born Again

I have written many times about my baptismal experience. The core of the message is that little did I realize in those moments the depth of rebirth I was experiencing. Little did I know that  I would be reborn many times over.

  It saved me in more ways than one. Before my “conversion experience” twenty-four years past I lived by anger and conflict. It was me against a cruel world until I wore out. I changed my life with baby steps. I married. We had fraternal twin boys, joined a church … you know the drill.

  Those twin boys grew until they began to obtain driver’s licenses, have girlfriends and go places without us on a regular basis. Often I've wondered why they showed little interest in “joining the church” or being baptized.  I would ask and teach but each seemed  ambivalent other than a rather liberal take on religion in general. We have encouraged questions and exploration. We seek each day to ingrain in them a sense of inclusivity and a “cosmo-centric” worldview yet I yearned for the passage into commitment … belief … faith.

  Last year in the midst of a grueling protocol of chemotherapy one son told his mother he’d like to be baptized in the lake my wife called “Heaven Lake”. We have traveled there each year for 12 or 13 years to camp with friends and raft white water. Ironically it started on a church trip. We have continued to go even though the church trips have stopped.

  My wife and her teacher had taught my son to meditate to help him with the side effects. They told him to imagine a place of peace where he felt lifted, calmed … healed. He chose “Dream Lake”.

  Last week we went there and the same man that held them up to the church as infants baptized them in that lake. That man is a friend of mine and I’m afraid I don’t claim many. Twenty or so folks stood on the bank and watched. We sang “Amazing Grace” and a few sang a verse of “We Shall Gather At the River”.

  It wasn’t done at the church we attend in front of that community of faith but I got a feeling God’s ok with it. Some were from the church … some weren’t but we were all in that cathedral of nature.  We were all witness to these youth being washed in the spirit. We are all better for it and once more I was "born again."

Tucker's First Prom

  My son Tucker is on his way to his first prom. I never went to one. I had a date for the senior prom and rented a tux but I sabotaged it and didn't end up going.

  His Mom has made a corsage and shopped with him for clothes and shoes. She does all that kind of stuff. I’m working most of the time. I gave him some money and watched him from afar the days leading up to it like Father’s will do. 

  He’s a handsome fellow and a little full of himself. He’s also altruistic and loving though. I've had a couple of waves of worry about drinking and drugs and such. No matter what I do he will always be my little “ Ta” from two years old. (That’s what he called himself)

  After closing up shop I returned a call I missed from his mother.

  “You missed us. I wanted you to see Tucker before he went,” she chirped.

  “ You took pictures didn't you?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “ Well I can at least see them tonight.”

   We hung up and I went back in to clean up my desk. Suddenly I had this overwhelming desire to talk to him … to hold him. I texted instead so as not to interfere or embarrass him.

  “Make us proud son. I luv u.”

  I filed a few things before leaving. Then I heard the little bloop my phone makes when a text comes in.

“Yes sir. Love you too.”

 I’m not so worried now. I think I’ll leave that on my phone for a while though. 

  

Powerlessness

 When my son was diagnosed with bone cancer about a year and a half ago we entered a world fraught with traps and pitfalls. I walked through a year of chemo and my son withering away with a dream like determination to keep him alive.

  The truth is once western medicine takes over a father is helpless except to clean up the puke and put cold bath cloths on his head. You can joke and be steady but you cannot suffer for them. I have never felt so powerless in my life.

  In order to maintain my sanity, I began to practice meditation, qi qong and tai chi chuan. Chemo ended. He returned to school. I began to fight. Part of me knew that I was doing what I had not been able to do for him.

  I took a Krav Maga class. Often while punching and kicking I would begin to gas so I’d bring childhood cancer to mind. Fury would explode as I lashed out at the helplessness I had felt that year of his torture. I’d see a demon attacking those dear bald children and I would murder it with my fists and knees and elbows.

  Eventually I blew out a shoulder that had been reconstructed years back. I’m back to tai chi and qi qong until I can heal. I know that I’ll go back to fighting though. You see a father who has to watch as his child suffers is like an animal that has been dropped off in a strange land. He does not know how to feed so he does the only thing he can.

  I have always been prone to fight. It has never been like this though. Before it was sport. Now … I seek to destroy something that I cannot touch and can only see with my mind and soul. In the end I am just an animal trying to survive. In the end I am powerless and he still suffers.

  For now there is no more chemo but he is tired and the leg they made for him requires him to use a cane and robs him of dreams. So I’ll continue to fight. I’ll fight till the day I die and maybe then I can be free of this interminable void that grips my heart. Maybe then I’ll be able to feel the true power of God. 

A Night's Rain

  My mind wants to weave in and out of scenes and scenarios that at first seem random.

 Just after dawn, one gray winter morning a few days ago, I sat on the deck behind my house. The cat we call “Rain” had jumped onto my lap and proceeded to kneed my leg, as cats will do. She purred that guttural whir as I softly drew my cupped palm down the length of her satin fur.

  The world was wet from the night’s rain. A dove called in the distance leading me to mindfulness of the bird’s morning symphony.

  I had found Rain one morning in weather much like this damp cold. She appeared near death and drenched, so small my index finger touched my thumb as I grasped around the trunk of her emaciated body.  I placed her on my shoulder. Kitten claws sank into my flesh. I walked the two miles  home grimacing through her panic.

 

  We eventually discovered she had a bad eye. You could'nt tell at first. I learned that animals would abandon offspring sometimes if something is wrong with it.

  She has always been skittish with a tendency to bite or claw out of the blue. I was wondering why she had jumped in my lap. She was looking at me with her now obvious one good eye as if to ask something.

  She reached up with a paw and touched my lips, purring steadily all the while.

 

  “Thank you,” she seemed to say. “Thank you for saving me. I’m healthy and have a good life because you held on to me in my fear and anger. You let me stay even though I attacked you. You did not give up on me so now I am here, beautiful, strong and capable.”

  So I sit here now writing this. I know it’s a stretch but I find it all quite real, you see. It’s as real as the prayer that lives in my heart each day as I reach up to the sky and thank God for saving ME.

The Hem of God

  Chaim lay in a hovel of sticks by the wall near the square. It was just around the corner so that the children would not abuse him. He had once been a shepherd in the hills outside the city. One day while retrieving a stray he had slipped and fallen hard onto a rock. Lying there watching the scudding clouds on a blue canvas of sky he had been overwhelmed with anxiety.

  They had found him there and taken him to a physician who could not help him. Knowing nothing else to do they had taken him outside the city wall, given him some bread and a skin of water and left him there.

  Eventually he had pulled his useless legs along until arriving here at the busy square where he could beg. There was less wind and dust and he had found this hovel. They told him that another crippled beggar  had been found dead there. The body had been buried outside the city.

  Today there was a fever in the air. A rabbi was coming. He claimed to be the Son of God. It was told that he had performed miracles of healing throughout the land. Was this truly the Messiah? Chaim could only query, “What God would have brought  so low?” What could the son of such a God do for him?

 He lay there as the rain reached her cold fingers inside his rags. It ran down his sides until it reached the places where he could feel it no more. He wept into the rain for he was lost and could not find his way. Then in a flash of lightning, shadows exposed,  he knew what he must do.

  Since there had been reports of miracles, he would crawl to the rabbi and ask him to restore his legs so that he might walk again. Dawn broke and the crowds gathered murmuring among themselves. The rabbi came. Chaim pulled himself along through the mud and stone. His neck ached from looking up at the legs and robes, struggling to find his way to the center.

 Some moved to allow his tedious passage, others trod upon his fingers and kicked his ribs but he persevered until he saw Him. He gazed upon this man who claimed to be the Son of God and once again he began to weep. No longer did he weep in self-pity though. He wept for joy because he could see the face of truth.

  He had come to be given his legs. Instead he had found his soul in the eyes of the Savior and he did not need to walk anymore. As the Messiah passed Chaim reached out to touch him craning his neck, extending his body until he could feel the coarse cloth of the rabbi’s simple robe.

  As the crowd surged a sharp pain flashed from his ankle where someone trod. He jumped to his feet to avoid being trampled. That’s when he heard the gasps as others began to murmur, then shout …

 “The cripple walks. It is a miracle.”

  Then he knew. He had wanted to stand like the man he had once been yet at the sight of the Savior, he had surrendered to his plight. In that moment he had been lifted by faith to stand new before God. Hearing their shouts the rabbi glanced back. Chaim looked into His eyes and wept no more.

A Father's Battle

   August 2011 my youngest son was diagnosed with bone cancer. So began a journey into another world.

  Upon arriving home from work, his mother and I stood in the large master bath of our home with the door closed trying to digest what was happening. I’ll always remember stepping to the mirror and looking into my reddened eyes. There stood a pitiable creature. There stood a man powerless to protect his family. There stood a man unable to be a man.  Then I told the tear-stained face, “The fight begins here.” We held each other for a few moments then parted. Each had to gird for battle in their own way.

  The next year was a blur of hospital rooms and “IV s”. Our son wasted away before our eyes as we ministered to him as best we could. We were at war with an enemy that would not come out and face us. It lived in him, a parasite on our lives destroying its “host of innocence.” The “pump of paradox” droned on endlessly delivering the poison that ate away his body in the hope of killing the cancer without killing him. I have since written often of this young warrior that is our son.

 

  Today though, I would like to speak of the fathers. I want you for just a moment to look into the mirror at the pitiable face that ultimately walks the halls of a world that has no place for him.

  When at the children’s hospital I would speak to my fellows. We were like ghosts haunting the fringes of reality. Each day we marched into the world of pain and grief with our bags of hope, days work behind us, to be with our children.

   We were men who could not fight, warriors whose swords slashed at air. Powerlessly weeping in closets of sadness we would rise and go to the foot of their beds to watch them fitfully sleep in a balled up stupor.

  Having gone to sea as a youth, I know the vast emptiness of an ocean. Yet that ocean breathed. This sea of doubt only suffocates courage until what remains is a robot of determined love.

  I tell you this only to shine a light on those invisible men lying there in the dark listening to the chemo pump.  I want to tell them that they are not alone. I need them to know that I see them there and I love them each and every one.

  Things may not be ok but no matter what happens, we will endure. We will be there like the fathers before us for time eternal because in the end it is simply where we belong.

  For now things are better. His hair has grown back and he goes to school. He attends parties, laughs and has rejoined his fellows. Often though,  in the photos his mother is always taking of the children and I see his fatigue.

  This is not a battle that ends. We march onward into time knowing that each moment is a gift. Each day the fathers gird for a battle that they cannot win. Each day they listen to the God they deem Holy and hope … hope for new beginnings. Hope … for all the children and all the days ahead.

Amen.