Lessons from my Father

It is a wise father who knows his child. But maybe it's a very wise child who takes time to know his father.

 ~ Anonymous

I spent a week with my dad, on purpose, and if you would have told me 5 years ago that I would have done that I would have thought you daft.

All I can say is that I am grateful for growth and time passing because had I not done just that, spent a week with him, I would have been much worse for wear and much impoverished to the knowlege that I do, in fact, have great respect for him.

Just days before Mom died she asked me a great favor. She knew when she asked just how much of a favor it was because, at that point I knew little of my father. She was the go between; the stabilizer of my father's and I relationship. I don't think, up to that time in my life, my father and I had ever shared a meaningful conversation. Mom was insistent that I promise, she even pulled the adage about a son is a son BS and she knew, that I take care of him. I think as I look back now, that she had little time left. She knew even more that a promise to her meant something and I wasn't leaving that hospital room without making that promise to her. I did. She thanked me and then whispered the words, "you will thank me someday."

Thank-you Mom, thank you.

GL is a man of mystery. To some, he is a world traveller, to others, a great teacher and learner and to even more and egnima. To me, he was absent, quite literally M.I.A. most of my life. For a long time I resented the hell out of him for it. Now, especially after this last week, I understand and in a deep and abiding sense, I am grateful. His absense had purpose. That's probablly the deepest and closest I will get to writing why.

Dad is being honored this year by the provincial government with it's highest honor. I decided, when Jack D sent me his initial application for the honor that I didn't know Dad at all. I made a promise to myself to try and get to know him. He was 82 at the time and every year we have him is a gift. It was time to let my anguish go and find him, to get to know him and learn why my mother loved him so much. It was that reason I asked him to come live with me when he is in town, it's that reason why I incessantly bug him with question after question, it is that reason why he has to ask me to put the camera down as I try and document him in my life through thousands of pictures that I am trying to catch up in taking.

A week in his home town of his youth, asking him about his growing years gave me an insight only two people sharing a journey by relation can have. Some day, when my grandchildren sit on my knee and ask me about Great Grandpa L I will have stories now. I have a love for him that I never would have had without a promise to a dying Mom.

Walking the peir on the harbour Great Grandpa L and Great Great Grandpa L moored their tug boats out of gave me the courage to ask the hard questions and to be open to even harder answers. Going up to Forbidden Plateau, Grandpa L's playground of his teens and hearing of his adventures and his budding love for the earth (he's a geologist) is a cherished and honored memory. Sharing the heartaches of his early years and understanding his nature because of it and his honor to parents who changed, maybe a touch late but changed all the same gave me the hope that change, even late, is worth it.

My song lives and breaths on the shores of the Georgia Straight, on the pier of Comox, on the boardwalk of Paradise Meadows, the Coutney River estuary pathway marked with the history of my family. I am L, and I am Horne, and McNiven and Patterson, and Wallace and Brown. Every blood relation I have in me brings to me a strength and a wisdom and honor I am coming to cherish deeply.

I will share one story and save the rest for those beautiful conversations I will have with M and C and the others waiting the wings to join us.

I asked Dad about his favorites, one he spoke of was his aunts in England.  I asked him, "why were they his favorites?". He said because they were strong and courageous women. All lived to their 100's, were widows for a very long time. He said, in my Mom, he found those very same traits and it was the reason he choose her, loved her, and missed so much.

I said; "I hope someday that my family will talk of me in that way," he muttered something, I think I know what he said, but if I have but an ounce of my mothers traits and even the great aunties I have never met running though me, there is hope.

I owe Mom so much for her insight into a promise. I have found in GL greatness I never knew was there.