This episode is about the grown-ups who were my children. The title is from an old nursery rhyme. In this life we all have many roads to travel and so, I call the episode,
A couple of months ago I got a request from my daughter, Kate. All three of my children are, let’s be nice and say, unusual. Since mine is the only genetic material they have in common, then Mea Culpa…my fault. Kate sent me a phrase in French and she wanted me to copy it in my handwriting.
If you have ever seen my handwriting you know that this story is already off kilter. The phrase translated as “Never forget who you are”. It was something I said to her, in English, every time she left my house or my supervision. It was so common that once, when she and a friend were getting in a car to go to a movie, I repeated the phrase, “Never forget who you are”. The car moved back in the driveway and stopped. Her friend opened the passenger door, stood up in the driveway and said, “Tell me, too!”
When I asked Kate to explain why she wanted me to write the phrase, she told me that it meant so much that she was going to get a tattoo of it on her arm and wanted it in my handwriting.
While I am of a generation that does not understand tattoos, my children are not of that generation and I have learned to cope. I have also learned that to know when I am being honored.
For Fathers’ Day, I got a pen from my older son, Case. It was one of those ballpoints designed to for astronauts and popularly called a “Space Pen”. Evidently ink does not flow in zero gravity like it does on planet earth. The Russian cosmonauts solved the problem by using pencils. I am sure that they were mechanical pencils so there was not the problem of where to empty the pencil sharpener.
We can’t have space guys, Russian or not, with wood shavings all over their pants and with their hands covered with black graphite. It does happen. Miss Armstrong almost sent me home from fourth grade because of the awful mess I had made emptying the pencil sharpener into a headwind.
As usual, I let myself stray from the topic. They call it “Birdwalking” in education. I think it should be called “soaring”. But back to the story of the pen.
Americans never choose a $2.00 pencil when we can spend two million developing a cosmic ballpoint pen. The pen is not flashy. It is not rocket shaped and there are no flashing lights. It doesn’t even have Bluetooth. It is slim and silver and classic in form. The key to its success is that it will write upside down or underwater or in orbit. I believe what the pamphlet says although I have not taken it in deep enough water to test it, I can’t afford to ride a space Tesla and while the pen may be able to write upside down, I don’t believe I can.
You can see why I like it though. I would feel unpatriotic not to want a pen developed by NASA. What you can’t see, is why I love it.
There is, on the barrel just below the pocket clip, a tiny engraving of a turkey. Just a turkey, no engraved motto, no wise words, no personalized initials.
It is a turkey dredged in history and deep fried in meaning. Case and his sister, Kate, spent their growing-up years a continent away from me. A couple of weeks in the summer and an occasional Christmas were our only times together.
When Case turned thirteen, a lovely age for both parents and children, he decided he wanted to come back to Fort Mill and live with me and Cheryl and our younger son, Michael. He and I were a rock and hard place. Everyone had to learn new rules and all of us struggled. The problem was not love, we had plenty of that. The problem was that neither of us really knew each other.
Case was starting high school in a town he barely remembered. He faced all the problems a thirteen-year-old faces in a new home environment. Thirteen is a time of first romances and first heartbreaks. Case was no exception. He met a girl who he liked and invited her to a movie. Since thirteen-year-olds can’t drive, they must suffer the humiliation of going everywhere with a parent. They decided to meet at the movie and I drove Case there and let him off. I am sure that on the drive to Rock Hill he was forced to listen to the wisdom only a father can inflict on a son.
Our kids don’t know that we worry about them as they make every step into unknown territory. We remember the awful insecurity of growing up…of becoming independent and we want life to treat our children more gently in matters of the heart.
Case was to call me when the movie was over. It was still a time when phones were attached by cable to the wall. When the phone rang forty-five minutes after I got home, I didn’t expect to hear Case’s voice. He was ready to come home, he told me. The girl hadn’t shown up and I could hear the disappointment over the phone.
None of us like rejection but we learn to handle it. Rejection for a young teen is not about one girl failing to show up…it feels like all girls will fail to show up.
We rode home in quiet. I stumbled through “More fish in the sea,” and “There will be lots more chances,” but they are cold comfort to a young vulnerable heart and so I eventually drove the car and wanted to strangle the girl who didn’t show.
We were traveling on I-77 and nearing the Fort Mill exit when, standing at the edge of the highway, a turkey gobbler, fully puffed out and tail spread, proclaimed himself to the world.
It was startling, and funny and for a few welcome moments, distracting. We laughed together and remembered how wondrous our world could be. I blurted out one of the most foolish things I have ever said. “Just when things seem as bad as they can get, God puts a turkey beside the road.”
It became our Mantra. When we talked and one of us was feeling the weight of life pressing us down, the other would recite our mantra and we would feel loved and cared for.
It took me a moment when he gave me the pen to realize its significance. It will take more than a lifetime to forget it.
We say, over and again, “It’s the thought that counts”. I don’t believe that. Thinking about doing something good or kind or right does not make it happen. I wish the saying were, “It’s the memory that counts.”
As parents we are all failures on a daily basis. Throughout life, no matter how hard we wish otherwise, trouble comes to us and to our children.
The things that become a part of us, that resonate through the years, are often the seemingly insignificant moments that take root in our souls and sometimes break the surface of our consciousness when we don’t, for a moment, remember who we are.
Cheryl and I had dinner with my younger son, Michael and his wife Elizabeth last night and we talked about the troubles, big and small that we all have to endure. As I get older, I worry more and more about the future. Michael, with a wisdom of his own, reminded me of the movie, Any Given Sunday and a speech by Al Pacino as the coach. He talked about football and about life and how important it is to live in the present.
“That’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face.”
So choose your antidote; Turkeys or tattoos or football. We take small moments of insight, tiny epiphanies, and we use them as fuel to take the next step, and then the next.
Sunday, July 24, my father would have turned 99. He left me with so many words of wisdom and even more jokes, puns and stories. I have tried to pass them along to my children, my grandchildren and to you.
Happy heavenly birthday, Dad. And just so you know, I still try to part my hair like Gene Autry.
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