The Confidence of Hindsight
Yesterday I wrote about the transition phase between the new and the established, childhood and adulthood, so to speak, about change and moving on.
There is an important middle phase, which we call adolescence when we’re talking about our physical growth. This is less frequently explored than the new and established phases, a less comfortable, transitory world.
In adolescence, we are often feeling our way, and learning which inner voice to listen to – the voice of our emerging self and wisdom, or the one that’s an echo of old habits or other people’s viewpoints.
From the standpoint of 2010, and the story told in My Father’s House, I can say I’m glad I followed my own compass when it came to my relationship with my father in his last years.
My Father’s House – Part 2
Continued from Part 1
When we were young, my sisters and I sometimes sat with him when he burned the insulation off short ends of scrap wire, cleaning it up to sell the copper. The fire burned in bright, strange colors, blue, green and pink. Time, then, moved slower and the parent-child boundary was not so unyielding. Around the fire we could ask him almost anything about the nature of life and the universe. He gave answers illustrated with his experiences and deep thought. That was a long time ago, long before I became aware of the world as a metaphor, before I knew what it was like to have a conversation with anyone called a spiritual teacher, or could recognize wisdom when I heard it.
The nature of the universe is change, my teachers said, and I believed that was true. Now I feel its reality and know that belief is a poor cousin to experience. This new experience, watching a parent age, is a little more complicated than navigating the new menu at the local Coney where I eat breakfast on weekends.
When you get into “middle age,” you begin to feel your place in the universe, like literally standing on a giant wheel, slow and massive, turning almost imperceptibly. Glance over one shoulder, see youth snapping up behind. Ahead stand older people where the wheel is moving up and up, fading into a misty unknown.
No, I wouldn’t want to go back to an earlier time, even if I could. Still, sometimes, I wish the Coney would bring back the old breakfast specials, and autumn nights would bring back fires in a pile of scrap wire.
By the time I get to Coldwater, only 20 miles more to go. Farmland stretches for miles around here. Somebody’s just made their last hay of the summer and baled it in rectangular bales. I look twice. Those bales are uncommon now, old fashioned. Nowadays you see the round ones. They’re less work and they can be stored outdoors.
Down the road the irony zinged me. I notice I’ve gotten used to seeing the round ones.
Soon I’m coming around the corner and I’m on my father’s road. The top of his house is easy to see, a landmark above the full grown corn, but black stains streak the siding in places. He liked building, not maintaining.
I get there first, thankful I’m the early one. I have his time to myself before the others come. I knock on the door, remind myself to breathe, then walk in, to meet the old and new in contrast, and be at peace.
Sometimes we do learn to appreciate the good things before they’re gone.
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Looking back at those days, from the standpoint of years gone by, I’m glad I made the effort, and listened to my own voice when it came to my father’s last years.
You can enjoy the time you have, and know that when things change, you did right by yourself and others.
In the end it does come down to what you believe. If you think there’s something more, are you trying hold on to things that have run their course and want to move on, or trying to force them to stay put?
Can a child in any sense (human, business or organization) stay that way forever, or must it my nature move on to another level, even if the path is rocky and uncertain?
The answer seems inevitable.
