Reliving Moments with Dad

Two weeks is the longest I have ever been away from Jenn and Jack.  As I come up on the two week bench mark I feel imminently weaker and anxious.  Something hit me the other day as I was chatting with Jenn.  She had told me about how she had been singing one of the catchy Irish tunes I used to sing when Jack was a little baby to calm him down.  He ran under the table and started crying “Daddy, hold you!” (his way of telling me to hold him).

It tore at me.  I had so many thoughts and emotions at that moment that I didn’t even realize I had dammed up.

Dad at our wedding

My mind flashed back to when I was sitting in the passenger seat next to my dad.  We were coming back from fathers and sons outing and were driving our green Ford Explorer. I sat there in my swimsuit still and was looking for a way to relax.  I undid my seat belt to get more comfortable. 

In a sudden moment of panic, I saw my dad yell to me to hold on.  I remember looking out my open window and seeing the road above the creek eroding around our tires.  Everything went dark and then I found myself laying in the creek 20 meters below.  I remember seeing the wrecked explorer and then seeing my dad hollering to see if I could stand.  I remember trying to act tough, saying I was alright, but as soon as I tried to stand up, my body crumbled under the weight of itself.  My back had been bruised and I couldn’t stand.

My dad was beat up pretty badly too, but he picked me up and trudged us both up to the road. I will always remember that.  It haunted me years later as I wanted so badly to lift my father as he fought years of unemployment and later pancreatic cancer that took him 3 years ago on the first of October.

I didn’t feel like crying that day. I was bawling a week later as I told Jenn how much I missed my dad, but at that moment, I felt numb and my world went gray, just blending with that cloudy October day. I remember getting confused looks from work colleagues as I showed up to my office to write the next day.  I wrote and wrote, I talked to friends and wrote some more.  I wanted to work for a long time thinking that it would bring color back into my life.

Me and Dad

5 months later I would become a dad myself and my relationship with my dad would almost miraculously be reborn.  As I've held my son on my shoulders, I would blink and remember me sitting on my father’s shoulders as we hiked around the Grand Canyon.  As I wrestled my son, I would remember so fondly our daily skirmishes even when he got old.  Flashbacks come so often as I watch how my son interacts with others…how much it hurts to see older kids ignore him and push him away.  Dad cherished us and wanted us all to succeed.  It truly broke his heart to see us getting rejected or hurt.  I remember when he held me after the wreck he just carried me as tears streaked down his face thinking that I was badly hurt.  

I often think of my relationship with my father being very similar to that of my Heavenly Father.  My brothers and sister will all give you their own stories about who their father was to them, but he was different to all of us.  We had deeply personal relationships with him.  It seems as though there is an entire world in my mind of memories, coaching, profusely long lectures, and experiences with my dad. He knew he had to be deeply personal to make us the best we could possibly be.  In my world with dad, he was tough, he was ready to rough me up after I got back from school rather than asking me how my day was (he spoke my language fluently). He knew I had energy to spare and pushed me to

Fishing with Dad

expend it on building myself and others. He was my workmate and some of my favorite times were either out in Cedar Haven or in the field working him. He was my morning buddy at the crack of dawn with a smile on his face ready to go workout…man that guy loved mornings as much as my lil buddy Jack does!  It is funny though, because out of all of the kids, I should have been one of the hardest for him to understand.  I was always running away looking for adventure and I was an extrovert to a fault.  Dad was always a homebody and introverted, and somehow I always managed to slip through his fingers and sleep over at the cousins, run away to the hut, stay over at a friends or just run away for work in Washington and Arizona.  I don’t think it surprised him when I got home from the mission and the first week was already applying for the Marine Corps officer candidate school.  I spent the next few years in Idaho, California, and Virginia along with a study abroad trip around Europe just for good measure. I know it stressed my dad out and he never got used to it.  Even when I was a kid he asked why I didn’t just have my friend’s parents adopt me.  One thing I do know is that we stayed close through it all.  He always told me how proud he was of me and he saw how much I thrived when I was in new environments with new people.  He didn’t slow me down or reign me in however much his instincts were screaming to, but he did miss me.  I look at my son and he is as much as “a goin' concern” as I was.  It will be payback when I'll be missin my buddy Jack as he experiences the world without me.   

When I did get home, dad was deep and expected me to find out who I was.  Casual conversations didn’t really fly in my home and they often got serious quick. He wanted to instill a moral code in us not by forcing us to abide by strict standards that the “church” set, but by questioning in ourselves why it was it was important.  I have watched many of my associates flounder in some of the basic principles and morals that lead to happiness and I personally believe that it is because they never found their “why”.

Dad was my advocate in a million ways.  He was always talking me up to people telling them that I was twice as fast as the competition, I was ten times stronger than any kid he knew, and smarter than a whip. It really embarrassed me to no end and there were several times where I called him out, but he never stopped…. He saw how much he had helped build me up over the years. 

Last family photo with dad

I was his "steel man" and no one could say otherwise!  I laugh now because I have a wife that does the same dang thing he did.  She won’t stop telling people how amazing, how romantic, how smart, how loving, how patient her husband is no matter how many times I pinch her and tell her to cut it out.  She acts like it’s her first date with the guy of her dreams most times we are together…and she knows I’m crazy about her and it has made all the difference in everything I do in life.  It would seem that this would be a huge confidence booster and give me a big head, but I think it has often just been extremely motivating knowing that I have someone that thinks the world of me.  Most times it is actually pretty humbling trying to live up to that. (If she reads this, she still needs to hold back out there in Montana on telling people too much about me because I end up getting treated like a celebrity and it becomes a bit of a letdown when they find out I’m a pretty simple guy—She’s a bit of story teller sometimes).  

 

October 1^st 2016 isn’t as cloudy a day.  It is the rainy season here in Rwanda and it poured last night without stop, but the clouds dispersed to give us lots of sunshine and color.  I would say that fatherhood has brought its weight in color and perspective as well.  It has only enhanced a relationship that I thought would be put on hold until the next life.  So, now I wait anxiously to meet my little girl who is perpetually kicking and twirling in Jenn’s womb.  I wait for the next flash of color and learning that will come.
  

I don’t write this to tell you I miss my dad.  I don’t want to aggrandize beyond what he was either.  It simply isn’t real to me.  He had some real struggles and I watched him in some of his low moments.  I watched how much it hurt when he didn’t have work and Jenn knows that I don’t do well without work either.  I watched as his body was eaten away by cancer…trying to joke with him and playing guitar by his bed side.   I write this to say that I relive our moments almost daily without realizing it and it brings fulfillment and life into my soul.  Every time I go out to the bush, I remember dad sitting next to me as a kid, on my first trip to Africa, living my pivotal moment that led to a lifelong passion and ambition to get back.  As I work with farmers in East Africa, I see my dad on a tractor or I hear him telling me about how many rows of beats he could hoe in a day (it was one of the few things he ever bragged about and it always made me laugh).  Whenever I hold my son and feel how stocky he is, I remember I wasn’t much of a featherweight back in my day either as dad hoisted me up. 

It’s always been hard for me to get mad at Jack for the little tricks he pulls because I quickly remember I was a little trickster too and often hid in the corner when I knew I was in trouble.  I remember tough times where dad still wanted so badly to give us the world and my moments become a little less tough. As an inheritance, dad passed on more than money and material things, he passed on a vivid and real way of living.  He helped me find deeper meaning in life, pushed me to find my passions, and taught me to find true love in life by giving it freely.