COME WITH ME ON A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

Are We There Yet, Dad?
Some of my favorite childhood memories are of summer family road trips with my dad and mom. Dad's varied occupations - first as a college campus ministry director, later as a writer, editor, and publisher, and finally as a priest in the Orthodox Church - required him to travel quite a bit.  

Dad brought the whole family along as often as he could. I recall tooling down Route 66, my dad at the wheel, my mom beside him, with my siblings and me crammed in the backseat.  We kids didn't quite understand the nostalgia of that old highway; we just wanted to get to our destination as soon as possible.

Our impatience would lead to a predictable question: "Are we there yet, Dad?" His truthful, yet disappointing answer in the negative would prompt us to take turns needling him every ten minutes or so, "How much longer until we get there?" - to which he'd finally announce with authority, "Okay, kids, it's time to play The Quiet Game!"

A Final Journey
To my regular readers, it might seem as if I've been playing "The Quiet Game" for the past few weeks, but the reason I've been absent from the world of blogging is that I was on another journey with my dad.  Our last one together on this earth.

In June, Dad was told by his doctors that after thirteen years his metastatic melanoma cancer had returned, was already in stage 4, and was untreatable.

My siblings and I immediately flew out to the Midwest to be with my parents.  I think those days in the hospital were some of the most loving, blessed, and bittersweet moments we have ever had together as a family - full of thanksgiving, tears, hugs, and kisses.

I know a question we all wanted to ask was, "How much longer until we get there, Dad?" Just a week later, Dad was moved to a beautiful hospice facility, and on July 1 we accompanied him to the Gates of Heaven, praying and singing hymns at his bedside.  It was a peaceful moment that I'll never forget.

Measuring Time
A couple of years ago, I came across and saved a tender perspective on the subject of loss, which brought me comfort in facing my father's death.  It’s from Wendell Berry’s book, Andy Catlett, Early Travels.

In this affectionate, fictionalized memoir, Andy (as an elderly narrator and the main character) looks back on his boyhood in rural Kentucky, and reflects on all the family and friends who have been part of his life.

The author, in one of his most poignant passages, describes how time is halved, and how the past and future are not only divided, but connected, by the present moment:

Time is always halved...by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present. Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting them, is eternal...We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. For time is told also by life.  As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome...time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, which is always present.  Time, then, is told by love’s losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost.  It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn welcomed into the womb.  The great question for the old and dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful for love received and given, however much.  No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.

While my Dad was in the hospital, I experienced this unique aspect of measuring time not just by death, but by birth, with the present moment dividing and connecting the past and the future.  My daughter, Mary, pregnant with her first child, brought a framed ultrasound picture of her unborn baby to my dad, in order to introduce her grandfather to his first great-grandchild and newest namesake, "Peter".

In grateful silence and awe, I watched as my daughter hugged my dad, and several realizations hit me:  hadn't it been just an "eye blink" ago that my daughter was a baby being introduced to her grandpa?  Now here she was, a grown woman and wife, soon to become a mother, and my first grandchild, still in utero, was present with us as a fourth generation of our family.

On July 1, 2012, my dad passed away amid tearful hugs and goodbyes, and my grandson will soon be born and welcomed with gentle kisses and hellos.  One journey is completed and a new one will begin...

ROBERT McCLOSKEY: A SHY AUTHOR FROM SMALL-TOWN AMERICA

I just started a novel by Wendell Berry (thanks Corinne!) about a young boy in the 1940's who travels by himself on a bus to go visit his grandparents, who live about 10 miles away, in rural Ohio. He's looking back on this experience as an older man and nostalgically recalls: "It was as though a curtain had fallen on a stage and the credulous audience (I, that is to say) was now in a different world from the one I had waked up in only a short time ago. The world I was in now was an older one that had been in existence a long time, though it would last only a few more years. The time was about over when a boy traveling into the Port William community might be met by a team of mules and a wagon...I knew well at that time that the two worlds existed and that I lived in both...That the worlds were in mortal contention had never occurred to me. When in a few years one had entirely consumed the other, so that no place anywhere would ever again be satisfied to be what it was, I was surprised, and I am more surprised now by the rapidity of the change than I was then. In only a few years the world of pavement, speed, and universal dissatisfaction had extended itself into nearly every place and nearly every mind, and the old world of a mule team and wagon was simply gone, leaving behind it a scatter of less and less intelligible relics."

Robert McCloskey also wrote about this time era and he definitely explored the same rapidity of change in his children's books. Born in 1914, in a small Ohio town, McCloskey wrote and illustrated stories that reflect a simpler time. He often said he didn't know anything about children's literature. "I think in pictures," he said. "I fill in between pictures with words. My first book I wrote in order to have something to illustrate."

His first book, LENTIL (for ages 6-10), is about a boy in a small town in Ohio during the 1940's, who cannot sing (or even whistle), but learns to play a harmonica and saves the day when a grumpy old man tries to ruin the town's homecoming celebration. HOMER PRICE (for ages 6-10)is a collection of 6 stories, also about a small-town boy. In one of the stories, a crowd gathers to watch as shy Homer - who works at his uncle's coffee shop - turns out thousands of donuts from his uncle's newfangled automatic donut machine. The book is a funny, charming look at unhurried life in 1940's America as it slowly experiences the changes being brought about by modern machinery and ideas.

Another endearing story, this time set in the big city of Boston, is MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS (for ages 4-8). This gently told tale of duck parents searching for a safe home to bring up their children, is bound to connect with your child (and they'll love memorizing all the ducklings names). Lots of landmarks in Boston are shown, often from a flying duck's-eye view. When we traveled with our children to Boston years ago, we went to Boston's Public Gardens and saw bronze statues of Mother Mallard and the 8 ducklings, as well as Swan Boats mentioned in the book! (yes, you can still ride in them.)

BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL, though, is my all time favorite McCloskey book! I loved the illustrations and the "kerplunk, kerplunk" of the blueberries hitting the bottom of Sal's pail (well, they're in the bottom until she eats them!) In the story, Sal and her mother are in search of blueberries at the same time as a mother bear and her cub. This story is sweetly and humorously told, as Sal and the cub wander off and absentmindedly trail behind the wrong mothers!

In this time, with all our rapid changes in technology and communication, I know you'll enjoy reading these stories with your children of a simpler, slower-paced life, where community, family, and responsibility are honored and cherished. (And you might also look into the book I'm reading, ANDY CATLETT, EARLY TRAVELS by Wendell Berry.)