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Monday, 29 December 2008

My Father’s Lessons

By Brent Green of Boomers blog

The autumnal prairie was where I began to understand him: vast, open spaces and dry wind cascading through tall grasses and flint hills; railroad tracks piercing sunset, taking you forever away to where you want to be; the stoic determination of hardened, heartland people, meticulously vulnerable.

My father.

While walking among tombstones in a cemetery near my home, Dad kept leaning over my shoulder to remind me of his coaching. He asked me to reflect upon his thundering lectures that I had mistakenly interpreted in childhood as nothing more than harsh corrections.

He told me to consider the superiority of dreams and invention over accumulation and wealth. Or gently he nudged me to deepen my perspective of moral rectitude supplanting self-serving gain – the victory in not compromising, that particular power of duty.

Lastly, he required me to grasp the ultimate confrontation with mortality and to possess for myself his stubborn unwillingness to live passively when all the active living had been done - better not to live at all. Let me go, he said.

My lessons.

There can never be completion when a man’s father dies. The unresolvable conflicts. The lingering unworthiness. The profound gratitude. These notions survive.

His name was Gilbert Green, a compact, taut, bronzed man with twinkling sky-blue eyes, born in the harsh high plains of western Kansas. He had only one brother who was eighteen months older.

Dad grew up humbly, sometimes suffering with stoic resignation the second-class status of the second-born son. But the Green brothers were an indomitable team, working their chores and fighting their bullies during an unsympathetic time to grow up, of world wars and economic depression.

He fought his battles, first during World War II in the South Pacific as a cryptographic technician – a Japanese code breaker – and then later as a career employee for the Federal Housing Administration.

One indelible lesson passed from him to me was intolerance of political gamesmanship and the unethical decision-making that often follows. I can see him now, red-faced and lit up, pacing the length of his living room, fury spewing over manipulation of laws to serve bureaucrats rather than taxpayers.

Work for yourself, he would often caution me. This would be his lifelong dream – to launch a real estate company with his son helping him build an empire. Instead, he punched the civil service time clock for thirty-five years, waking more days than not with resignation to finish what he had started. He had chosen his path during a time of deprivation; the answer always was unwavering duty to your choices.

I remember one day when he took me aside to tell me about a get-rich scheme. It was a period of quickening baby boomer fads, with a succession of smash-hit products sweeping the nation, from hula-hoops to silly putty.

In the garage one day he spoke guardedly to me about a popular toy from his childhood that had been lost to history. He then showed me an old wooden top with a metal tip that he had dug out of a forgotten steamer trunk. By wrapping a string just so around the top and then flinging it with exacting wrist action, you could make the top dance with ferocity. Dad saw it as the next big boomer craze.

Born with the grit and vision of an entrepreneur, he nevertheless did not also have the willingness to take significant financial risks with limited financial holdings. Bringing his spinning top to market would have required considerable venture capital. He eventually let the dream whither feeling, I am sure, inadequate to tackle the complexities of national new-product marketing.

Dad’s after-retirement dreams were of great escapes where my mother and he might board a silver recreational vehicle and roll into sunset. He wanted nothing fancy or luxurious for himself, just the peace of an open road and the adventure of another turn.

My chronically ill mother dissuaded bold expeditions with her delicate health. He resigned himself instead to fish alone for bass in Shawnee Lake, floating above his dreams in a small silver rowboat.

Smell the roses, son, he often cautioned, as he watched me pushing rashly through the years, head pressed to the proverbial grindstone. He had a clear understanding of mortality, the brevity of our days and, even more elusively, those fleeting moments of joy. I always thought this to be an ironic caution from a man who answered the irritating shout of obligation more frequently than the alluring whisper of fulfillment.

The years passed with him spending many hours asleep in front of the television. Routine had its predictable, tranquillizing effect, but deep within remained lingering, unsatisfied fervor. Every spring he awoke from his trance to march into the Kansas state legislature where he fought to protect retired federal employees and their civil service pensions from political capriciousness. In those times when his quick reason and fiery arguments filleted elected thieves, he was never more alive.

As a son searches through the years with only memories to mine, he often uncovers golden nuggets left behind from the man who gave him life. Decades of discussion, telephone calls, and fatherly advice reduce to a few simple aphorisms or an overworked cliché.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone, he advised. This was his lesson of perseverance, and never has a man lived with more devotion to his beliefs and values.

His health failed for several years, the inexorable spiral from independence to assisted living, from hospitals to a nursing home. A mild heart attack one morning was all he needed to let go of the reins and in four excruciating months, he passed through the final stages of dependency. After two days of labored breathing, he released his last breath as a gasp and then a resigned sigh.

Gilbert Green now marches decisively through prairie fields, an infinite sea of swaying tall grass, a 16-gauge shotgun snugly under his left arm. Perhaps Uncle Gary is within reach of his shrill whistle should he stumble upon a covey of quail or launch a prairie chicken into frenetic flight.

He strides briskly, a bounce in each step. He is in control of this forever moment – no strings attached to lesser bosses or circumstances that prohibited him from achieving all his dreams. Perhaps parked in the background sits a rolling silver hotel under my mother’s control, simple but comfortable. He is seeing the world as he did during life: for what it gives rather than what it takes.

This, I finally understand.

[EDITORIAL NOTE: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. Instructions are here.]

Posted by Ronni Bennett at 02:30 AM | Permalink | Email this post