The Quest

(The "Difficult Splendor" thread is going off-line for a few. But it will be back...)

I wrote my dad a note on Father's Day telling him how much I love and appreciate him. I also raised a few questions in the note - not as in "please answer these and get back with me," but rather, "these are some things I wonder about, dad."

When you were 40, in those still moments of the night, when you couldn't sleep, did you -
*Toss and turn over where the money was going to come from to pay your bills? Did you want more money?

*Wrestle with being a good father and husband? What did you use to evaluate yourself in those areas?

*Consider quitting your job and taking off after some dream? Walk away from the church and raise horses?

*Ponder whether your marriage would last? Did you look across the bed and wonder who this other person was?

*Work tirelessly at something, only to see it fail? Did you shrug it off or did it paralyze you for months?

*Feel connected to your sons? Did you want to enter their world, but didn't always know how? Did they scare you?

*Dream about other lives you might have lived, had you made different decisions? Did you ever tell anybody about that?

*Notice your body growing older, thicker, slower? Did you look at boys in their 20s and wish to be young again?

*Need to ask questions about God and faith and providence and sin? And if so, did you ever ask them?

*Want to get in a fight - just to feel what it felt like?

*Wonder whether other women noticed you?

Yeah, I know - these questions say a lot more about me than they do my dad. However, unless he's some alien from another galaxy, there must be some common ground there, some flesh-and-blood feelings and questions that all men ask of themselves. There is a part of me that wishes I'd have been interested in these things in my teens or 20s. But there's no way that would have been possible - I hadn't lived long enough for those questions to have any substance. They would have been asked prematurely and the answers would have been a mere exchange of information. In your 30s, you're so damn busy with getting started with job, wife, children, car payments, mortgages, exercise, etc., that questions like these hover around you like flies, but you swat them away. Ole' rabbit from the Pooh series - "busy, busy, busy."

But things begin slowing somewhat in your 40s, on several levels, and you start really pondering things. At least I am. You've had enough time to disappoint some people, betray some friends, lose some things dear to your heart, switch jobs, sire some kiddos, and really start being married. In other words, you've got a context for questions like these - they are much more than just letters and words. They're questions, with the emphasis on "quest" - the search, the longing.

I guess a bottom-line here is that I want to know more of my dad, maybe in hopes of knowing more of me. Because as different as we are, we're not really that different. Mike and The Mechanics sing a favorite song of mine entitled "The Living Years." One line especially haunts me - "I wasn't there the morning when my father passed away. I didn't get to tell him, all the things I had to say." Dear God, I want some time with my dad. Not to tell him all the things I have to say, but to ask him a few questions and listen. And hopefully, learn. I wonder if he wants the same from me?