Dear Dad...letters from afar...

Dear Dad,
With me it’s always the starting that proves difficult. I’ve laid awake nights just contemplating this moment. Where to begin? How to turn on the tap and let it all come streaming out? Maybe if I knew the secret of keeping the channels open, if I didn’t wander off so easily about my own business I wouldn’t find myself having to write at all. Writing is for the far off isn’t it. Writing is for holidays: “Wish you were here…weather fine…food reasonable…flight abominable…sun hot…sea wet…home soon…love, Pete.” Writing is for business: “Please find enclosed my return of the 5th inst…yours as in the third party…faithfully (but never quite sincerely) yours, P. Hardy (Peter Hardy, BA, Cert.Ed. RSA Typing/Shorthand, Cycling Proficiency Badge, Leaping Wolf and St. John’s First Aid Certificate.) Writing is for the poor in speech and weak of heart: “I’m writing because I find it so hard to say just what I mean…and to mean just what I say...hoping this hits the mark…gets me off the hook…saves me the tears…shores up my pride…with love (and hoping it somehow might just bounce back), Pete.
I could have called. That’s it, I could have called. What would it take? A minute or two out of the day? It’s like clearing up the backlog of washing and ironing. What kind of commitment does it take? A little here, a little there. But no! Once a week or so I make true pilgrimage to the basket. Not the passing acknowledgement of the pile’s presence. Not the “Well there it is, a bit done now will save all that bother later.” Never let it be said that I don’t know how to chill out, hang out and leave out. The job grows with each passing nod to the need. The thing with pilgrimages is that they seem to require of us something more than the truly, deeply madly, passionately, lovingly lived life. A pilgrimage calls out for careful arrangements to be made. There’s a pre-planned cleansing of the soul, a kind of spiritual deck clearing in readiness for an out-of-the-ordinary but in-body experience. This will require effort. This will demand sacrifice. Martyrdom (of a thankfully temporary nature) may well be on the cards and even dealt onto the table in self-gratifying view of others. So there we are – once in a while I set to with a vengeance. I feed the cleansing mill with days and days of accumulated muck, drape every available radiator with the drying out (pilgrimages seem often to be accompanied by inclement weather – heightens the sense of personal cost) and cry (poor tortured soul) as I take the steep learning curve associated with ironing when more regular practice with fewer articles could have by now delivered to me a Master’s Degree in the mystic art of getting the sleeves right.
Ah yes. I could have called. I could have simply made a little effort, picked up the phone and saved myself the postage, the walk to the post box and the hours spent wondering what kind of look there would be on your face when you read what I finally plucked up the courage to write.
“Dear Dad…” I’ve spent nights tossing and turning. I mean, I’m a dad too. I know what it is to hope for, long for, ache for dad-kid stuff. (Keep this to yourself, but I do sometimes wish that there might be a bit more two way traffic in this family business. I have paid the dues, bought the rights and all that.) I suppose this comes as a bit rich now doesn’t it? A quick poke at the delete key could save a bit of personal embarrassment between us. It just strikes me that perhaps you haven’t slept much either over the years. Sometimes it feels that I never quite manage to slumber or sleep where my own kids are concerned.
Do you know? I think things are a spot better already. “Dimidium facti qui coepit habet” (thanks Horace.) Here I am, maybe for the first time really trying to get through to you. Perhaps a bit of gratitude is called for? Not from you but from me. I did get your letters by the way. I kept a bit quiet about it at the time but I was thankful for the helping hand you gave from time to time. Truth be told, I think that it was more than from time to time. I think you even boasted about me a bit from what I gather (that tended to get back to me from others rather than direct from you to me but then again, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.) Well thanks anyway. No really. Thanks a lot. Well even more than that now I come to think of it. I’m generally beginning to get the hang of this. Now I’ve begun I have the work half done (thanks again Horace).
This all seems so familiar to me now. It gets complicated for a little while but I remember when my own dad had bother with this communication business.
Hang on. “Dear Dad…” “My own dad…” This puts me in mind of a conversation I had in school with a lad. Having almost slain another for speaking ill of his mum we retired to the office. A cup of tea. Half an hour of calming and soothing and out comes all this love for his mum.
“I’d do anything for her sir. Anything. She looked after us when my dad was – well like, you know, knocking her about like. He was always going on at her, always trying to hurt her. I cried ‘cos I was too small to do anything about it. Best thing he did was to leave. I have a new dad now. I mean, he’s not my real dad but he’s more a dad than my real dad was if you get me. He’s taken time with me like my other dad never did. He’s nice to my mum so he’s more like the dad I would have wanted to have. He’s my dad really but it’s complicated sir.”
There must be millions out there with the same kind of tale. Oh, maybe not the violence and deep troubles of my lad at school, but still juggling the issues arising from two dads. “Where do my loyalties lie?” “Who am I anyway?” And then folks say they can’t understand Jesus having two dads. His situation smacks of the ultra modern if you ask me. Dad bunks off leaving a new one to do the business as it were. He gives him everything he can. You know, food, clothes, a roof over his head and a chance at the family business. And then the lad goes looking up the biological pa. Gets in touch with his real self. Talks more about the absent pater than the present one.
So here I am with two dads. And my dad – not you of the “Dear Dad…here I am trying to sort out a letter to you” variety, but the other one who, now I come to think of it would probably welcomed this kind of thing if I had just got around to it – had a bit of a falling out about his dad. This makes three dads and counting, and, like riding a bike, if I stop and think about this for long enough there may well be tears before bedtime. I’ll persevere and hope this comes out as I hoped it would.
So here I am with two dads…and my other dad had this falling out with his and this led to some ripples of less than good will flowing between him and his sister. Life’s never simple is it? “Ripples” is something of an understatement. Let’s try “and so they did take themselves off unto diametrically opposed lands apparently bereft of all modern means of communication despite both having phones and a post box on the corner of the street.” In short, they didn’t speak to each other for let’s call it ten years. Now, I don’t know how it was for his sister in all this. What I do know is that my dad wouldn’t hear of talking to her. What I don’t have a clue about is what went on in the cold dark watches of the night. You know, the time when most of our secret thoughts haul themselves out from under the bedclothes of the mind, strip off their Sunday best and parade themselves for what they truly are – horrifying.
Time passed. Some were born; some learned to drive (more later) and it was given to some to die. A death occurred which called us back to our homeland. During a lull in funereally related duties I offered my dad a ride out in the car (he not, never having been, nor ever destined to be a driver) and me being one of those who twixt life and death had mastered the necessary skills, parted with a shed load of money and been delivered of a licence. Always one for a novelty dad took me up on the offer and I took him to his sister’s house (well it was my car, I had the keys and getting out of the passenger seat at anything over fifteen miles an hour is hardly an option is it?)
“What’s this?” he asked in typically northern fashion.
”Your sister’s” I replied having mastered the nuances of his particular language.
“I’m not going in there”, he replied, linguistically pushing out the boat somewhat.
“Well I am and you’ll look a bit daft sitting the car while I do” I said.
I knocked on the door while he rocked from foot to foot behind me.

“Why it’s you,” his sister said as she opened the door. “The kettle’s on and I’ve a few scones. Come in.”
I spent a wonderful half hour wandering around the local cemetery inspecting the dead while the living put to death the stuff that finally allowed them to get on with living. The funny thing is they never missed calling each other, regular as clockwork until my dad – you know, my real dad – died.
There we are. It’s just a story. One of many about how we seem to be so good at not quite getting our act together, and then, when we do, it’s like we come to life. I’ve a fleeting sense of that happening now. Ever since I made the first teetering steps towards this moment. “Dear Dad…”
Here I am with a chance to make good. My other dad (the “real” one) didn’t do such a half bad job. Maybe I can get that off my chest if you’ll allow me to write again. Meanwhile, the more I think about it, the better the fist of it you seem to have made with me. I feel better for not bottling it all up. It’s like the pile of ironing diminishing because I took a few moments out of the day. It hasn’t been such a hill to climb after all.
Must close for now. Things to do, people to see. Did you know that I have got on pretty well so far? I’d like to think that you could be proud of me. Maybe even speak well of me some more should you feel the need of a little fatherly boasting.
Hope this finds you, as it leaves me – well actually no. I hope this finds you better for getting it and I feel so much better for the sending.
I will write again soon. Oh, and I do love you.

Pete

Hands across the ocean

Canada? February? Wedding? Can’t beat it!
Our son Mark married Bethany at six o’clock on a Wednesday night – snow on the ground and temperatures hovering at a steady –6C. Good do though. Lots of friends. A warm welcome of a winter’s eve. Party on to just short of midnight and a blistering snowstorm next day with a trip to a very arctic feeling Niagara Falls.

We had a call the other day to say that the couple had enjoyed their two-month anniversary (is that Pearl? Cotton? Plastic? – not sure.)

An old Celtic blessing to be spoken over a marriage goes something like this:
“May you not be gathered to the Father until your children have found love.”
It stuck in my mind. I turned it over and over and saw the sense of it.
This year is significant for us anyway – Mark married already, and our daughter getting married in September. As it happens, it’s 30 years for Ruth and I. So by the end of the year we’ll have newcomers, just beginners and older hands on the marriage road
The Bible says that the only picture we have of Christ’s love for the Church is marriage. So in September we’ll have a shot of all three couples together – setting off, early days, and well on the way. And with that snapshot (which I look forward to with mounting pride) we have an insight into the character of Jesus and his staying power – the same, Yesterday, Today and Forever.

OOh Err... light in here, bit dark out there!

This is all new to me.

Hope that it gets some kind of attention.

Tell me. Just where does anyone begin with this blogging thing?

Good job it's light in here.

I'm fresh in from Canada and Romania and settling down to a run in UK.

I'm hoping to post news and views and stuff I write.

The competition out there is FIERCE.

I won't hold my breath. Do you find the competition out there FIERCE?

Well welcome to

ROUX HAMMER!

This is really only a tester so bye for now

(and love of course)

To check me out some more go...

http://hardyquick.googlepages.com