par example

I am living very near where I grew up now, and with that experiencing things and being around people day-to-day for the first time in nearly a decade. 

It's odd how so many things about home have continued to stay the same; it's as if everything remains frozen or isolated in some habitat that keeps away change...take my dad for example.

I have always remembered him as a patient, wise, hard-working man who loved my siblings and I--and my mother even more. Nothing has changed. How is it that I feel I have changed enormously, several times throughout my years, yet my father seems to me to have had no transformation? Maybe it's because of age, our experiences, our personalities, or it even could be the fact that external perceptions are often misplaced.

And yet I write this because of my dad, who exists in my mind almost no differently than the way I remember him growing up except for one thing: his slowness to anger. Like any child growing up with a father, they can remember him cursing and yelling in frustration with something. It's usually a humbling experience because there is this figure who is always right while you are always wrong...an individual who is strong and unwavering...wise and deep in experience--who is suddenly subject to a fate that is beyond his control. 

Over the last few months, I have seen some unlucky things happen with my dad. And he simply deals with it now with a laugh; a joke at himself and a deflection to the fates that have continued to befuddle him while I was away. He doesn't yell and curse anymore, and somehow this reaction was always in him in other things he did. It's merely as if his sense of justice and equilibrium with the world has stayed the same, but now he has learned to accept it for himself.

I pray that I can inherit this wisdom!

Where I come from

My parents are very keen on genealogy and they love to spend countless hours finding links in their families trees...often competing with one another to see who is closer linked to a famous person in history or who can trace their lineage back further.

More recently as I have been interested though, I have come to discover that they have to use distant links even to start somewhere. They use their grandparents siblings or cousins, great aunts or uncles, 2nd or 3rd generation cousins--all as jumping points to start working back. 

In such a way I have realized that all of their, and ultimately my family lineages in a direct descent are unknown. We have definitely been on the losing side of history on both my mother and father's side.

My mother's father was an Scottish-Irish immigrant who came over with his half-dozen brothers and sisters, and they grew up in Texas during the great depression. They left their clan of McGarrah's behind in the UK in order to find a way out of their poverty, only to find an uglier face of it here in the US.

My mother's mother was an alcoholic Osage Indian, and so was her mother and mother before her of Pettit's. I don't need to mention how well the records and treatment were kept of Native Americans...

My father's father was one of 12 Catholic Bennett children that moved from Missouri, Arkansas, to Texas during the depression. Their father was an orphan and nothing is known about his family...well he was an orphan...dead end there.

My father's mother was a Russian/Polish Jew. Her family of Schmidts and Feinbergs came over from Vilnius in modern day Lithuania around the time of the Russian pograms and moved to Brooklyn. Not much of a direction there, it's definitely not as if I can trace any Jews living in Poland, Russia, or anywhere in eastern Europe for that matter.

At least I know who my mother and father are, and who their parents were. That's something! I wish I could go back further though.

Here is an ode from the Greek Pindaros:

Even high deeds of prowess

Have a great darkness if they lack song;

We can hold up a mirror to fine doings

In one way only:

If with the help of Memory in her glittering crown

Recompense is found for labour

In words' echoing melodies.

A Coming Home

One of my favourite memories I have was being a a little kid waiting for my dad to come home from work.  I remember asking mom constantly "What time is daddy coming home?".  Vividly I recall that it was about 6:15pm or so every day, he had a little over an hour commute back home from Dallas.  I would play with my toys at the window sill that faced the driveway, so I could see when his little tan truck would pull up.  As soon as he'd open his door I would shout through the window screen: "Daddy's home!" I think I did that so that he would know I saw him, and so that my mom would know I noticed him first.

I remember he would put his key chain between his teeth and shake his head, making a goofy face and rattling the keys at me in the window.  I'd run to the front door and wait for him to come in, soon jumping on his foot and wrapping my arms and legs around one of his legs.  He seemed like such a giant back then.  He'd take a step or two with me clinging tightly on, to then greet my mother, where they would say to each other "Hi honey" and exchange their usual three quick kisses.  Dinner was normally about ready, and my dad might pick me up and pretend that he was going to eat me because he was hungry.  

This routine lasted a few years, until I got older.  My mom and dad to this day still do the exact same exchange.  It's funny how no matter how much some things change, there are these comforting constants that always seem remain the same.  I hope one day to relive memories like this, maybe as a father myself?