Reflections on my dad

​It's my dad's birthday today and I’ve been thinking about how young he would have been when he fathered me. Of course I have no actual memories of that time. But I imagine him a bit through my neices and nephews and my own son who are all kind of around that age he would have been ....

It's .... O, it's fun to imagine and also strange .... to imagine my dad, not even 30 years old, with a family .... My dad is kind of this odd combination of, ummm, well, not exactly institutions not the right word but he, you know he did all the proper adult things, got married, had kids, bought a house, had a job. all that. But also a little bit of an adventurous soul. When we were young, I was 3 years old, he took 6 months off of work and took the family to Japan. And when he was about 50, he and my mom took off and went to the South Pacific .... He retired somewhat early but never really stopped working until more recently the last sort of 5 or so years maybe, well into his seventies he kept working ....

I wonder if his life was as he imagined it might be. I know for me my life is not as I imagined it might be. Because we just don't know what the world is going to throw at us. As much as we plan, as much as we do the things we're supposed to or not supposed to do .... Other things emerge.

There's a picture of me and my dad when I'm just tiny, a little baby looking in the mirror. And he looks so young there. Of course I guess I do too I was a baby. Two young old souls looking in the mirror.

​Mirrors are a bit of a, bit of a device because they allow us to see in a way we could otherwise not see. We never truly see ourselves because we're always looking at ourselves backwards through the mirror .... Mirrors, looking glasses, take us into places that are unexpected. And they are also portals. I wonder what my dad was thinking when he looked in that mirror holding his baby daughter. I wonder what I was thinking .... ....

Sometimes we give my dad a hard time. Well not even sometimes, kind of all the time. And he takes it with good humor .... He has taken many things in life with good humor .... He has welcomed people into the family .... .... ....

Yeah, you know my dad sometimes seems a bit, is taciturn the word? But he has taught me an awful lot about hospitality, about grace .... About both living within and without of the box. Those are good things to have learned. Thanks dad ....