Some Words...

Over the weekend I attended a surprise birthday party for my dad's 65th birthday. His birthday was actually on August 2nd so we had to make him believe that we'd all been too busy to acknowledge it. I learned that even at age 65 a grown man pouts. Turns out my dad complained to just about everyone he knew that no one did anything for his birthday. It's kind of ironic really because my dad has forgotten my own birthday quite a few times in my lifetime but that's a whole other story. So anyway, we all show up at my dad's place while he's out golfing and he was pretty surprised by the time he came home. I could tell he felt kind of stupid for complaining to everyone about being forgotten but as he always tells me, what's done is done. It's strange celebrating one of your parent's 65th birthday because even though you know that everyone gets old, somehow you never see it happening to your parents. You don't think about your parents getting sick and you most definitely don't think about them being old enough to collect social security. I see other people's parents and they're old, but not mine. I'm not sure why we live in denial for so long except maybe it's because we don't ever want to think about losing them. As I sat there watching my dad squint trying to read the birthday card I'd handed him, I realized that my dad is human. He will get old, he will most likely get sick, and some day he will pass on to the next life waiting beyond this one. It's not a pleasant thought coming to that realization but I suppose it's inevitable.

As always my dad left us all with some words of wisdom, words I file away under "things to remember". He was talking about his life as a boy, his poor family moving here from Ireland with exactly $53 to start a new life with. He said that growing up he believed that he knew everything. He knew that life could be hard so he decided to be harder than life. When he was in his twenties he started to wonder if maybe he didn't know as much as he thought he did and that left part of him vulnerable. When you don't know everything, you risk losing what you've already obtained. And now that's he's an old man he can't remember if he ever knew anything at all and that vulnerable part has become what's left. He said that all the time he spent trying to convince himself that he was hard enough to survive his life, should have been spent accepting that being hard is what makes you unable to survive at all.

So my dad is 65. He's what some consider old but luckily for now, he's healthy. He still has the flaws he had before, some seem larger and more apparent now. But as I look at the father that's been in my life for 38 years, finally I see that the 'hardness' has escaped him. The edges of who he is may still be like stone, but the inside, it's pure marshmallow.