Dad's gone. This post is 11 years old, written one early morning in the throes of the 2009 economic doldrums. What it says--what he says--is poignant and relevant.
_________________________
My father-in-law calls with a question. "There are six
tapes in this box," he says. "I got to wondering about
who paid for them."
It's not a question I couldn't have predicted. It's very much like him to wonder about such things, about, as he used to say, "settling up." We bought him a set of choral renditions of the psalms, one of the few really good gifts we could come up for a man in the Home who's ninety. Wasn't a birthday. We just dropped them off and hoped he'd like them. He seemed to.
"Not to worry, Dad," I told him. "It's no big deal."
I'm sure he'd thought of that answer too.
"Well, you know there are six of them in the set," he said. "You could take a couple along back home with you and that way we both could enjoy them. Then, next week or so, we can exchange."
That was a proposal I couldn't have predicted, but once he offered it, I wasn't surprised.
Now the fact is I would not have thought of such an offering, and neither would our own kids: we can share this blessing—that's what he was saying.
My wife's father—like my own—is a child of the Depression. Call his ethic cheap, call it skimping, call him Silas Marner, call him anything you want-- what he was offering originated in a desire, deeply-held and graciously offered, that such our gift of six tapes--music from the psalms--was that good that it should be shared.
Our present economic doldrums might still exist if everyone thought that way, but I doubt it. His desire to share good things with us might well wreak havoc on industries throughout the country, but if more of us—me too—had a touch of ye olde ethic, all of us could well be a whole lot better off.
Nobody wants joblessness or recession or, certainly, another Depression. But there are lessons to be learned, methinks, in that single phone call from an old way of life—lessons about making do and about considering others.
He's 90, probably too old to send off to Washington. He wouldn't want a job anyway.
It's not a question I couldn't have predicted. It's very much like him to wonder about such things, about, as he used to say, "settling up." We bought him a set of choral renditions of the psalms, one of the few really good gifts we could come up for a man in the Home who's ninety. Wasn't a birthday. We just dropped them off and hoped he'd like them. He seemed to.
"Not to worry, Dad," I told him. "It's no big deal."
I'm sure he'd thought of that answer too.
"Well, you know there are six of them in the set," he said. "You could take a couple along back home with you and that way we both could enjoy them. Then, next week or so, we can exchange."
That was a proposal I couldn't have predicted, but once he offered it, I wasn't surprised.
Now the fact is I would not have thought of such an offering, and neither would our own kids: we can share this blessing—that's what he was saying.
My wife's father—like my own—is a child of the Depression. Call his ethic cheap, call it skimping, call him Silas Marner, call him anything you want-- what he was offering originated in a desire, deeply-held and graciously offered, that such our gift of six tapes--music from the psalms--was that good that it should be shared.
Our present economic doldrums might still exist if everyone thought that way, but I doubt it. His desire to share good things with us might well wreak havoc on industries throughout the country, but if more of us—me too—had a touch of ye olde ethic, all of us could well be a whole lot better off.
Nobody wants joblessness or recession or, certainly, another Depression. But there are lessons to be learned, methinks, in that single phone call from an old way of life—lessons about making do and about considering others.
He's 90, probably too old to send off to Washington. He wouldn't want a job anyway.
This morning's thanks are for what once was.
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