My sister last night (my time - she is three time zones ahead) posted an image in social media. One I haven't seen in quite a while. It's an analog photo that had been scanned in, a bit yellowing now with age. It's a photo of my father, in his Navy uniform, holding my baby brother James, outside our then home in suburban Los Angeles. Garden Grove, California to be more precise.
I don't know if the photo was taken the day that my mother and father brought my sister and brother home from the hospital, but it's plainly in the very early days of their lives. (My brother and sister are twins).
Today is my father's birthday. He would have been 80 years old this year. But of course, dad lost his battle to cancer many years ago. This summer, it will be 27 years in fact.
Looking at that photo, I see a baby whose entire life remains, and I see my father, who was then a young man. Much younger than I am now. At the time, nobody knew, nobody could know, what life had in store for my brother, my sister, or my dad. That's the bargain.
One of my very earliest memories was the day that my parents returned from hospital with my brother and sister. I can recall pretty clearly them being absent in the final days before the twins were born, and the excitement of the day that all came home. I remember the anticipation and happiness of getting the chance to hold them - sitting in a chair; I was three and a half then. I have an older brother, 11 months my senior, so until that day, I was the youngest. Charles and I each got a chance to hold our new siblings. To meet them and welcome them to the house.
Now, from time to time, I think of that day. The memory seems pretty clear, perhaps too clear in my mind. So at this point, I cannot say how much of the image I can recall is real, and how much of it has been constructed over time. A shadow, re-enforced by suggestion and by my own imagination. In the film Blade Runner, the replicants (artificial humans) are given "memories" of events that did not happen. But to the replicants, they are as real as they could be, and I guess, help define their humanity for them.
As time is passing, the distance between when dad was alive and here and today grows longer. 27 years is not so long ago for me now. Time has a way of shaping our view of the past, and I suspect, softens the hard light that shines around the things we would rather not see. God has given us in the way we remember the past a precious gift that is more powerful than an airbrush. More of what constitutes our brief time on earth becomes photographs and memories all the time.
I think about my father a bit every day. A bit more so on his birthday. A bit more on the anniversary of the day he left us behind here. I thought he was an old man, as I suspect, every kid thinks about their parents. I am now about two years on the south side of the age he was when he died. I don't feel like an old man, although I sometimes do not recognize the face that now looks back at me in the mirror.
I've said it before, but human beings are not machine-made. Real things risk imperfections. We are made as well as we could be, but we break. We age. Ultimately, we leave behind photographs and memories and stories.
All too often, we measure our lives by what we've done. My father was a surgeon. Part of his job was fixing imperfections of people when they fell and were broken. A part of it was assuring that my brothers, sister, mother, and me had lives that were made as well as they could be. His life wasn't one that politicians talk about, or that get profiled in the newspaper. His alma mater will never name a building after him.
Dad wasn't a 'great' man. But he was a good one.
A critical lesson that I did not know then, but I think I grasp now, that I have my own son who is just a couple of years removed from becoming an adult, is that what is truly valuable in living is not the toys you accumulate or the pictures of vacations that you take. It's not the house you live in or cars you drive.
I've reached some level of success in life. I've had the chance to see the world, made a good career. People offer congratulations.
But the truth is this:
Much of what I have been able to do is because of the things my parents couldn't. Their sacrifices were my opportunities. The things I got to see were the places they missed.
Now that I am decidedly on the back nine, that's how I hope my life measures when I am a photograph in a book. My own son will have his own life. He'll make his own choices, and ultimately, measure out his happiness and success by the yardsticks he decides. My hope is that when he is my age, he will look at how I spent my life and my time the way that I look at my old man, who didn't get the chance to get "old."
If I can measure to half of that tally, that's a life that I can defend as great in a meaningful and not platitudinous way.
80 years old.
Happy birthday, dad. Thanks for how you invested your life in your family. In me.
I miss you a lot.
