Monthly Archive for September, 2004

it is long. but believe me. without knowing my father. without knowing me. to find this letter on the street would open your eyes. it would make your heart scream out to be loved and to love those around you. i wouldn’t normally share something like this. something which is so personal to me and my family. but i feel as though this letter will make you think. and it will make you want to call your parents and tell them how much you love them.

A Letter To My Son.

Dear Nathan,
“And i have placed you in a garden abundant to overflowing. ANd of its fruit you may eat where-of you will excepting only from the tree which groweth in the center of the garden. Eatheth you not of the fruit there-of.”

I wish to say much, but feel compelled, even so, to say little. This will be an unusual letter torn as it shall be between those two poles. If you understand its language, you have probably found the tree in the garden and gained some of its knowledge.

I notice that you achieved the scanning of a single photo the other night which i expect you worked on diligently, but expect also that you may have been distracted from your goal. And i wanted to attempt to focus your attention to the task at hand so that you might not be so distracted in the future.

I apologize for whatever diversion the various crates and cartons of my life may have induced. They probably shouldn’t be left lying about with their content strewn around the floor. My life is filled with baggage lying willy-nilly. Not that i am ashamed in any way of the boxes that i carry with me, but i suppose when someone first comes upon them, that they could indeed be intimidating.

Mother and i each lug our own pails and baskets stuffed with seeds yet to be planted from which future tales will grow, or the dried flowers of past adventures, but we have no secrets between us, finding it easier to share a load than to carry it alone. Sometimes we open each others crates and boxes with jocularity, and other times with serious vein. We weed each others flower beds when the weeds become too high for one or the other to see through them.

But there is always that tree in the center of the garden. I know that its fallen fruit may decompose, and in that state could emit noxious aromas if it were not taken up and disposed of properly. Normally i tend the tree in solitary. But when a visitor should happen into the garden and espy its fruit, it is possible that some horticultural understanding could be of assistance.

So consider this a gardening venture if you will, for there is fruit yet on the tree in addition to that which may have fallen unchecked. Dropped fruit most often is bruised and decays quickly, while that which is properly picked and cared for, despite the warnings posted above, can be found to bring knowledge and understanding.

I myslef first found the tree of knowledge when i was nine or ten years of age, although i was certain of its existence years before that. And not having anyone to guide me, i consumed its fruit and was awakened to knowledge of who i was and where i belonged in the universe. At the time however, that knowledge was indeed the damnation prophesied in its warning. I struggled without success against the knowing it had brought, and was after a number of years, on the brink of my own destruction from the burden of it.

ANd then when i was still some years younger than you, i found someone that could help me carry that load, who made my heart sing from who i was and who i could be. And i learned that the tree in the center of the garden was good for leaning on while reading poetry and that its fallen branches provided warmth in the winter chill and its blossom a sweet aroma in the Spring mornings dew and its leaves gave shade in the heat of day, and that knowledge it endowed was a knowing of how good life was and that it could be approached without fear, but with love and caring. And that person was joined by another who opened up other worlds for me, worlds which i had always been led to believe would be lost to me forever, worlds of laughter and fun, realms of shared dreams and hopes, the gift of children and Christmas and holidays as i had never known them.

I have tasted the fruit of that tree and the understanding it has given me is an understanding of what joy is, but also an understanding of the nearly indescribable pain of loss. ANd yet i am so fortunate to have someone still to share with me my burdens and to give me joy, to look forward with hope to tomorrow and look back on days past with a grin.

Now you and Heather and Chris are a large part of our pleasure, and a preponderance of our hope, hope that you will all be happy, that your lives will go where you wish and that you will be lucky enough to find that one person or two for whose life you would trade your own, whose burden you would gladly shoulder, whose life you would happily share. Such people are rare indeed whether arrayed in mail and armor or clad in chintz and lace.

Nearly every day it occurs to me how fortunate i am and how fortunate i have been. I have drunk fine wine to the point of intoxication for most of my days; the wine of love and caring. ANd even at the time of my greatest loss, i was given the most unbelievable gift in recompense, one that i don’t know if i could ever describe but someday may try. And i try to give that in return as well as i can even though my training has tended to make me miserly with my affections.

Do i know who i am? i think i do and i am happy with that thought on most days, missing only those on which i know that i have made mother sad or troubled, sometimes missing parted friends but with a smile. some days i am troubled thinking of those who must be suffering today with that same knowledge that i gained and wrestled with as a youth but knowing theres nothing i can do to help tem get through to the awakening that will come if they can only survive their childhood.

I now consider you children among my list of best friends, and as the old adage had it, i shall never have enough friends that i shouldn’t take up one more, nor do i now have so many that i can afford to give up a single one.

If the fruit you found seemed wormy, come and try again some day for one of the shiny red ones farther up the tree. They shall be waiting for you.

With all my fatherly love,
Dad.