A poem to my father

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In 1994 I was flat broke living in Houston, Texas trying to find my butt with both hands (one of my dad's favorite sayings). I made the trek back to Minnesota for Christmas, but had only enough money for gas and maybe a Wendy's #1 combo meal. In short, I had nothing for Christmas gifts. So, I wrote everyone in my family a poem.

This poem is certainly no piece of literary excellence and will not be gathered into even weak vanity anthologies. What it does have going for it is some terrific hope and love. It was my heart back then and is my heart now. There are also some hidden meanings that I will flesh out some in italics between the verses.

Here goes:

Father, My Father
Father, my father,
To whom could I go
To learn the things
Your son ought to know?

To combat his sense of guilt and failure as a father, I wanted to give him a sense of exclusiveness in our relationship. If it isn't him, then it's no one. He is my one and only irreplaceable father.

No, you're not perfect,
No man can be,
But you're the perfect father,
For God sent you to me,

This second verse continues the first thought and justifies it with Divine authority. It was God's will that he be my father. This makes my claims in the first stanza irrefuteable. My rhetoric makes it such that he would have to take objections up with God, not me.

To teach me specific truths
Through failures and success,
You've been ordained by God,
My life to bless.

This verse serves to give value, not condemnation to his failures. Good came out of what he did, no matter what he did. The word"ordained" is crucial here. Before I was born, he was baptized as a young and newly married adult and wanted to become a preacher. This is actually a little known secret, even to me until I was an adult. He did not become a preacher because the elders of his church at the time said that he was not ready and would need to wait probably two years to mature. Though they were probalby right, he was deeply wounded by this. So, the word "ordained" here touches on the fact that he ministered to me. It didn't matter if her was not ordained by the church, God went ahead and did it anyway.

Father, I love you,
Though I am far away;
A thousand miles is nothing;
You're here when I pray.

This verse closes the immense geographical gap from Houston, Texas where I was living to Eagan, Minnesota, where he was living. It serves to connect us. It also leads into the next verse.

Father, don't stop teaching,
For I'm not done learning;
I'll always be your son,
Though the years keep turning.

Though I was a grown adult, that fact did not mean I had arrived with wisdom, knowledge and was no longer in need of him. He needed to know that his job was not done and that he is always going to be of value to me.

You're a great man, dad,
It's easy for me to see;
I saw it most clearly,
When you bowed and prayed with me;

The use of the words "great man" is deep here, though it sounds shallow. I had been to a retreat earlier in that year where I came to grips with how I had hate and contempt in my heart for my father. I had acknowledged it and came to complete forgiveness. He and I reconciled after that retreat when I shared with him my heart. I apologized for how I had treated him and vowed to love him without condition from that point forward. We wept and hugged and it was beautiful.

Anyway, at the retreat I went through an exercise whereby the end result is an affirming statement about your own identity, generally in the context of God's view of yourself. Most people came up with these beautiful and detailed statements that captured an deep inner truth. Mine was this: "I am a great man." Seriously, I couldn't think of anything else. So, when I called him a "great man" it was more than just a tritte thing you say, it was a deep statement of our collective identification together. There is so much we between us.

Perhaps here on Earth
I'll see you now and then,
But more than in this life,
I want to see you in Heaven.

This is the line that got me crying again when I read it today. Living so far from him, I knew that I might see him once per year - maybe twice. I felt the weight of that distance so often. But the one comfort I had was a desire to see him in Heaven. I knew that was my ace in the hole. Well, that ace is my final play. I will do just that - I will see him in Heaven.