"Remembering" (Image & Text Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
For Father's Day
“It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” ~Anne Sexton
This afternoon I found myself gazing at an old photograph of my father.
The picture was taken when he was in his twenties. He is handsome, confident, and standing at the threshold of a life he cannot yet imagine. Looking at the photograph, an idle thought drifted into my mind:
Did I ever really know you?
I know the broad outlines of his story. I know that he and my mother loved each other deeply. I know they built a good life together. I know he worked hard, provided for his family, and raised his children with a mixture of discipline and devotion.
But who was the young man in this photograph before he became my father?
Who was the man who swept my mother off her feet?
What made him laugh? What dreams did he carry? What fears did he quietly wrestle with? What did he imagine for himself as he stood at the beginning of adulthood with his whole future spread out before him?
The older I become, the more I realize how little children truly know their parents.
As a child, I knew him through moments.
I remember my sandbox when I was four, five, and six years old. The sand was unlike any other sandbox in the neighborhood. While other children had ordinary sand, my father went to sandstone cliffs and personally gathered soft white sand for mine. At the time, it simply seemed normal. Only years later did I recognize what it really was: an act of thoughtful, intentional love.
I remember sitting on his lap while he read to me.
I remember his rules.
I remember the way he expected things to be done.
I remember thinking he was strict.
What I did not fully understand then was how much love can exist quietly, without announcing itself. Some forms of love do not arrive wrapped in words. They arrive as white sand in a sandbox. They arrive in books read aloud. They arrive in long hours worked and sacrifices never mentioned.
Then came the teenage years.
We locked horns more than once.
There were arguments.
There were sharp words.
There was the certainty, common to adolescence, that I knew things he did not.
Later there was college and returning home for holidays. There were conversations, laughter, awkward silences, and all the ordinary moments that become precious only after they are gone.
Some memories still make me smile.
Others still make me wince.
Such is the nature of family.
Then, when I was twenty-eight years old, he died.
I remember the last weekend I saw him alive.
He was seriously ill and confined to a hospital bed.
At the same time, I was living through a crisis of my own. My faith had collapsed beneath me. Questions had replaced certainties. Belief had become doubt.
A minister stood beside the bed and began to pray.
Several of us gathered around him.
Heads bowed.
Eyes closed.
Everyone praying.
Except me.
I stood there staring out the hospital window, unable to pray, unable to believe, unable even to pretend.
Then my eyes drifted back toward the bed.
My father's eyes were open.
He was watching me.
Not the minister.
Not the others.
Me.
It is a moment I have never forgotten.
Even now, after all these years, I wonder what he saw.
Did he recognize my struggle before I could name it?
Did he understand me far better than I understood myself?
Even while facing his own mortality, was he still concerned about his son?
I never asked.
And now I never can.
The older I become, the more I understand that relationships are mysteries. We spend entire lifetimes beside one another, sharing meals, holidays, laughter, grief, and love. Yet there are parts of every human soul that remain hidden, even from those closest to us.
I knew my father.
But did I really know him?
I know he loved gardening.
Gardening was his gift.
It was never mine—or so I thought.
Yet somehow I inherited his green thumb.
Plants thrive under my care despite my frequent uncertainty about what I am doing. They bloom and flourish as though they know something I do not.
Years ago, when I lived in northern California, I was potting plants on the deck one April afternoon. I wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a gray cardigan sweater that had seen better days.
As I worked, I happened to glance at my reflection in the glass door leading into the living room.
For a moment, it startled me.
The person staring back was not me.
It was my father.
Not literally, of course.
But the resemblance was unmistakable.
The posture.
The expression.
The gray cardigan sweater, worn and comfortable.
Suddenly I remembered him working in his garden, dressed much the same way.
And I smiled.
Sometimes the acorn does not fall very far from the tree.
The years have taught me something I could not have understood when I was young. The people who shape us continue living within us long after they are gone. We hear them in our laughter. We find them in our habits. We discover them in unexpected reflections on ordinary afternoons.
Perhaps we never fully know our parents.
Perhaps we only spend our lives gradually discovering them.
And perhaps, in the process, we discover ourselves.
So today, as Father's Day arrives once more, I find myself looking at this photograph of a young man who became my father and wondering about the parts of him I never knew.
Yet I also find myself grateful.
Grateful for the white sand in a little boy's sandbox.
Grateful for books read aloud.
Grateful for lessons learned, even the difficult ones.
Grateful for a lifetime of memories.
And grateful for the realization that, in ways both seen and unseen, he is still part of who I am.
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
I remember you.
And I love you.
~Wylddane
“It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” ~Anne Sexton
This afternoon I found myself gazing at an old photograph of my father.
The picture was taken when he was in his twenties. He is handsome, confident, and standing at the threshold of a life he cannot yet imagine. Looking at the photograph, an idle thought drifted into my mind:
Did I ever really know you?
I know the broad outlines of his story. I know that he and my mother loved each other deeply. I know they built a good life together. I know he worked hard, provided for his family, and raised his children with a mixture of discipline and devotion.
But who was the young man in this photograph before he became my father?
Who was the man who swept my mother off her feet?
What made him laugh? What dreams did he carry? What fears did he quietly wrestle with? What did he imagine for himself as he stood at the beginning of adulthood with his whole future spread out before him?
The older I become, the more I realize how little children truly know their parents.
As a child, I knew him through moments.
I remember my sandbox when I was four, five, and six years old. The sand was unlike any other sandbox in the neighborhood. While other children had ordinary sand, my father went to sandstone cliffs and personally gathered soft white sand for mine. At the time, it simply seemed normal. Only years later did I recognize what it really was: an act of thoughtful, intentional love.
I remember sitting on his lap while he read to me.
I remember his rules.
I remember the way he expected things to be done.
I remember thinking he was strict.
What I did not fully understand then was how much love can exist quietly, without announcing itself. Some forms of love do not arrive wrapped in words. They arrive as white sand in a sandbox. They arrive in books read aloud. They arrive in long hours worked and sacrifices never mentioned.
Then came the teenage years.
We locked horns more than once.
There were arguments.
There were sharp words.
There was the certainty, common to adolescence, that I knew things he did not.
Later there was college and returning home for holidays. There were conversations, laughter, awkward silences, and all the ordinary moments that become precious only after they are gone.
Some memories still make me smile.
Others still make me wince.
Such is the nature of family.
Then, when I was twenty-eight years old, he died.
I remember the last weekend I saw him alive.
He was seriously ill and confined to a hospital bed.
At the same time, I was living through a crisis of my own. My faith had collapsed beneath me. Questions had replaced certainties. Belief had become doubt.
A minister stood beside the bed and began to pray.
Several of us gathered around him.
Heads bowed.
Eyes closed.
Everyone praying.
Except me.
I stood there staring out the hospital window, unable to pray, unable to believe, unable even to pretend.
Then my eyes drifted back toward the bed.
My father's eyes were open.
He was watching me.
Not the minister.
Not the others.
Me.
It is a moment I have never forgotten.
Even now, after all these years, I wonder what he saw.
Did he recognize my struggle before I could name it?
Did he understand me far better than I understood myself?
Even while facing his own mortality, was he still concerned about his son?
I never asked.
And now I never can.
The older I become, the more I understand that relationships are mysteries. We spend entire lifetimes beside one another, sharing meals, holidays, laughter, grief, and love. Yet there are parts of every human soul that remain hidden, even from those closest to us.
I knew my father.
But did I really know him?
I know he loved gardening.
Gardening was his gift.
It was never mine—or so I thought.
Yet somehow I inherited his green thumb.
Plants thrive under my care despite my frequent uncertainty about what I am doing. They bloom and flourish as though they know something I do not.
Years ago, when I lived in northern California, I was potting plants on the deck one April afternoon. I wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a gray cardigan sweater that had seen better days.
As I worked, I happened to glance at my reflection in the glass door leading into the living room.
For a moment, it startled me.
The person staring back was not me.
It was my father.
Not literally, of course.
But the resemblance was unmistakable.
The posture.
The expression.
The gray cardigan sweater, worn and comfortable.
Suddenly I remembered him working in his garden, dressed much the same way.
And I smiled.
Sometimes the acorn does not fall very far from the tree.
The years have taught me something I could not have understood when I was young. The people who shape us continue living within us long after they are gone. We hear them in our laughter. We find them in our habits. We discover them in unexpected reflections on ordinary afternoons.
Perhaps we never fully know our parents.
Perhaps we only spend our lives gradually discovering them.
And perhaps, in the process, we discover ourselves.
So today, as Father's Day arrives once more, I find myself looking at this photograph of a young man who became my father and wondering about the parts of him I never knew.
Yet I also find myself grateful.
Grateful for the white sand in a little boy's sandbox.
Grateful for books read aloud.
Grateful for lessons learned, even the difficult ones.
Grateful for a lifetime of memories.
And grateful for the realization that, in ways both seen and unseen, he is still part of who I am.
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
I remember you.
And I love you.
~Wylddane
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