The No Quit Gene I’d be embarrassed to tell you how old I was. I’d be even more embarrassed to tell you what the angst was about. But it was Big. I had big plans and right away things had not gone my way. I called Daddy. He’s a softy. His kids get that tone in their voice and he’d hear it, know he was needed, drop everything, and listen. I tell him. And then I tell him some more. I make my points. I drip with how-dare-it-be-this-way. Am I expecting him to make it all better? I don’t know. I’m sure I expected him to sympathize with me. He didn’t. Here’s his quote: “Well, if that’s gonna stop you then you’d never have gotten there anyway.” _____ _____ I remember it so clearly because it was so not-like-he’d-usually-do-it. Usually he was a soft ear. Why take needles to a limp balloon when life would deflate it naturally? Why say I-saw-this-coming when the point of parenthood was for the child to reach the point of seeing-it-coming themselves? This one time, and maybe that’s why I remember it so profoundly, he pushes on me, to see if I have the no-quit gene… _____ _______ God didn’t over-do Dad with show-off gifts. Ask me to list his strengths and here’s the 1-2-3: 1) he said Yes to God early and never changed his mind; 2) he’s the most sincere person I’ll ever know; 3) he drove his life in the right lane, never on the shoulder, never in the ditch, never giving vices a chance. I add to that list his no-quit. I’ve seen him pray for slack and get answers of squeeze. I’ve seen him in financial peril. In the long grinding decades of the summer of his life, when nothing was remarkable, when the marriage was strained and his kids were duds, in the bottoms, in the droughts, I’d catch him drained, but I never saw him quit. His faith made him a cork. Whether in ocean or pond, my father floated to the top. _____ ______ It all comes together now. I see my father’s life as a quilt, and it’s about all stitched up. All those scraps, all those stitches, and now it’s becoming revealed as a Finished Whole. I see God’s needle and my father’s thimble. It makes such sense, seen here at the end, how we all think we’re whole when young and then broken by our messes, when maybe it’s the other way, that we’re only made right by the fractured friction of our lives. All we have to do to make our quilt is to not quit on the tediousness of assembling so many pieces with so many stitches… ____ _____ This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we hope you respect the gift of your life with eyes Up and deep hope.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 04:39:51 +0000
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