MY FATHER’S GIFTS

 

I’ve been writing a series of poems about my father, poems I never was able to write when he was alive.  There is a certain freedom, a certain reconciliation that death can bring to relationships.  If I had tried to write these when he was alive, I think they would either have turned out overly sentimental or angry.

Many of the poems have to do with his overcoming adversity: told he was “less than” for speaking German as the son of immigrants in 1917, the loss of his mother at age 12, poverty in Depression-era rural North Dakota, being rootless in his early twenties, World War II.  There are also poems about his joys and passions: planting and reaping, family, politics, hope.  One of the greatest gifts he received was 22 plus years of retirement, in which he was healthy and active until his final illness.  He became a great listener, and a healer to many people.   These are some lines from my poem called “Retirement”, in his voice:

I have muscles in my mouth               

that have not grown old.  I have ears                         
soft as a sparrow’s belly.  I will sit
in my recliner. I will listen to the rain
furrow the hard earth with grace.
I will release like pollen blown by the wind. 

I’ve tried to not gloss over the difficult parts of our relationship, although the most difficult are still hard to get at.  To the extent that I have been able to write about these things, a few things have helped.  First, I am not the angry young man I was, and I don’t feel that I have to prove anything to him (that’s a great liberation).  Secondly, I’m exploring my relationship with him by writing about his life, instead of writing about my feelings.  And finally, I am exploring, rather than telling, with the hope that my love of language will allow me to see the fierce beauty in his—and my—life.

Some fellow poets have told me that they see a lot of rage in my poems.  I don’t think of myself as an angry poet. I do write about injustices—whether it be that of the war my father was in, or the deportation of a father from our congregation.  But I surely am not angry while I am writing about people’s adversity.  (I save my anger for computers, and political ads!) As I explore my father’s trials, I stand in awe, in compassion, in a desire to embrace and honor him.

I wonder how good we are as a people at overcoming adversity.  We see the destruction that Sandy caused, and there’s a burst of good feeling for those who helped, and there’s a concern for those who suffered, but soon weariness for this disaster will be replaced, I fear, with concern for the next one.  And so much of what passes for political discourse is angry.

I’ve tried to write about the political choices we have coming up on Tuesday (not that our involvement ceases then), but I find I am way too angry to create anything of meaning, let alone beauty. I could rant for awhile, but we have enough of that.

I am angry that we have heard almost nothing about poverty or climate change in all the campaigns. I am angry that we have not heard our responsibilities to the world, but only what we have a right to defend. I am angry at the annual scapegoating of immigrants, poor people, gays and lesbians and people in other countries (whose leaders do things “we don’t like”). 

I believe that underneath our anger can be only two things: fear and hurt.  Fear of what the other will do if and when they have the same (or more) power than us; hurt at the loss of the way things were, and of a sense of stability and security that came with it.  Never mind that that security may have been illusory and unsustainable—losing our sense of security can make us so anxious that we are swayed by appeals to our baser emotions.  When we are anxious and afraid, we tend to close into our group or lash out.  Neither one of those is a way to build community.

My father was often an angry man, and I, like my siblings received some of that.  I don’t judge him for that like I used to, and I can see some of the roots of his anger more clearly.  But he also had a hope, a joy that—like a tender plant surviving and growing in the midst of drought and wind—a hope and a joy that gave his love wings.

For the last 11 or so years of my dad’s life, I lived on the East Coast.  We would talk a lot, and we always talked on election night or the next night. I miss not being able to do that.  He would tell you to vote straight Democratic!  I tell you to vote hope, vote joy, vote justice for the poor and vote with a gentle power, a power that won’t quit.

 Polls open at 7 in Minnesota.

 Be justice.  Be beauty.

 Patrick

 
P.S. Thank you for all the prayers and thoughts regarding the death of my mother-in-law, Rosa Arroyo, on All Saints Day.  She lives!