Notes - Dad

         Evening. Carol, Kim and you worked on cleaning the basement most of the day. Owen and Brennan even helped at times. You drove to Good Will twice, once in the Odyssey. You drove to Half Price Books once. You put together about ten Staple business boxes and have used most of them, but earlier, before supper, Kim brought up a box of mostly old photographs you inherited from your mother, many you had not seen before. One struck you deeper than any other. It is your father's high school graduation picture. He appears and kind, friendly and happy fellow. You thought to yourself in the moment: 'I never knew this man'. - Amorella

       2042 hours. The father I knew, the man who helped raise me, I never met (consciously) until 1946 after World War II, a year after he and others in his company liberated Dachau in 1945. What a difference a war must make. If you were a scientist, a sports hunter and a sports fisherman, a member of a bowling league and/or watched college and/or professional football and you knew my father you were most likely friends. If you were a reader, which he also was, you were likely an avid reader in private (fiction and non-fiction), i.e. no real discussions or book club orientation. I never heard him discuss or talk about any book unless it had to do with UFO's. We bowled on the same team for two seasons, but we never had a conversation that I can remember. We were very good at ignoring each other whenever possible, that was our mutual, civilized peace. In his eighties he grew slightly more social and we exchanged pleasantries like most other family members. It was then that he casually mentioned while we were on a quiet walk at Otterbein's campus about five blocks from his and Mother's house on East Park Street, that it was okay that I was an English teacher and that I liked to write. That was it. I think I responded with, "that's good," or something similar in a non-committal manner. When Uncle Ernie was dying in the hospital he mentioned that my father was a good man. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled, but Uncle Ernie knew he was closer (in attachment) to being my father than Dad was. Uncle Ernie cared. Dad would have cared, I think, if I had enjoyed hunting and fishing and had been a scientist or in the sciences. We both enjoyed science fiction but we rarely if ever talked about it even when he knew I taught a class in it. My father-in-law and I discussed it and futures studies regularly. I think Dad was born a hundred years too late and I was born a hundred years to early. I respect the man for who he was as a human being. He had been an Eagle scout, I never got that high. I enjoyed camping with him I didn't mind hunting with him or fishing with him but never enjoyed killing game or catching fish. This is what is on my mind after seeing that photograph of my father when he was seventeen.

         Post. - Amorella