Legacy

 

Legacy

This morning as I came into the kitchen I turned and looked out the patio door.  I could tell you that I was looking at what yesterday’s snowstorm left behind.  It had started as many March storms do – as rain.  After raining hard all night, the temperature dropped enough that fat snowflakes began falling by breakfast time.  It snowed all day and into the night.  So, today in the morning sun, between the ice and the snow, the world is sparkling.  My eyes were taking it in, but that’s not what my mind was focused on.

Or, I could tell you that I was taking stock of the visitors to the bird feeders.  Some recently-arrived redwing blackbirds are mixed in with the usual winter suspects.  A downy woodpecker, the smallest of his kind around here, gets bumped from the suet cake by a pileated woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in these parts.  I watched him try to maintain his balance on the suet feeder that was rocking hard with his weight.  I saw them all, but that’s not what my mind was focused on.

I was thinking of a morning just like this one, exactly three years ago today.  On that morning, I was staring over my coffee cup out the patio door also.  My mind kept going over it.  I considered the dates again – married in 1980, Jacob was born in March of 1982.  It was 2022.  I worked through the adding and subtraction in my head.  No, that couldn’t be right.  I went through it again and couldn’t prove myself wrong, but I struggled to admit that I was right. 

Michelle was still teaching school that spring while I had retired two years before.  She came in to grab her cell phone off of the charger as she gathered everything up so she could head out the door.  “What are you thinking about so hard?” she asked.  “Is Jacob really 40 years old?” I asked back.  “Yes he is,” she affirmed.  “I don’t think of myself as an old person, but I guess I am,” I stated flatly; it was almost like the voice belonged to someone else.  Michelle chuckled.  “Well, you are old – remember that I am two years younger than you!”  That wasn’t helpful, just as she had intended it to be!

Now, this morning I was thinking how three years had already sped past since that moment of reality in 2022.  I poured a cup of fresh coffee and sat down. 

I remember so vividly when the nurse handed me this tiny baby and led me over to the table where I could wash him up.  I remember wiping off his hair and the nurse commenting about its red color.  I felt awkward and unprepared.  But as I held him close I was overwhelmed with emotions of love, awe, wonder.  I brought him back to Michelle and placed him in her reaching arms.  We all hugged, and laughed and cried all at the same time.

I was planning for Jacob to be a miniature me for most of his youth.  However, there were signs along the way that it may not exactly work out that way.  When Jake was about four I took him fishing for the first time.  I bought him a real fishing pole, not one of those little toy ones.  We left his grandparent’s farm house and drove 30 minutes north to Boot Lake.  I was very familiar with the lake and I knew that you could follow the campground path to the far shore where there was a huge red pine that had fallen in the water.  I was sure that there would be some nice bluegills lurking around it branches. 

We reached the downed pine after a 20-minute walk.  I was right; there were dozens of big bluegills just waiting to be caught.  I baited Jake’s hook and cast the line out.  Of course, the bobber went under immediately.  I handed the pole to Jake and cheered him on as he reeled the fish in.  He smiled broadly as he held his wriggling prize.  It was all just as I hoped until Jake asked, “Can we go back to Grandma’s now?”  In his little mind we had accomplished what we set out to do.  Now he wanted to go back and play with his cousins.  Something told me deep in my heart that we weren’t going to be like Andy and Opie Taylor after all.  There were dozens of fish to be had, but he wanted to go, so we went back to Grandma’s. 

As life worked out, Jake never really enjoyed what I loved to do.  Sometimes, in his teens, I felt that he was almost deliberate in choosing to be interested in things I was not because they were different from me.  Some of those things are still passions of his, so I’ve realized that maybe it was less about me and more about what he really wanted to do.  Strange that it took me so long to appreciate that that was just fine.

As it has turned out through four children and eleven grandchildren there is no miniature me in the bunch.  I have learned that my legacy was never in continuing the Dan mold.  But they can all depend on me to be with them in all their joy and all their pain without fail.  They do not have to doubt me.

I have always joked with Michelle since the first time we watched the movie Jeremiah Johnson, with Robert Redford.  There is a scene where he is trying to teach his Native American wife to speak English.  He points to himself – “Fine figure of a man – yes?”  He coaches her to answer, “Yes.”  Then he says, “Mighty hunter – yes?”  He coaches her to answer, “Yes.”  Then he says, “That is all you need to know.”  Of course, if you know the movie, the two live a beautiful and loving union until she and their son are tragically killed by braves from another tribe. 

Today, I contemplate each of my family members – my legacy - and in my thoughts and prayers I ask each of them, “One who loves you – yes?  “That is all you need to know.”

His Peace <><   

Deacon Dan      

Photo by Kevin Delvecchio on Unsplash