It is impossible to know the ending this story, for the simple reason that it is not over.
This is, at best, a chapter’s closing
This chapter was about me going to Rio to see my father, and there to enjoy his company, speak my heart, listen, and try to provide whatever kind of support I might be able to deliver. This chapter was about me going to Rio to see my father, and with his help, to learn a little bit more about life, about father and son, about aunts, uncles, cousins, ex wives, about neighbors, visitors, tenants, friends. I went to learn about all of these things as they are in the hands and in the life of my dad. I went to learn about life as a (nearly) nonagenarian, about life as a child reared in the Great Depression and about the life of a young man who’d been a bomber pilot in World War II. I went to learn the worth of love as expressed in a thousand ways outside of romance.
What I witnessed was the life of a man who’s only luxury is his time and his attention.
To who the highest values are the richness and truth experienced in thought, the will to work, and the lessons learned over a lifetime of thinking, doing and observing. A man who’s most happily independent, and gladly interdependent on the great circle of friendships earned and kept over decades of welcoming, politeness and generosity.
My father lives in a wealth of scarcity, lean by design, efficiency and functionality only giving way to what heightens the quality of mind through experience. There is a certain beauty in his carefully pruned existence, a zen garden where tools are used hard and maintained with care, where repurposing is chosen over discarding, where very little is treated as useless. Dad looks at what I routinely call trash, and sees a further purpose to which it can serve. Plastic bags, scraps of lumber, loose screws, electric chords once cut, empty food cartons, newsprint, tattered towels, misfit plumbing, extra tile, glass oven doors, chord, all of these and more are kept and reapplied, some multiple times. There is no hoarding in my father’s house. It is small, and orderly, and he knows where to find anything he chooses to keep.
In another post I speculated about the number of open ended and incomplete projects I found in his home. There are lampshades made of colored resin, metal tools waiting for replacement handles, stair steps eternally under repair, lumber in vast quantities, furniture still clamped together, doors held shut with lead weights, light fixtures wired in with alligator clip extensions, appliances with their guts hanging out, plumbing held in place by wire … just to name a few of the most immediate and obvious vestiges of an active mind with tools at it’s hands.
In a recent conversation, speaking with someone who hopes to embark on an artistic practice, I found myself being encouraging while knowing full well that the person I was speaking with had no idea of how broad and wide the field really is. They were really proposing to wade out into what they thought would be a pleasant pool, but which I know is actually a sea, with depths and lengths great enough to swallow a whole lifetime.
I hung up the phone and in the same instant the realization came upon me: while I felt they were being foolhardy, it was more important to embark upon the attempt than to turn back for not knowing how far and wide they might have to course in order to get where they thought they’d like to go. Immediately I knew this had to do with my father, it had to do with the myriad projects jettisoned along the way. I believe that a good portion of why my father is still quite so present and mentally active at 89 is that he has consistently chosen to take on new challenges. The dross of derelict projects around the house is, I know, only the thin dust on a much larger edifice of completed forms.
The internet piped in via his iPad is his newest constant challenger, one which he returns to almost as often as to his many games of solitaire. Along with learning how to use digital media, there is one other great new project my father has, remaining active in his mental and physical worlds despite the withering effects of age. It is foolhardy indeed to embark on those journeys, as the technology will continue to evolve at incredible speeds, and aging is an ocean who’s depths no one has ever survived. Yet it is the seat of what is truly human, to try.
Of all the things I went to Rio to learn, this, this lesson on perseverance, on personal integrity, on the value of being willing to play, and work, at what you don’t yet know, this has been the clearest teaching imparted. It was taught not by design, not by lecturing or by study, but by example.
When the heart is open, the darts that pierce it are joyously unexpected. They are what, precisely, is needed.
I have my father to thank in a thousand more ways than I know how to articulate, for a horde of examples that I know will continue to work themselves into my thinking, doing and observations, for the rest of my life. In this way I am thankfully certain he will always be with me.
My visit to Rio and my Dad, is over, I left three days ago, fortunately his story is not.