A fatherly testimony

Here we are, sitting in your work van, a white, ’71 Ford van with barely more metal than rust holes. The windshield has a world map of cracks that grows larger each passing season. The seats, more exposed cushion than vinyl, precariously hold our bodies on this calm and muggy summer afternoon. 

You’ve just returned home after working another twelve-hour day as a carpenter in our small, rural Minnesota town. Your arms, tanned from hours laboring under the sun, straddle the steering wheel as you readily look over at me in the passenger seat and ask me how my day was.

This is the ritual to which I’ve assigned myself. Each day, at precisely the same time, I run home from wherever my nine-year-old curiosities have driven me that day and wait for your arrival. Most days I’m exploring the woods that surround the river as it meanders through our neighborhood. 

Always arriving home a few minutes before you, I wait inside our house, straining my head out the large picture window to see when your van turns the corner and pulls up outside. If for some reason I don’t see the van when you turn the corner, I can usually hear the van’s disjointed shifting as it comes to rest near the curb in front of our house.

Before you have a chance to turn off the ignition, I’ve already made my way into the passenger seat. You move your black, cement-stained lunch pal from the passenger seat to give me room to sit. After we say our hellos, I sheepishly look over at you and ask the question, the one I ask each day: “Did you bring me any wood?” 

Your job as a carpenter and my joy at building tree houses and other contraptions makes us a good combination. I already have enough wood to build several go-carts, tree houses and ladders. Maybe it’s the father-son ritual that makes me keep asking.

We sit for a few more minutes, not saying too much, but reacquainting ourselves, father and son. You’re in your mid-40s by this time, still somewhat rugged and in great shape. I look up to you.

We walk the fifty or sixty feet from the van to the house, where mom has dinner prepared. You wash up and sit down at the table, happy to be home from work and with your family. Your demeanor, always reserved and humble, doesn’t let on to this much—but I can tell. You become more relaxed, patient and your smile is more evident.

After dinner, you are exhausted from your day of climbing roofs, hauling cement, and pounding countless nails into shingles and two-by-fours. You crumble onto the couch. The TV silently beckons your attention, but you don’t watch it, your mind and body having their first real chance at rest all day.

But as usual, and this must be part of my ritual, too, you begin to perk up after a few minutes, me hovering over you and asking when we can go outside.

Even though it’s early evening, the sun and humidity have not released their stifling grip. In the garage, clean and always in order, we grab our baseball mitts and head out to the back yard. My mitt, just recently purchased from the local Coast to Coast store; your mitt, the leather stained dark from numerous chemicals intentionally and unintentionally spilled on it over the years, is worn and held together by one leather string. We grab a baseball, one of about ten I have in an ice cream bucket by the back door.

Baseball is probably the easiest sport for you to play. Since an accident with a joiner at work left you without significant parts of two fingers on your throwing hand, you struggle to grip firmly most balls. A football is nearly impossible for you to throw, but you still play catch with me. A basketball even harder, as the flick of your wrist releases very little power to the ball when two of the most powerful fingers used in this action aren’t there. Yet, on occasion, you still shoot baskets with me.

We play catch for fifteen or twenty minutes, father and son. You don’t have trouble with throwing the ball a certain distance, but your accuracy is shaky. And when we’re done, you move to the garage and putz around, repairing things that need repairing and straightening up the mess I probably made. I run over to a friend’s house and spend the remaining daylight hours riding bike or climbing trees.

Now some thirty-odd years later, I’m a father myself, with the same worries, fears and joys that you experienced. Though you aren’t a man of many words, a man who relies heavily on talking to communicate things, you clearly communicated many things to me. While your faith is strong and important in your life, you rarely talked about it. 

But that didn’t matter to me. I understood who you are and the important things in your life. And to me, those wonderful occasions when we, father and son, played catch in the backyard, those occasions communicated more to me who you are than all the words you ever spoke.