There is a Picture of My Father

By Guy Lounsbury

There is a picture of my father as a child. In it, he can be no more than 9 or 10 years old, maybe less. It is the only one I have ever seen of him at such a young age. It was taken at a time when money was scarce and an instant captured was given more regard than the quick snapshot of today. I can see nothing special about this moment, whatever occasion or event the photo might have commemorated has long been erased by time. Now it is just an old grainy black and white image.

The young boy's hair, full and straight, hangs over his forehead in a careless fashion. He is wearing shorts, a regular button down shirt, and shoes that look worn but sturdy and heavy. They appear to be shoes that had lasted through several previous siblings' wear. His eyes are squinting into the camera, the sun in his face. Alone on the step, he looks hot, rumpled and has the impatient look of any small child when enduring the momentary annoyance of an adult's unfathomable whim, particularly with the promise of ice cream scant feet away. The wooden step he is sitting on looks worn smooth, the street looks dusty. To anyone else I am sure it would be an unremarkable photo, just a kid sitting on some steps tolerating the capture of a moment in time. But when I look at this picture, and I look at it frequently, I see the beginning of a journey.

Is there anything more inconsequential than the thoughts of a child? Certainly we treat them as such even if we don't admit it. Children are seldom taken seriously in their thoughts and ideas. Their opinions, voiced and heard, are rarely listened to and fade almost as quickly as they appear. I suppose back then this was even more so. It was a, "children should be seen and not heard" era. Still, as I look back through the years at that child, I cannot help but think of how much I would like to be able to spend just a few precious moments with him. To be able to ask the question, "What are you thinking?", and to hear of his wants and worries, his dreams and goals. The answers would be priceless to me.

That small boy turned out to be one of the most important people in my life and certainly the most influential. Though he couldn't have known it then, nor even dreamt it, he was learning the lessons that would later help shape me into the person that I am today. Already at that young age there were elements of me within him, an unfelt togetherness. We were, are and always will be unreservedly tied together with unbreakable bonds. There is an indescribable harmony between father and son, dynamic in its nature, changing with the passage of years but never lessening.

I am an only child; I grew up in a rural area. There weren't many other children around; most of the time none at all. It could have been a lonely childhood but my father wouldn't let that happen. He was both my teacher and my friend, he still is. Through him I learned to fish and hunt, to play baseball, to fix things, the proverbial value of a dollar and all the other things young boys learn on their way to becoming men. He still continues to teach me how to be a man and more importantly how to be a father to my own children; there is always room for improvement, there is always room for growth. He faces the twilight of his life with dignity and honor. His life is an example I endeavor to emulate.

He was and is a kind and patient man, tolerant of others, with a keen sense of humor. I can remember once when I was very young, putting a rock through his car windshield. I dropped it off the porch and through the glass, not out of any sense of maliciousness, but strictly as a child's experiment. When he asked, somewhat stunned, why I did it, I replied in all honesty "To see what would happen". He never even raised his voice to me and I went on my way with my new found knowledge completely unaware of the mercy I had just been shown. Years later I asked him about it, I'm not sure I could have remained as calm as he did given the circumstances. He told me that I was little, and didn't know any better. My own children don't realize it, but they have benefited greatly from that act of forgiveness my father showed me that day. My father is not one to verbalize his emotions. I cannot even remember him ever saying he loved me, but I have never doubted his love for me, not even for a moment.

My father is old now, his life is almost done. Time has dulled his senses and the years weigh heavily upon his body. He walks slowly now with the shuffling gait of the aged, pausing often to rest. The long purposeful stride I would try so hard to match as a child is gone, it exists now only in my memory. Sometimes he gets confused and forgetful and sometimes I think that he also gets scared, but he has too much pride to ever admit any shortcomings that mere years might bring about. Time may not be acknowledged, but its effects cannot be denied. The man I knew as a child is gone, just as the child he knew me as has also gone. We both walk down a road that had seemed endless, but now seems all too short. Our roles have reversed, and I am now the one that slows down for him, but on the path of our lives, I am again a child watching my father getting farther away from me. I want him to slow down so that we may walk side by side, but it is no longer a matter of shortening his stride or slowing his walk and letting me catch up. His pace is set, the years take their toll and all I can do is watch. I pass where he has been but he is no longer there. It is the nature of things, but it is nonetheless sad. I wish I could thank him for all he has done, I wish I knew how. But how can you thank someone who has given you everything?

Still, I can look at that picture and see my father, a small boy with the years endlessly rolling out in front of him. The potentials and opportunities spread out before him as numerous as the blades of grass in a field. Did he have a good life? I suppose that only he knows the answer. I hope so, although I know I did my part to cause him the share of grief that any child owes their parent. I wonder if he too ever looks at that old photograph of himself as a child. If he could, would he like to talk to that child? I wonder what questions he would ask, and what advice he could offer. But then maybe I already know what he would say because in the end, I did hear what my father would say, in the end he did talk to that child, in the end that child was me.