I created "The Readster" for the purpose of reviewing books and movies, but I shunned the notion of sharing anything deep and certainly nothing overtly personal. I had thought ---and still think---there is too much blatant self-promotion and indiscriminate self-disclosure on social media. I suppose I contribute a bit of that on Facebook. I have a Twitter account that I don't use. And I rarely blog. This post turns all that on its head. As I am trying to write for publication (my sabbatical project is an article/novel after all. ) I began to think that all writing is, in some form, self-disclosure. So I am going to try my hand at writing reflectively in this post. It is for all the world to see--or at least the world that happens on to it. This post is great departure from my use of social media so a toe in the water, so to speak. We'll see how it goes. It might be the last or it might be the start of a new day. That remains to be seen.
Father's Day is fast approaching. Honestly, I haven't thought much about Father's Day since I was a teenager because my father died when I was 15. For the record, I think Mother's Day, Father's Day and Valentine's Day are Hallmark holidays, vastly overrated, and consumer driven. I generally do not celebrate them or in the case of Mother's Day try to keep it pretty low key. I take my mother out for dinner at Red Lobster or Seasons 54 and that's about it.
For some reason just recently I started thinking more intentionally about my father, or what I remember of him. The trigger might have been the fact that I ran into one of my fellow professors and his wife the other day while getting ice cream at Ivanhoe's. A few years ago that colleague spent his sabbatical project discovering and researching his mother who had died when he was a boy. His project report was emotionally moving and touched me in a way I haven't forgotten.
We share some of the same scars, although I have some snippets of memory of my own father that he did not have of his mother. It is probably a truism to suggest that we tend to venerate parents who have been gone for a long time. Time has a way of magnifying the saintly characteristics while diminishing the human or less honorable ones. I have tried hard not to do that in my thoughts of him. I have tried to recreate the memories in my mind realistically. But time has a way of playing with our memory. I want to keep my thoughts and writings of him in balance.
The fact is that while our culture reveres holidays like Father's Day, I have paid little mind to it. Over the years I would say Father's Day has passed by more often than not without thought of my father. Maybe because memories are still a little painful and raw. Maybe my feelings are still unresolved. Or maybe I have focused on those people who immediately surround my life.
The truth is I have this gaping and vacuous hole when I start to think about my dad. The conversation I have with myself often begins: "I wonder what he would have thought about...x or y or z." And I wonder what kinds of conversations we would have had as adults. I wonder what kind of person I would have become had he lived to influence my choices: college, boyfriends, books, political persuasion, philosophy of life, or theological beliefs. Would I spar with him intellectually? Would we have respectful conversations? Would I have been a rebel and challenge him or would we have similar ideas? I always seem to think of these questions when I am in the car. (One of my strongest memories is that he loved to drive. Or maybe he was like me and enjoyed the fresh air and the momentum of going and returning. Did I get my love of travel and adventure from him? ) I can get quite a bit of mileage out of those questions. When I get lost in my reverie of imaginary conversations with my father time speeds. Before long I realize I have traveled from Upland to Chicago or Grand Rapids or wherever I am going.
I guess this is long enough for this post. If you have read this far I welcome your feedback. I have been thinking about reflective writing as I prepare to lead a workshop on Writing As Healing. In then next few days and weeks I hope this post puts into practice the very thing I am going to talk about. So here is my first stab at it. So let me know what you think.
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