A Father's Day Gratitude

The sun seemed brighter this day in a world on the verge.

Like most people in the world today, there is a sense of forboding that hangs around the corners of my mind about the state of affairs in the world, from Ukraine to Iran. I went to bed yesterday wondering, with more reality than I might care to want, if the end might come some night ahead, in a quick pre-emptive text and a flash of eviceration. The world feels out of control, so when I was awoken by the sunshine in my window this morning, I had a deeper sense of gratitude than other Father’s Days past. It is easy to get sucked into the morass of fear and terror. I have a much deeper hatred of war than most because I have four military-aged sons. I have lived a full life. Much more than most my age, so if the world careens to an end by irrationality and a thirst for power, I will leave with so much joy and a knowledge that what time I had was spent well. I cannot say that for my children, however. They are just at the beginnings of their adventures. Suppose this craziness continues, and they are sent to a far-off land by conscription to fight for something that none of us understands. In that case, it will be my biggest regret that we didn’t race away to Switzerland to hide in a small mountain town as a family, as far away from the hands of the warmongers as possible.

War and Father’s Day should not be colliding thoughts, but on this day, as we stare down the unthinkable, a haunting movie about children, fathers, and war arrived a the front of my memories. One of my favorite movies from the World War 2 era is about the Sullivan Brothers: five brothers who all decided to enlist in the Navy after Pearl Harbor. They insisted that they all serve on the same ship. They were allowed to do so against Navy protocol, and ultimately, their ship, the Juno, was sunk, and all five brothers met their end at the bottom of the cold Pacific. There is a fabulous scene at the end that captures a father’s grief after learning of the boy’s demise.

“All five?”

Thomas Mitchell, who plays the father, gives what I think is his best performance of his career. Known for his role as “Uncle Billy” in Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Mitchell is truly amazing in this movie. The grief that he demonstrates as he is told the news, and his tragic salute to the water tower where his young boys used to gather to see him off to work, is still as gut-wrenching as the first time I saw this. I remember seeing this as a young kid and not being able to control my sadness about it. Even rewatching it, I found myself choking up. It is hard to imagine sacrificing all of my children to a war. I don’t know that I could do it. If faced with the same grief, I doubt I would last through it. War is not a game, as Lindsey Graham has posted, it is filled with Sullivanesque Stories of grief, death, and sadness. No one ever wins in war. Sure, people profit from it, and they can drive their fancy reupholstered Aston Martins because of it, but the people who, for the love of their country and neighbors choose to fight, and who ultimately might be wounded, or mentally tortured or find death, leave behind a trail of terrible grief and loss. Our moment is tenuous, and it will take great leadership to pull back from this escalating conflict. On this Father’s Day, I pray that the men who have chosen to stare this down, without any real consequences, can be reminded that there are millions of lives at stake.

My children are all in the in-between land of becoming adults. They are beginning their bright futures, and this Father’s Day, because of the tensions in the world, I am reminded of their youth. Several weeks ago, I was awoken by a cruel dream. My youngest son is our most boisterous and enthusiastic. He has become a lovely teenager, but his youth was magical to me. Every new adventure was met with starry eyes and confidence to take on whatever might come. In the dream, we were sitting at a home in the mountains. It had a vague familiarity to it, but I could not place its location. We had seemingly returned from skiing, and all of my kids were their present ages and were busy doing their things after returning from the hill. Suddenly, at the table where we had set all of our helmets and gloves down, was my wide-eyed, six-year-old youngest son. He turned his head away from the table and saw me. His huge smile and big eyes connected with me, and he ran over to me. We hugged and fell to the floor, laughing and hugging. I awoke with my arms across my chest, but my six-year-old son was not there. I started to weep.

Time is cruel, and the older I get, the harsher each minute feels in its fleetingness. I know that this is the natural cycle of life, but somehow, when I was working so hard to make sure we could always stay ahead of the dying dollar or the next car trouble, I was missing moments that I would trade any of my marginal success in work for. I don’t like falling for the dead-beat dad stuff that modern movies suck us into, where every dad who misses out on moments in life is a loser for doing it, but I do find some resonant pull at the conflict that dads and moms face as they try all they can to give their children a better life. Perhaps that is why war is such a heavy topic for me. All of that life that I put my back into for them could be lost in an instant, and I must ask, “For what?”

I was reminded of this scene from Winnie the Pooh the other night when that same youngest son came to my room and asked if I remembered a story about his stuffed animal, Beary. I knew everything he was about to say, but I let him re-tell it from his perspective.

In an afternoon of playing at our home, my son had placed his little white bear in a drawer of our coffee table. He said he was sending Beary to space for an adventure. I am certain his little three-year-old mind got distracted and he forgot that Beary was in the drawer. When he returned home from his adventures in the neighborhood park, he couldn’t remember where Beary was. He looked everywhere, but as he looked, his fear of loss grew. Soon, all of our family was consumed by the search, but Beary was nowhere to be found. The bear had actually been pinned up underneath the coffee table where the drawer was, so even though we looked there, Beary seemed to have gone missing. I put my devastated son to bed that night, and my wife and I conspired, as most parents have in those moments, that we might find a new bear to try and replace Beary. The next day, I went to Target to try and find a replacement, but nothing matched. There was a giant white bear that had some similarities to it. I bought it and brought it home, knowing that I would beat them back from their evening events they had at church. I placed the bear in a cased opening in our breakfast booth and waited for their arrival. When they got home, my son saw the bear and asked, “Who is this?” to which I replied, “This is Beary. He told me he went for an adventure and grew up while he was away.” My son examined the bear with caution, then ran downstairs with my wife in tow. They came back up with a sheet of paper. Pointing to a rudimentary drawing that he had made, my son said, “Beary had a red bow and a red nose. This isn’t Beary.”

He was right, and I told him that I had tried to ease his pain. He was forgiving, but he was never giving up the hunt for Beary. Eventually, we found him stuck in the back of the coffee table, and all was restored. Big Beary, as my son named the giant white bear I had given him, found a place alongside the other stuffed animal friends that my son had assembled and adored, and his innocent love of imaginary creatures lasted much longer than most who were his age. I loved hearing the tales that he dreamed up. Which is why Winnie the Pooh is such a beloved book by so many. I can only imagine A.A. Milne sitting down to write about Christopher Robin and Pooh with absolute delight. The ending of the Disney version is special. The art is beautiful; a new style of pencil overlay that made the animation feel like a storybook. Sterling Holloway’s voice is the perfect fit for Pooh, and this touching last scene rings true for any parent who wishes for their child to always be six.

This morning, I was listening to Mark Steyn’s Father’s Day tribute, and he mentioned a poem I had forgotten by Wordsworth called Anecdote for Fathers. It is a lovely piece about a father and son and a walk in the woods, and it is a favorite. It has much more meaning now as a dad than it did when I first was introduced to it in college, and over the years, as I have watched my children grow, its resonance gains in strength.

Here is a reading of it:

Wordsworth always reminds me of another wonderful book by Norman Maclean. Fly fishing is imperative in our home. All of my boys know how to do it, and love to spend time wading in the waters. Maclean’s book, A River Runs Through It, is a true masterpiece of storytelling. The spirit of a wild Montana, a troubled brother, and a writer’s mind all revolving around the sport of fly fishing makes the book unique amongst western American literature. Robert Redford made a movie of the story, and there is a wonderful scene where father and son go back and forth reciting Wordsworth to each other. In this season of life, as my oldest sons are in college, this particular back-and-forth speaks to me in a new season, and this one is no less glorious than the adventures of a lost bear.

The ending of the movie also stirs great paternal emotion, and seeing young Norman and Paul in flashbacks in the mind of an old man reminds me that my days do grow shorter. Fly fishing is a magical sport for so many reasons, but its thread of interwoven connections in my life to my own father, grandfather, friends, and sons is a wonderful point of commonality.

I find myself thankful for this amazing life that I have had. I am overwhelmed that I have been given the chance to be a father and to see my children grow and blossom into amazing young men. I don’t always love the Hallmark Holidays like Father’s Day because of this strange sense of feigned obligation to something that needs no reminder of its greatness, but today I will take the joys from having had the chance to live in that becoming. I wish for peace this Father’s Day. I have no interest in seeing my children’s lives cut short in a circumvention of the normal rhythms of living by war. So while I fear the unnatural endings of apocalyptic conflict, I am also cognizant that each day is a gift not to be taken for granted. So as I head out for my morning walk, I will reach into gratitude rather than fear, and I will pray for cooler heads and better hope for humanity. I will pray that fathers, who are in the positions to make catastrophic decisions, are reminded of their children’s youthful smiles, or their lost bears, and back away from a road that leads to ending all wide-eyed youthfulness. On this Father’s Day, I am thankful for the time I have had, and I pray for my children to have the same.