johnste3

After almost a year I can say that my son is back. All the rebellion and hostility is gone and I pray gone for good.

Twice this weekend he said to me, “Love you dad.” I cannot remember the last time I’d gotten that from him…ever.

It has taken months for each of us to retain the trust and confidence of the other. My mistake was not trusting him soon enough. I think he has been waiting for me to forgive him. It has been hard. The forgiveness part is hard…really hard.

This weekend we shoveled two yards of mulch in the flower beds. Two men working together: some conversation, but mostly work. It was when we were completed and after he swept out the truck bed that I told him “thank you” his response was, “you’re welcome…love you dad.” It was all i could do not to cry right there.

There are few moments in life so crystaline, so precise, so important and we need to grab them and hold them close to our hearts. Hold the moment in your hand, and let those whom you love know that you love them.

We embraced. There in the driveway. We embraced. And I told him that I loved him too.

I drove my daughter to camp on Saturday.

She is going to an arts camp and this is her third year to go to this camp.

My son is 17 and she is 14 and I struggle weekly with the emotion in knowing that soon he’ll move away to college and that there will come a time when they are both gone. I know that is their job: to grow and to move on. Intellectually, I comprehend that fact 100% of the time but that comprehension gnaws at my heart.

I got her registered and helped get her supplies and bedding moved into her dorm room. She came down to the car to get a pillow and we hugged goodbye.

She turned and walked away from me back to her dorm. That was hard.

I wish I could remember when I first heard someone say, “Forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself”.

There are few abolute truths in this life and the concept of gifting oneself peace by forgiving others is certainly one of those truths.

For YEARS I had a fist, a fist of anger clinched around my heart. Keeping me safe and others away.

There is a poem by Robert Bly that always comes to mind when I think of forgiveness. The entire poem is worth reading, but there is a line towards the end which caught me breathless the first time that I read it:

“He already had
his bark-like skin then,
made rough especially to repel the sympathy
he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept”

My Father’s Wedding
by Roberty Bly

“Today, lonely for my father, I saw
a log, or branch,
long, bent, ragged, bark gone.
I felt lonely for my father when I saw it.
It was the log
that lay near my uncle’s old milk wagon.

Some men live with a limp they don’t hide,
stagger, or drag
a leg. Their sons often are angry.
Only recently I thought:
Doing what you want …
Is that like limping? Tracks of it show in sand.

Have you seen those giant bird-
men of Bhutan?
Men in bird masks, with pig noses, dancing,
teeth like a dog’s, sometimes
dancing on one bad leg!
They do what they want, the dog’s teeth say that.

But I grew up without dog’s teeth,
showed a whole body,
left only clear tracks in sand.
I learned to walk swiftly, easily,
no trace of a limp.
I even leaped a little. Guess where my defect is!

Then what? If a man, cautious,
hides his limp,
somebody has to limp it. Things
do it; the surroundings limp.
House walls get scars,
the car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

On my father’s wedding day,
no one was there
to hold him. Noble loneliness
held him. Since he never asked for pity
his friends thought he
was whole. Walking alone he could carry it.

He came in limping. It was a simple
wedding, three
or four people. The man in black,
lifting the book, called for order.
And the invisible bride
stepped forward, before his own bride.

He married the invisible bride, not his own.
In her left
breast she carried the three drops
that wound and kill. He already had
his bark-like skin then,
made rough especially to repel the sympathy

he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept.
So the Bible’s
words are read. The man in black
speaks the sentence. When the service
is over, I hold him
in my arms for the first time and the last.

After that he was alone
and I was alone.
Few friends came; he invited few.
His two-story house he turned
into a forest,
where both he and I are the hunters.”

Forgive. Forgive. Forgive.