Take Time

Dad,

Remember this?

You made it and gave it to me once for Christmas. Or perhaps my birthday. Doesn’t matter. What’s cool about it is that I still have it. It’s hanging on the wall behind my desk.

Words of wisdom, always before me. Since the picture is blurry, I’ll share what it says, for the benefit of those reading along . . .

Take Time

Take time to work – it is the price of success.
Take time to think – it is the source of power.
Take time to play – it is the secret to perpetual youth.
Take time to be friendly – it is the road to happiness.
Take time to dream – it is expanding your horizons.
Take time to look around – the day is too short to be selfish.
Take time to laugh – it is the music of the soul.

Such a simple gift. Handmade. Your writing, adorned with Liquid Paper. And BJ the bear.

I don’t remember the day I received this from you. I imagine that’s because it didn’t make a big impression at the time. It wasn’t fancy. Didn’t run on batteries or play heavy metal music. I couldn’t eat it. So I suppose I stuck it away somewhere.

Only to take it out one day a few years later and hang it up. And to pack it up and move it each time we relocated. Both in our own family and in mine.

Of all the things you’ve given me, this remains.

What were the circumstances of your life when you made this for me? Were finances stretched thin? Was this what you could afford to give? Since you’re a softy like me, did you cry as you made it, wishing it were so much more?

You should know that I keep it for no other reason than it came from you, and that it probably meant more to you than it ever has to me.

This is the way of a father. You give, like a flower scattering its seed upon the back of a gentle breeze, and wait to see what will take hold. What will grow in a welcome field. And, not surprisingly, it is the least profound things that produce the greatest harvest.

Thank you for this gift. Thank you for taking the time to make it. Thank you for having the courage to give it to me. I don’t remember saying that at the time. Forgive me for taking so long . . .

[This is your lucky day!  BOGO day here at The Cheek!  Not only did I post here.  I posted here as well.  Please, go read that if you have a moment to spare . . . ]

I Do

Words have eluded me. Or perhaps I have fled from them. Not the noise in my head, but the formulating and plotting and putting down of the things. I have been running past the words like a relay runner who has forgotten he is part of the team. Ignoring the baton. Eyes pinched shut, sprinting headlong toward an imagined – what seemed like an inevitable – finish line.

And yet the stuff happened. The world spun round and the damn sun kept coming up and things scraped themselves together into a life and held meaning and I let it remain there. At the tip of my tongue. On the ends of my fingers.

I stay.

For days like this one. An end and a beginning. A moment wrapped up and dunked into the big shiny batter of significance. Of meaning. Of faltered steps and stammered words and hands held tight so none of it slips away. So many details gone forever. And forever those two words remain.

I do.

We said them because they were part of the script. They made sense in the context of the day. The ritual. Like the way we sometimes say, “I love you.” Because we have to in order to move on to the next thing. Twenty years worth of next things. Moments that begin with a sweetly-breathed I do. Sometimes a sigh. But always the words.

I remain.

You keep me here. Sweaty and shivering and mostly calm in the palm of your hand. You refuse to let me drift too far or wander too close to the edge. I see it, reach for it, let my desire for it consume me, and you are there to keep me safe. You have never complained or grown weary of me. You mean it when you say things. Do things. When I have stopped to look at you, I have never felt anything but safe. Held. Beheld. And burned alive over and over and over again. Such is your commitment to me.

In the din and in the quiet and in the moments I hear nothing but contempt I reach for you with all of me. You are never far. And you take me every single time. You smile at me and say it again.

I do.