Friend, Father, Family Man ( #AtoZ )

         We play many roles throughout our lives--sometimes significant and other times seemingly trivial.  But it's all important, everything we do, because it all means something even if we don't realize what that meaning is...

Arlee Bird center with the black cap with family in Gatlinburg TN

           When I was a child my father was like a hero to me.  I even made up a song about him when I was about 4 or so.  I'd sing, "I'm Bob Jackson the movie star..." (his name was Bob Jackson).  I don't recall if there were any other lyrics--I guess I just repeated that line.  

            In my teens and early adult years I disagreed with my father often, but his core values were deeply instilled within me.   After having my own children I began to more greatly appreciate the responsibilities of fatherhood.  In my later thirties--perhaps a year or so before my father died--I thanked him for being the father that he had been and the example he had set for my own time at being a father.  He didn't say much in response, but I'm sure he had some kind of appreciation for my having said that.

            After my father died at age 67, I often thought of him as I continued my own fatherhood journey.  Even now, nearly thirty years after his departure from this Earth, my father's presence surrounds me.  These days when I look in the mirror I see my father.  In many ways I have become him, but I have also become my own unique person.

            Now with four children of my own who are on their own raising the next generation, I see myself in that same place I was 30 years ago.  My kids have thanked me for being a good father and teaching them how to deal with life as best as they could.  At this stage of life I am not just a father to my children, but a friend to some fine adults with interesting lives.  They are bringing up a new generation and attempting to give their children a life akin to what they remember having as kids.  The kind that I remember my parents giving to me.

           Years have passed as have both my mother and father.  A few of my friends I still keep in contact with to some extent.  They live far from me as do my brothers and sisters.  Isolated in L.A. is how I sometimes feel.  But that might be okay because a lone castaway dreams bigger sometimes.  My rescue boat may be on its way.

            My father never stopped dreaming--he always  had some big idea that he was sure that would be his next big life thing.  Years after I moved away from home my mother told me how they started going to comedy clubs and my father began to develop his own comedy act that he could perform in those clubs.   And he actually did it on a small scale.  A stunning success was probably part of his comedy dream, but just doing it was a success to a degree though he never became quite the star he might have fancied becoming.  He was having fun and he was pursuing a dream.

          I have no aspirations for comedic stardom, but I have other dreams that keep burning within me.  My father's drive is now compelling me.  I feel him encouraging me onward.  Something needs to happen and it will.  The question is:  What will that something be?   In some sense I know what the something might be and I'm working on it now  I am my father and I am my children's father.  I am who I am and only hope that others will accept me for who I am.

            I choose to be no one else but who I am.  This is me.

           Do you see something of your parents in who you've become?   Were your parents big dreamers or were they discontents?   Have you kept up with friends from younger days or have you mostly departed from them for some reason or another?

My Father Who Art In Heaven

              Bob Jackson  January 14, 1923 --September 9, 1990

         When I was a child, a portrait of my father sat on a table in our living room.  This was one of my favorite pictures in all the world.   In the photograph my father serenely sits with his right hand resting on top of his left as he comtemplates something to his right field of vision.  He is neatly dressed in suit and tie and his hair is immaculately groomed.  The background is dark except for a luminescent corona which backlights his shoulders.

          Sometimes I would gaze thoughtfully at the portrait.  In that strangely multidimensional way that children are able to think,  I would wonder who the man was.  He looked like my father and yet did not seem to be the same person who I would see in the evenings, often loud, sometimes funny, sometimes angry,  and always outgoing to strangers and friends alike.  The man in the picture was quiet and absorbed. What was he looking at?  What was he thinking?  Did he know me?

        Of course, I knew that it was really my father in the picture, but then again I pondered the possibility that it might be  another version of my father who I could only see in the portrait.  Occasionally I would tell my sister that the picture made it look like our father had died and gone to heaven.  With the aura of light behind him he looked like an angel to me.

         When my father was at home I paid no attention to the picture unless he had become angry and yelled at me.  In my fear, through my tears, I might catch the alternate reality daddy in the picture and be reminded that the real daddy would not be angry forever; and that even as I cried his angelic countenance might be watching me from some hidden place.  These thoughts would bring peace to me and make me sorry that I had misbehaved.

            Over the years, after we had moved a few times and I was older, I don't recall seeing this picture around our home anymore.   But the image stayed in my heart and held a sweet place in my memory.  Then a few years after my father died in 1990, my mother sent me a copy of the portrait.  She knew that I had always liked this picture.

             The framed picture now sits in the center of a display of family pictures in the home where my wife and I  live.  In fact, it's right in the hall outside the office where I work.  I often look at it as I frequently pass by it during the day.  Sometimes I pause a moment to reflect upon the peaceful gaze of my father who looks like an angel in heaven.