A Legacy of 300 Homes

Issue #6: Two Story-Poems About My Father

My Daddy is Home

Every time I look in a mirror,
I see the deep lines on his face,
the gray passion in his hair.
I remember the hours we spent
playing catch in the backyard
until the sun disappeared
from the sky and darkness
had replaced it. I remember
the basketball games when he came
to watch me play, and I would spend
the entire game on the bench. He
never asked me why I didn't get
to play or why I wasn't as good
as the others on the team. He could
have, you know. He had been the captain
of his basketball team—the leading scorer.
I never achieved his greatness, his level
of skill. I was a second-string player
sitting on the bench. I showed up at
every practice, ran laps with the best of them, 
and shot free throws by the hundreds. 

I remember the first time I was fired 
from a job. He didn't yell at me or make fun
of me. He quietly offered his help. I was fifteen
and wanted to work for someone besides
him. I didn't want to build houses that
summer. To carry cement blocks in the hot
sun to those laying the basement walls.
I didn't want to carry shingles or hang
insulation and drywall. I tried to step
outside the shadow of my father, to find
my path, to make my way in the world.
I secured a job detasseling corn, walking
the cornfields during the hottest days
of July, sweat pouring down my face.
I had leaped from the frying pan into
the fire. If I thought construction was
hard work, detasseling was even harder.
And I wasn't the boss's son. I couldn't
hide out. I lasted a week, and they
fired me. Claimed I was too slow. It
was a setup. My supervisor told us
he wanted a girls' crew. So he told
four of us to take our time, and then 
he fired us for working too slowly. 
When I told my father, he said he could
help if I was willing to apologize. So he
took me to see a man that he knew,
someone high up in the company.
I stood there, shamefaced, apologizing
and begging for my job back. It did not
work. Even my father could not fix everything.

More than a dozen years ago, my father
passed away. A heart attack. He had gone
to work when he was still sick from
pneumonia. He was sitting on the tailgate
of his blue pickup when it hit him. He fell
to the ground. One of his employees
helped him to his feet. He sat down beneath
a tree. Moments later, his heart gave out.
He left his body. He left with a smile
on his corpse. Dead, one month shy
of his sixty-fifth birthday. We all must
die someday. I wonder how my death will
come. Will it sneak upon me in the middle
of the night? Will it accost me at noon
on a hot summer's day? My hair is showing
gray now. My wrinkles are deeper. My body
stiffer. My snoring louder. Each of us must
come to accept who we become. Each of us
must find our way through the fog of death.
My nephew claims my father visited him after 
he died. Will he be there waiting for me when 
I crossover? What awaits any of us on the other side? 

On my wall hangs a photo of my father and 
his basketball team. I look at it almost every
day as I reach for a tie to put around my neck.
My father was a quiet man with a smile on
his face. My mother claimed the smile was
from the car accident where he had all his ribs
broken, except the one that God used to make
woman. And most of his teeth were broken
off when he tried to eat through the dashboard.
Would my father be proud of me today? Would
he sit on a hard chair and listen to me preach?
The gift my father gave me was to support
whatever I did and to be proud of me.
Sometimes late at night when my world
is asleep, I can hear him breathing. Some veil
in time opens and we cross the folds that
separate us. I listen for his return when 
I will whisper: My daddy is home.

---

Notes:

If my father were still alive, he would turn 100 in July. He passed away almost thirty-five years ago, when I was forty-one. I received the news from my sister. I had visited my parents about two months before his death and took a few photos of him. He was overseeing the reconstruction of a barn at the Illinois Mennonite Heritage Center in Metamora.

These two poems are different than most of my poetry because they are grounded in fact. These are about my dad. I have only made minor changes to the story. Most of my poems are fictional.

Since my Dad’s brothers and sisters have passed, I dedicate these poems to Dad’s first cousin. Maurice and I connected last year. He is 92 and in hospice. He reads and comments on my poetry and newsletters.

These poems were written in 2003.

---

An Old Red Jacket

You asked me why I wear
this old red jacket, faded
and torn under the armpit
with the emblem of a cardinal
on the left breast. I smiled
and remembered how proud
my father was when he gave it
to me. I was married by then and
had a child of my own. His construction
business had fallen on hard times
and he was forced to make his living
weatherizing old houses instead
of building new ones. Since he
bought a lot of insulation, he
received gifts, incentives to buy
more, from the company that
promotes itself through the image
of the Pink Panther. Today, I work
in an office building down
the street from the corporate
headquarters of the Pink Panther
and my father lies buried 
in the church cemetery. This
red jacket is one of the few
tangible connections I still have
to my father, a man who built over
three hundred homes in his career,
a man who received more than
three hundred blue ribbons 
showing his hogs at the state fairs. 

What is the making of a man? When
we reach the end of that road, and
the good Lord comes to take us
away, how should we be measured?
By what standard are we to be
judged? How will we be remembered?
Was it all in vain, or did we leave
a small footprint in the sand to be
washed away by the next tide?

I wear this old red jacket from time
to time and remember my father
and one of his final gifts to me.
My mother died nine years after
my father and now lies buried beside
him. When we divided up her possessions
among the six children, I requested
the second red jacket, the one
my father wore. It is more faded
and stained than my own, and
it is a size too small, but I hang
it in our coat closet as a reminder
of the man my father was, and
some would say still is. What 
is the measure of a life spent
building houses? What is the measure
of the darkness that caresses
my soul? I listen to the music
playing in my head and whisper
a prayer of remembrance. I zip
my old red jacket and walk
beneath the autumn moon. I am
my father's son. And the jacket
is the blessing he gave me.