A Father's Legacy

            My dad often wondered about his legacy.  It mattered to him how his children would grow up and what kind of people they would become.  One of his priorities was that all of his five children receive college educations.  The tally, at the moment, is that his five children have nine degrees, soon to be ten.  One of us had a double major in college, so I suppose you could even argue we have eleven degrees.

            If you judge a man on the success he had in convincing his children to get educated, my Dad was an unqualified success. Of course, education is one thing, character is another altogether.  Well, on a bottom line sort of level, none of the five kids have ever been in jail (as a convict – I have been to jail to visit clients and take depositions from time to time – not sure if any of my sisters have ever been inside a jail).  But certainly character is more than just avoiding scrapes with the law and paying your taxes. 

            Okie dokie: My oldest sister left a good paying job as a college professor to spend two years in the Peace Corps – while in her mid-forties!  If this weren’t enough, she came back from Kenya and is now primarily responsible for taking care of our aging parents.  Two of my sisters are pastor’s wives and all this entails.  Both are exemplary moms and wives.  My other sister and her husband have raised two sons amidst the sociological carnage that is a liberal college town without any psychological damage to either son – no mean feat these days.  Oh, yeah, and the four of us who are married have all been married to the same person since we got married; three for more than 20 years.  One of us (me) celebrated 30 years of marriage this past August.

            So what, you say.  Plenty of American families could point to similar stories and none of this proves any particular character.  Maybe.  But there’s more.  Dad actually taught us things about living.  Me probably most of all because I was the only boy, and the oldest.  I learned from him that a man is judged by the way he speaks; that you don’t get something for nothing; that you should be honest with people; that when people are mean to you, the best strategy is to kill them with kindness; that instead of smoking cigarettes, you might as well suck on the tail pipe of a car (okay, he got that one from his mom – thanks, Grandma!).  I learned that patience most often wins out – not because he told me but because I tried his patience many times over and he won out!  I learned that if you love your children you will simply try to spend time with them, even doing simple things like eating dinner together.  He taught me to throw a baseball.  He taught me to fish.  He taught me to drive.  He taught me that you went to work even if you didn’t feel like it.

            Big deal, you say.  Lots of Dads did similar stuff.  That’s just it, though.  If you had a Dad who was like mine, then he was there for the big and the little.  His legacy is just that – life isn’t about doing something enormous, life is about doing the little everyday things well on an everyday basis.  Given the last true conversations I had with my Dad, I think he missed out on that idea as an ideal, even though he was actually living it out.  He couldn’t see it for himself, but I see it.  It took me 51 years and many stupid blunders to finally get it through my thick head. 

             Men – men of character out there – if you are reading this stop right now and go tell your wife you love her.  Go spend a few minutes with your kids doing something, anything with them.  Tell your kids you’re proud of them – even if they’re adults.  Stop thinking you have to do some enormous thing in life to accomplish great things in life.  My dad didn’t develop the cure for the common cold; he didn’t end the Cold War; he didn’t hit .400 in a baseball season; he didn’t invent the internet; he didn’t write a best-selling book; he didn’t do anything that anyone would ever say was spectacular or that would give him a place in history.  So?  Most of us won’t and you know what – who cares?  Doesn’t it matter more that we have taught our children wisely while we have had the chance?  Doesn’t it matter that by our example our children learn something (even dopes like me who take way too long?). 

            Thanks, Dad.  I know you’ll never read this, but thanks all the same.  You do have a legacy and I thank God you were the man who gave it to me.