My father's never been much of a man for hugs.
My family's never been much good at expressing affection.
This doesn't detract from my love for my father,
The skilled man of labor who supported his family
With study legs and arms, a strong back and hands,
A truck driving, plastering, sheet-rock taping
Hod-carrier of a man, rugged as a workbench.
A bulwark of a man, intimidating as a shop teacher.
I'd always been known in Hermantown as "Swede's son."
Not, "Junior," as he had been christened.
He once said that he wouldn't inflict the indignity
Upon a son of naming him "John Henry Hanson the turd."
His force of personality was a formidable enough hurdle
To surmount though. Everyone knew and loved " Swede."
For too many years I considered myself a failure
Because I couldn't work like him, make friends as he did,
Or dominate a room by sheer strength of character.
Perhaps I've been the one who's never been much for hugs.
I've always kept my life and dreams out of his reach,
Unable or unwilling to share them with him,
Fearing that how different I was from him
Would only elicite his scorn or contempt.
I'd like to say that I wish I could have made him proud,
But that isn't really fair to him either. I may have.
But what is poetry but memories that have been cut away
From the ragged clothes of past experiences.
Selective snipping, editing of the loose threads,
Discarding the ragged swatches that just don't fit,
And upon reflection weaving the ones we choose
Into a patchwork quilt of selected images.
The choice of those that we deem worthy of remembrance
Varies with each of us. Truth is so subjective.
Each of us wraps ourselves in a comforter
Of myth and delusion, suppressing disappointment
While magnifying the moments we wish to hold onto.
I see my young dad proudly displaying the gas station
That he's put together one Christmas morning for me,
With a ramp winding from roof parking down to the garage.
He'd taken the time to wrap each little car individually,
To prolong my joy in unwrapping so many surprises.
Taking delight in my childish excitement and glee.
I see a middle-aged man driving his young teen-aged son
On the kid's Sunday morning paper route.
Dad's old blue Dodge smelled of plaster and mortar,
Enough of a work car to allow "Brownie" to join us.
My chocolate lab companion would bound out of the car
Whenever I did, and run alongside me as I tossed
Rubber-band bound papers onto customer's porches
While my father waited patiently for us to return.
I see a slightly greying man who's driven a day
In his work car to spend some time with my family.
He'd brought his hod, trowel and other tools of his trade
In plastic buckets in the back seat, wedged between bags
Of cement and plaster, his smallest mud box atop it all.
He'd come to tuck point and stucco the brick foundation
Of our home. "It needs it," he explained tersely.
I see an old man now. Too frail to take care of the home
He built fifty six years ago, the yard he landscaped,
The trees he planted. To hear his voice quavering,
To see him wrestle to control his Parkinson's shakes,
And to see him have to use an oxygen tank to breathe
Seems a cruel invasion of of a proud man's privacy.
It's so demeaning; so humbling to grow old.
Yet I've never seen him succumb to despair.
Even when it would be so easy to.
Part of me would like to walk over and give him a hug,
To embrace him and to tell him how much he's meant to me.
Yet at this point in our lives I fear
That my act of love would be viewed as a "pity hug,"
A gesture that would make us both uncomfortable.
My father's never been much of a man for hugs.
My family's never been much good at expressing affection.
