The Old Man of the Town Friday, September 26, 2003

A treat today: lunch with Dad. I talk a lot about Walker Percy and Philip K. Dick and those types of guys, but if I had to narrow the field to one philosopher it would be my father. He isn't as quotable as the others but at least as wise. Like all the greats he keeps his smarts to himself and makes his life his statement of belief. He is modest, shy, generous and immensely gifted. He had a burger.

A measure of his generosity: He dislikes meeting people, hates making conversation, but came up to my office and let me show him off. Everybody loved him, of course, in his gray sweater and big glasses. How could you not? When we were kids he read stories to us and did all the voices. When he read "Black Beauty" he even neighed. You can still see that in his smile. I can, anyway.

Mom is different. Mom is verbal. She's spent her life reading and deconstructing and fending off assaults from bosses and in-laws. She cares just as much as my Dad does, but she knows she's the smartest one in the room, and she's usually right.

We talked about her at lunch, her and my sister and my uncle. He and my father were childhood friends who married sisters. I don't think I've ever heard my Dad mention my aunt; it shook me a little to hear him say, "If Jo hadn't died, the plan was, we were all gonna retire upstate." It didn't hit me until then: He knew her as long as he knew my mother. Christ, how did he feel about it?

He talked about his carving and the odd engineering jobs he's been doing since he retired; we walked around the cove and looked at boats. When the bill came he didn't want to wait for change so he left a ten-dollar tip. "I gotta spend the money sometime," he said.

More than anything else, Dad taught me quiet. Or rather he tried: Mom's way was more fun. Let's say he showed me that silence and stillness were virtues. If I live to be a million I don't think I'll have his self-possession and simple, precise wisdom.

I've been analyzed up and down by friends and enemies, cruelly and kindly, but one of the few assessments I remember is something my father said many years ago on a summer afternoon. I was working in his office then, a fat, taciturn college freshman, and he was giving me a lift home with another engineer. A couple of girls passed the windshield, and the other guy said something saucy but harmless. Then he chuckled: I guess I shouldn't say nothing with your kid in the car. My Dad barely exhaled; that's how he laughed. He watches girls, too, but he never says anything. Even now!

One more story, just to get some God in here. I was much younger, and we were watching "All in the Family." Archie and the Meathead were getting heated about religion. How can God allow so much cruelty and evil in the world? etc. etc. My father, who had not spoken the whole evening, and had not gone to church in my lifetime, said simply: "God didn't put evil in the world. People did." I needed to hear that at that moment, and I've come back to it more than I can say--more than Walker Percy, more than Chesterton or C.S. Lewis.

Happy New Year, everybody! Let's make it a good one.

@ 8:39:00 PM,

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