For my father

I have to wonder, how often do fathers and sons become strangers, enemies even? It was once pointed out to me that blood is thicker than water; it's been proven often enough. My father told me that. He loves history. By extension, because he loves history I do, too. By extension, because he loves many things in this life, so do I.

Is it because I want to be like him or do I want his approval or is it simply because it seems the thing to do, to follow in the foot steps of the one man who influenced my life in so many ways? I'm certain that Freud would have a ball with that. I also wanted to marry my mother, but that's another story. This one's about Dad.

Right now, I am frightened for my father. I know his intellect, the power of his observational skills, the way he could parse the BS to get to the root of the issue. Before I go any farther with this let me make one thing clear; I love my father without reservation. No matter how much or often we might disagree about things, he is the single most important man in my life. He was there when I needed him, he never abused me and often defended me when we both knew I was wrong and gave me hell later. He gave me my moral compass and allowed me to pursue my life as I saw fit. No one could ever give a greater gift than the love my father gave me.

Still, I am frightened for my father. This world is changing fast. In the last fifty years we have progressed farther than we have in the last five thousand. This is phenomenal growth. More than that, it is frightening. In a world that barely knew flight, we now reach for the stars. In a world where it took a month get a reply to a letter, we get a reply instantly, even from the other side of the planet. Nations that we once fought are now trade partners and lands that were foreign now own most of our debt load. Change has come quickly and without cease.

There is no time to catch our breath. For the folk who grew up in a slower time, these times must be full of wind and fury. Just yesterday I had a conversation with a ninety year old man who piloted B 17s in WWII. He talked about going to the recruiting station in a Hanson carriage drawn by the same horse he used to plow with. I had a great aunt by marriage who went to the West Coast by Conestoga wagon and back to the Mid West by 747. How confusing/frightening this world must be to our elders. How awesome and terrible.

Virtual lives, the barriers of privacy melting into the world wide web, the people of government wide open to examination, the death of the printed word and the ascendancy of the virtual word, any opinion, no matter how skewed there for the perusal of those who care to look; how does one choose? How does one who is used to the slower pace of print with it's lack of easy cross reference deal with the speed of propagation that information enjoys today?

The hate and fear mongers, the resisters of change, the ones who find change a threat; their voices can be heard loud and clear. To a generation that is not used to the pace of change we experience today, those voices make sense. To those who were born to these times, a PC in every home, email, blogging, public airing of personal lives; their voices are like the lowing of cattle awaiting the milk maid.

Dad, I love you! You are the one I look to when I have a difficulty with life, internal and external. It is your example that I follow. Strength, morality, integrity, truth, you empower me. I think I might know now, in my own adulthood, something of who you are and where you come from. It is with compassion and love, reaching for understanding that I express my feelings here. I am not an orphan. I know you love me. I know you care above and beyond yourself for me. For this, and many more things, I thank you.

Your son,

Gary Bush

(and damned proud of it!)

 


No one gets out of here alive, so live it like ya mean it.