Closing Gates
Last night my Dad called to talk. The last couple of times I've spoken to him on the phone this week, he's seemed grouchy and tired. Exactly how he seemed when I was a kid, but not how he's sounded in many years. Dad turns 90 this April. You may remember my previous entry about my Dad and how his Father fled the south during the Civil War when he was 14 or 15 to avoid conscription in Jeff Davis' army of the confederacy and became somewhat of an outlaw on the Kansas plains.
So last night Dad called to tell me that he's putting his ducks in a row- or as he called it, 'closing the gates'. He said that he wanted to finalize any loose ends so that his affairs won't be in such a mess when he 'goes'. He's heading out to Springfield this Tuesday to meet with his lawyer and sign things over to me. The weight of the conversation kept me from asking, "Gee, aren't ya' gonna' watch the inauguration?" He wouldn't have liked that I don't think, being as... let's say 'Old School' about such things as racial matters.
But despite this fact, and with the burden of a life-discussion on our backs, I hung up and began to reflect on the extraordinary bookend that my Dad closes in the twilight of his life and in the hand to hand of his father and himself. Chiefly, that his father walked the Earth with President Lincoln. He breathed the same air as slaves. Heard the first cannons of American civil rights shaking the clouds.
And that man's son, will die under a black President.
So last night Dad called to tell me that he's putting his ducks in a row- or as he called it, 'closing the gates'. He said that he wanted to finalize any loose ends so that his affairs won't be in such a mess when he 'goes'. He's heading out to Springfield this Tuesday to meet with his lawyer and sign things over to me. The weight of the conversation kept me from asking, "Gee, aren't ya' gonna' watch the inauguration?" He wouldn't have liked that I don't think, being as... let's say 'Old School' about such things as racial matters.
But despite this fact, and with the burden of a life-discussion on our backs, I hung up and began to reflect on the extraordinary bookend that my Dad closes in the twilight of his life and in the hand to hand of his father and himself. Chiefly, that his father walked the Earth with President Lincoln. He breathed the same air as slaves. Heard the first cannons of American civil rights shaking the clouds.
And that man's son, will die under a black President.