Blog 151 – 10.30.15

I can still hear my dad saying, “Do as I say not as I do.” After I was older I used to reply, “But Dad, what you do speaks so loudly that I can hardly hear what you say.” One of my favorite singers Josh Groban released a new CD called Stages and one of the cuts on that CD is two songs put together Children Will Listen and No One’s Gonna Harm You. I recommend it to all. One of my favorite lines is, “Children may not always obey but children will listen.”

The hard learned lessons that my father tried to impart to me come to me often though he has been gone eighteen years. I could have saved myself a lot of wandering around in the wilderness had I acted on his astute advise as a younger man but few young people are that wise and most insist on making all our own mistakes and not profiting from those of others.

A big reason writers write is to share their stories with the hope that someone’s else can thereby avoid a pot hole or two along the way. There is more love in most people’s hearts than we give them credit for and yes even our own. As a young mama’s boy I heard and believed all the disparaging things my mother said about my dad. Though no saint, few of us are, my dad was not the calloused insensitive person my mother described. For one he stayed and provided for his unhappy wife and two sons. He loved to entertain us with his many stories and he genuinely gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. He never met a stranger.

I used to not like to be told that I was like my dad but since I accepted and came to love myself I hear those remarks as the highest form of praise. In a lot of ways I think my dad had a much healthier self esteem and outlook on life than my mother. I believe my daddy loved my mother so much that he was content to be her fall guy. I think he wanted to be by her so much that he accepted her almost constant complaining and attempts to remake him as just her way of loving him. And she did as much as she was able to love anyone not loving herself.

At about aged ten I saw my daddy drunk, a rare thing, but he was a sloppy crying drunk, begging my mama to forgive him. I vowed to myself that my children nor anyone else would ever see me drunk. I have kept that vow for almost fifty five years. Thanks, Dad. I learned so much from you and more from what you said than even what you did. I turned out to be a better listener that you or I even I thought. I miss you more than even Mama and I never ever thought I would say that but it is true. Thanks for loving us all the wonderful way you did.

Your friend and fellow traveler, Jake White’s boy,
David White