TheBanyanTree: The Person in the Role

[Tom Smith]

I told a friend how quirky it was that my son never
remembers my birthday yet never forgets Father's Day.
My friend replied "Kids can be so totally clueless when it
comes to parent's feelings at times.  My sister Linda says
she remembered the day when it suddenly occured to her that
Mama was a person.  She said she was an adult when she
realized that."

My father was more a playmate, friend and Santa Claus
combination than an authoritarian rule enforcer.  This is
not to say he didn't lay out rules nor let infractions go
without consequence.  An almost certain consequence was a
lecture.  

When well old enough to know better, I was brought home one
night by the police for vandalism.  I expected punnishment
*and* a long intense serious lecture from my father, but got
silence,  disappointment, sorrow, and mysterious
understanding.  Nothing could have made me think more about
what I had done.

A decade ago, a week after my father died, my mother gave me
a bundle of letters which my father had written to his best
friend when about the age of his later-to-be-vandal son. 
His teenage voice echoed from 1933: "Believe it or not I
still have some firecrackers left over from last fourth so I
am going to raise cain on halloween with them.  Last fourth
I blew off seven mailboxes just with ordinary columbus
firecrackers and boy they sure have got a lot of power."

Tom



		
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