Zacchaeus
10-27-2005, 04:34 PM
So I took my 8-year old, Josh, for a haircut yesterday and while we waited to be served, we did some serious catching up. Due to my recent workload, we hadn’t spent any real quality time together for a few days, so we started by discussing some ideas for his forthcoming school project about the Romans – I think I’m more excited about it than he is! Then we renewed our debate at some length as to why Batman has a Fighting Skills rating [in Trump Cards] of only 92, when Wolverine has 95! Then, my son crowed over his recent thrashing of me at Jedi Knight – I was half asleep when we played, honest! – which was a bad move on his part as I sincerely regretted having to remind him that I’m still unbeaten at both Halo and Serious Sam! Then we got onto one of our favourite topics: Sarah [or Sazzy as Josh likes to call her], my sixteen-month old daughter, and some of the things she’s taken to doing recently, like standing there with her little hand on the dial of the dish washer, while staring earnestly at mummy (who is desperately trying NOT to wet herself!) with an expression that says: “I think I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’ll just wait for you to tell me to stop!” And my son and I chatted... and we laughed... and chatted some more... and laughed some more... and we did what I suppose most fathers and sons do together; at least that’s how it was with me and my Dad who’s called Arthur by the way.
And then this kind old gentleman, who had just finished having his hair cut came up to me on his way out and said "Do you know you have a wonderful gift for communicating with your son?" Taken somewhat by surprise, I mumbled a rather uncertain "thank you", and the old man left. I looked at the barber with raised eyebrows anticipating a rather laconic, barber-esque response like “never trust over-65s who’ve just had a hair cut. They come over all unpredictable”. But the barber simply smiled at me and said "He's right, you know. You’re so relaxed with your kid, you’re always laughing together. Not like some of the other dads that come in here…"
My son's immediate promotion to the front of the queue spared me any further embarrassment but, perhaps more importantly, gave me the space to reflect on what had just occurred…
My immediate thought was “Wait a minute! I know I’m a good dad, a BLOODY GOOD DAD and a BLOODY GOOD HUSBAND to boot; I pride myself on the time I invest in my marriage and my family because these people mean everything to me, and I’m not ashamed to say THEY ARE MY WORLD”. If I’d said that to the old man, I reckon he might have understood; he may even have read my story in the subtext of the capitalised words – BLOODY GOOD DAD, BLOODY GOOD HUSBAND, and THEY ARE MY WORLD – the story of a young man who does his utmost to find god but succeeds only in finding a thing called Church; settling for the latter, he gives up almost a third of his life believing that this is perhaps god and that maybe a covenant has formed, only to discover through a series of reversals that his covenant with Church is in fact no covenant at all. And, god? Well, the young man can hardly blame somebody he’s never met, right? So, he leaves Church broken and disillusioned and resolves to only ever honour two relationship covenants again: life (marriage) and blood (family). He figures that the only people that matter to him, the only ones he should be answerable to, are those who have truly bound themselves to him by choice or birth and have thus earned the right.
Over the past four years, I have felt at times that my efforts to “build a better life in the here are now” are perhaps an angry response to rejection by the Church; a desire to prove to these people in my past that I can manage without them. But, it wasn’t until a short while after the old man had spoken to me – as my son was nearing the end of his hair cut – that I finally realised where my anger was directed: not at evangelical Christians, that largely repressed bunch of individuals who are mocked and ridiculed by the majority of free-thinking people for their medieval view of the world and who dwell, for the most part, on the fringes of society praying for and awaiting the end of days; good luck to them I say. No. My anger has a more particular target. When I joined the Church back in 1992 I wasn’t looking for friends or a social club, but instead a Particular Somebody. I don’t know why but that Particular Somebody never showed up. For years, I tried to convince myself that he was there, on the edges of my peripheral vision, waiting to show up in a blaze of glory. But the blaze never materialised and when conflict eventually arose I was left, alone with my wife, to fight a rearguard action against the denizens of this peculiar entity known as “God’s Family”
By the time I had arrived at a more convincing riposte than my rather lame “thank you”, the old man had long gone. If he’d stayed though, he would have heard me say: “Wonderful gift? You mean the one from my Dad, Arthur? The Man who raised me as one of seven? The Man who toiled, along with my Mother, to ensure that we were provided for and always had a roof over our heads? You mean a flesh-and-blood REAL Dad. Or, are you perhaps suggesting that I received this gift from the one sometimes called Father to Fatherless (usually by the fatherless) who seems to have an astonishing lack of ideas when he comes across people who have actually been loved, nurtured and fathered from birth. Oh, and if you do see god, which is clearly a gift I do not have, tell him he’s welcome to drop by, in corporeal form of course, any time; I’d be only too happy to pass on to him one or two of the things I picked up about fatherhood and covenant from a REAL Dad.”
It was getting late; we’d been in the barbers for nearly an hour and a half, and having arrived so suddenly at this new perspective, I could easily have slid into some kind of angry depression. But, my son, pleased with his new hair cut, and yet perceptive to a change in my mood, made one of those childlike yet deeply profound observations: “You’re my bestest Daddy in the world…” (he paused for thought, then smiled) “Actually you’re my only Daddy.”
Sometimes, all we have is ALL we have.
And then this kind old gentleman, who had just finished having his hair cut came up to me on his way out and said "Do you know you have a wonderful gift for communicating with your son?" Taken somewhat by surprise, I mumbled a rather uncertain "thank you", and the old man left. I looked at the barber with raised eyebrows anticipating a rather laconic, barber-esque response like “never trust over-65s who’ve just had a hair cut. They come over all unpredictable”. But the barber simply smiled at me and said "He's right, you know. You’re so relaxed with your kid, you’re always laughing together. Not like some of the other dads that come in here…"
My son's immediate promotion to the front of the queue spared me any further embarrassment but, perhaps more importantly, gave me the space to reflect on what had just occurred…
My immediate thought was “Wait a minute! I know I’m a good dad, a BLOODY GOOD DAD and a BLOODY GOOD HUSBAND to boot; I pride myself on the time I invest in my marriage and my family because these people mean everything to me, and I’m not ashamed to say THEY ARE MY WORLD”. If I’d said that to the old man, I reckon he might have understood; he may even have read my story in the subtext of the capitalised words – BLOODY GOOD DAD, BLOODY GOOD HUSBAND, and THEY ARE MY WORLD – the story of a young man who does his utmost to find god but succeeds only in finding a thing called Church; settling for the latter, he gives up almost a third of his life believing that this is perhaps god and that maybe a covenant has formed, only to discover through a series of reversals that his covenant with Church is in fact no covenant at all. And, god? Well, the young man can hardly blame somebody he’s never met, right? So, he leaves Church broken and disillusioned and resolves to only ever honour two relationship covenants again: life (marriage) and blood (family). He figures that the only people that matter to him, the only ones he should be answerable to, are those who have truly bound themselves to him by choice or birth and have thus earned the right.
Over the past four years, I have felt at times that my efforts to “build a better life in the here are now” are perhaps an angry response to rejection by the Church; a desire to prove to these people in my past that I can manage without them. But, it wasn’t until a short while after the old man had spoken to me – as my son was nearing the end of his hair cut – that I finally realised where my anger was directed: not at evangelical Christians, that largely repressed bunch of individuals who are mocked and ridiculed by the majority of free-thinking people for their medieval view of the world and who dwell, for the most part, on the fringes of society praying for and awaiting the end of days; good luck to them I say. No. My anger has a more particular target. When I joined the Church back in 1992 I wasn’t looking for friends or a social club, but instead a Particular Somebody. I don’t know why but that Particular Somebody never showed up. For years, I tried to convince myself that he was there, on the edges of my peripheral vision, waiting to show up in a blaze of glory. But the blaze never materialised and when conflict eventually arose I was left, alone with my wife, to fight a rearguard action against the denizens of this peculiar entity known as “God’s Family”
By the time I had arrived at a more convincing riposte than my rather lame “thank you”, the old man had long gone. If he’d stayed though, he would have heard me say: “Wonderful gift? You mean the one from my Dad, Arthur? The Man who raised me as one of seven? The Man who toiled, along with my Mother, to ensure that we were provided for and always had a roof over our heads? You mean a flesh-and-blood REAL Dad. Or, are you perhaps suggesting that I received this gift from the one sometimes called Father to Fatherless (usually by the fatherless) who seems to have an astonishing lack of ideas when he comes across people who have actually been loved, nurtured and fathered from birth. Oh, and if you do see god, which is clearly a gift I do not have, tell him he’s welcome to drop by, in corporeal form of course, any time; I’d be only too happy to pass on to him one or two of the things I picked up about fatherhood and covenant from a REAL Dad.”
It was getting late; we’d been in the barbers for nearly an hour and a half, and having arrived so suddenly at this new perspective, I could easily have slid into some kind of angry depression. But, my son, pleased with his new hair cut, and yet perceptive to a change in my mood, made one of those childlike yet deeply profound observations: “You’re my bestest Daddy in the world…” (he paused for thought, then smiled) “Actually you’re my only Daddy.”
Sometimes, all we have is ALL we have.