A Good One by Leon Hale

Leon Hale of the Houston Chronicle has, once again, written an excellent Father's Day column. In fact, it appeared above the fold on the front page of today's print edition. (The one he wrote in 2001 I clipped and have tacked to a bulletin board in my study to this day. This one has joined it.)

The column is well worth reading because it captures beautifully both the admiration he had for his father as a young lad and the awe he feels for him even as an old man. I think it also shows the power of a good parent to protect the innocence of a young child while he is still unable to handle adversity.

The following paragraphs will, I am sure, resonate with lots of sons out there.

Go back with me a long way, when I was nothing but a skinny kid in overalls. I then thought my father was the greatest man who ever walked, but I didn't feel close to him.

In fact, for a significant part of my childhood, I thought he didn't like me much. He didn't pay me a lot of attention.

On the rare occasions when he did -- say, he came out in the yard and played catch with me -- I was overwhelmed by that simple experience. Catching a ball thrown by my father.

In all my growing-up years, my father took me fishing one time. Just that once.

And the experience was so intense, so wonderful, that it remains engraved in my memory to this day. I can remember the orange light coming through the trees, across the river from where we sat. I can hear the blackbirds talking in the cattails nearby. And I can still smell the first-growth willow that dipped its branches in the water where we watched our corks.

I'll never lose one detail of that time I fished with my father.

Hale then goes on to ask why it was that his father was distant, and why he got to spend so little time with his first hero. In the process, he goes on to explain what he learned later that caused everything to make so much sense, particularly the very long hours his dad had to work in a dry goods store around the time of the Great Depression.

And then his admiration for the man, which has never waned, meets hindsight and the wisdom of Hale's own many years with a force one can never forget....

This poor man worked a schedule like that during most of my growing-up years, and it's no mystery to me now that he fell asleep during church.

That memorable day when he came out and played catch with me? That must have been on a Sunday afternoon. Knowing what I know now, if I'd been him I'd have been in bed Sunday afternoon.

The time he took me fishing, that was probably after he lost the job at the store. Because I remember the morning sun on the river, and it sure wasn't a Sunday morning or we'd have been in church.

That brought tears to my eyes, and not just because it reminded me of my own dear, departed father.

Thank you, Leon Hale.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: On thinking further about the role of a parent in protecting the innocence of a young child, I recalled the movie La Vita e Bella, which dramatizes this point very powerfully and which I highly recommend in its own right.

And a quick bleg: If anyone knows offhand of a good review of the movie, please comment below or drop me a line.