Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

Picture of Dad, Mess Kit from Burma, Cricket Ball

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What did I know? What could I know of Dad's deep and dreadful places? His childhood in rural Scotland during the Depression - a time ridden with anger and alcohol. How could I possibly grasp the horror of the Burma railroad, his daily challenge with PTSD? How many years passed before I understood the silences, the pervasive apprehension? How long before I realized that love's signals are often "slant", that Dad found HIS way to care? Who knew the importance of THAT book on the dresser?

This was the man who found HIS way to welome others, to reveal his innate generosity. Who attended his floribunda roses, the tiny garden and collected tins of Quality Street chocolates. Whose garage was a storage masterpiece , who delighted in accumulating boxes of unopened shirts and who devoted days to decorating the house before Christmas. A man who introduced me to cricket but who never, ever upheld any of my LBW appeals - no nepotism for Ali Evans! The man who flew across the Atlantic, enduring hours of claustrophobic hell, just to make sure that I was OK. The man who taught me about "showing up" who, even in death, was revealed and honored - remember THAT letter! What did I know? What did I know?

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