It was like I had met you a long time ago.

It was like I had met you a long time ago

My dad and I were always close. He put himself through a lot of grief being my father. I am not much of a rule-follower. He had to bail me out of trouble a good number of times – at church, at school, and even once with the police. During the last named experience, When I asked him, somewhat sarcastically, why he did all this for me, he gave an answer both strange and beautiful. He said, “When you were a baby, and I held you in my arms for the first time, it was like I had met you a long time ago.”

For reasons I did not understand at the time, and ever after since, I would think of those words and automatically feel close to him, even though we would be miles apart. It brought me confidence, knowing that I had been loved a long time. It is hard to explain.

When I went away to university, living in residence far away from home, and I was preparing for exams, the phrase would come to me. I would call my dad and simply say to him, “Tell me again.” And he would know the words I wanted, as he had many times since the first, “When you were a baby, and I held you in my arms for the first time, it was like I had met you a long time ago.” No discussion was necessary. As two grown men, we weren’t very good at talking about emotions anyway.

I did well that year and the next years to follow, and became a doctor. At my graduation, we both laughed after we said at just about the same time that “I never thought that a day like this would come.”

           The year 2019 was a terrible one for me. First, in the spring, there was separation from my wife of 10 years. Then, in the middle of summer, dad died. My two supports were gone. Neither was surprising though. My wife and I had been growing more and more distant. And dad was 99.

Come New Year’s Night

           Come New Year’s night, I decided that I had to do something completely new and different. So just about when the sun went down, I drove over to the old family farm where my father was raised. Our family hasn’t owned it in over 50 years, but it is still a special place for me. Memories floated there like a flock of bluebirds on the wing. 

           The old stone house was abandoned now. I had never seen it when it was still all together. It had always been a stone skeleton to me. I hadn’t seen it for a few years now, and it looked pretty much as it had always done. There was no functional house on the property these days. Someone was thinking investment value, and holding out for great sums of money.

           I parked my car on the old country lane, and walked down the tree-lined path to the house. I felt lighter somehow, like someone had physically, not metaphorically, lifted a weight off of me.

           There was an old tree stump just in front of what had been the front door of the house. I sat down and looked inside, imagining what it had been like in my father’s day. To help in my personal celebration of sadness, I had brought a bottle of scotch with me – no glass, as I wouldn’t need one. I could sleep in the car. It wasn’t very cold outside anyway.

           I held the bottle up as if to salute the house, and said, “Here’s to you dad. I will come here now every New Year’s.” And I meant it.

           The contents of the bottle emptied pretty quickly. Getting up from the stump was pretty much impossible. So I fell asleep there, or at least I think that I did.

First Meeting

           When I woke up, things were different. That is an understatement. The stump was as it had been, but everything else had changed. The house was no longer a ruin, but a house complete. There was a door, windows, and smoke coming out of the chimney.  The weather was stormy. I could never have driven there in such a menacing mixture of wind, snow and sleet.

           I got up with more ease than I had thought possible, and knocked on the door. I had to see the inside. An older woman opened the door, and asked me. “Are you the doctor?” It took a few seconds to answer what should have been a simple “yes.” 

           “Then come in.  The moment is just about upon us. We were worried that you would not be able to make it from town in this horrible weather.

           I was led to a bedroom. In it was a small woman going through the throes of childbirth.

I had assisted at several births before, so, despite the lack of any of the tools of my trade, I knew that I could help her give birth.

           “It is her first,” said the older woman, who spoke as an experienced woman in childbirth, hers and probably that of others as well. 

           “No problem” I replied. “The two of us will help her through it.”

           And help her we did, although it was a difficult process for all three of us. The father of the child was in the main room, going through difficulty himself. He kept asking “How is it going?” He obviously did not feel it right for him to ‘see for himself.’

           Then, the child was born, a boy. I took him in my arms and held him, in part because I wanted to physically feel that he was healthy. The other part was my firm belief that this baby would eventually become my father. I wanted so very much to hold him tight. I wanted to be sure that he would remember me when he saw me again.

           I was not surprised, then, when I looked over at the wall and saw a calendar. The year written large on the top was 1920, the year of my father’s birth.