Restoration

Restoration

Walking your dog through the park is usually just that. A walk in the park. You meet a few others doing the same thing and often stop for a quick chat; then on your way again only to repeat the process tomorrow. Nothing exciting. You both get a little exercise; socialize a bit then come back home for a short snooze. I work second shift so it frees my morning to participate in this activity with my best friend “Barney.” I’m not sure just what his make up is. Several breeds of hound I would say. He doesn’t bark but rather gives off a high pitched baying sound when he feels reason to call attention to himself. When I am at work my land-lady, Katie, who absolutely adores him takes him in so that he doesn’t get lonely and perhaps start tearing up the furniture. 

The sun was bright and warm so I guided Barney toward the nearest park bench and flopped down to momentarily soak in a few rays. It had been a long, cold winter and the first warm days of spring were a welcome contrast. Then the scruffy looking man made another appearance. I had seen him twice in the past week and the way he stared at me was rather creepy. If I had been female instead of male I would have run for my life. I guess it was just his shabby appearance which put suspicion in my mind.  Otherwise he seemed harmless. He came to the bench where I was sitting. 

“Mind if I sit down?”

I wanted to tell him to move on but thought that would be a cruel rebuke so I relented and said, “Not at all.” I scooted over a bit to give him more room. He sat there for a long moment staring straight ahead in silence. His lips moved a couple of times as if he had something to say but no sound came forth. A tear came to the corner of his eye and slid slowly down his cheek.

“Jimmy?”

I froze. The hair on the back of my neck took on a life of its own. 

“You don’t recognize me do you?” 

I looked again. There was something vaguely familiar about that voice and those features. I felt I had seen him somewhere before. “It’s been a long time.” The tears were flowing freely now. Slowly recognition began to emerge. It couldn’t be. If so I didn’t want to be here. 

“Dad?”

He didn’t answer he just slowly nodded his head. I felt trapped but my legs seemed paralyzed. I wanted to run as fast as I could but I was frozen in place. I just put my head down and looked away. 

“I won’t blame you if you just get up and walk away but if you will listen there is a man speaking here who is full of emotional pain who needs to talk to you. I beg of you to listen. Then after you hear me out and you still want to leave I will understand.” 

There was something in the emotion of his voice that held me in place. 

“I think you said it all twenty years ago when you left Mom and me for some teen-aged hussy.”

Now the tears were in my eyes. 

“You were my hero and you not only let me down. It was like you punched me in the stomach and picked me up and body-slammed me to the floor. I cried for a week. Mom was almost bed-fast she was so devastated. Now you want to talk. I don’t what you can say that will make up for all that.”

 “I can’t make it up. Even if I tried to ask for forgiveness a thousand times or if I could open my insides and show you my crushed heart because of what I did to you it wouldn’t be enough.” 

He put his hands over his face and sobbed in convulsions. Everything within me was saying “run” but for some reason I couldn’t move. When he had composed himself he began again. 

“Believe me. I paid the price for what I did to you. She was cheating on me from day one. After a year she disappeared with some tattooed guy on a motorcycle and I haven’t seen her since. I moved twenty miles away. I didn’t want you or your mother to see me. I wanted with all my heart to come back and ask forgiveness but I didn’t think you deserved to have me back in your life or even if you would want me back.” 

He turned half-way away and sat in silence for a moment. I was seething inside yet something held me in place. Finally, he spoke again.

“Somewhere in the Bible it says ‘your sins will find you out.’ I had to find that out the hard way. And believe me it was the hard way.” 

He broke down again putting his hands to his face he bent over until his head was on his knees and his body convulsing in sobs. I looked over at him. A pathetic man who had sinned against his family and himself and is now paying the price. I wanted to revel in his pain yet in spite of all he had done I felt pity for him instead. When he recovered he confessed. “you don’t know how much I missed you all these years. All the fishing trips and ball games we missed. All the games you played and I never saw a one.” 

He pounded his fist onto the bench so hard it knew it had to hurt. 

“All those other kids playing with their fathers in the stands cheering them on and you had no one.” 

“it hurt Dad. Believe me it hurt.”

We both sat there is awkward silence. He was looking straight ahead and I sitting there with my back to him. 

“I don’t know what you want. Dad. Do you think confession is going to make it any better.”

“No. I know that.” He looked down at his hands which were clasped together on his knees. 

“I…I guess somehow I wanted you to know that what I did to you I did to myself as well.” 

He bit his lip and gazed into the distance in silence. 

“I’m not asking for forgiveness. I don’t deserve that. Somehow I thought you should know that I didn’t come out of this living ‘happily ever after.’”

“Do you think that makes a difference? Do you?” My anger was coming to the surface. I turned around and looked into his face. He could see my tears now. “We didn’t know whether you were happy or sad in your new life! All we knew was that you didn’t want us anymore! Do you know what that feels like?” “Mom and I have lived with it for twenty long years and it still hurts, Dad! It still hurts!” 

He broke into another fit of sobs and groans. He began to pound the bench again. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” 

He got up and started to walk away. For a moment I thought, ‘let him go.’”

“Dad. Don’t go.”

He turned around and stared at me blankly.

“Why, should I inflict myself on you anymore? Haven’t I done enough damage?” 

I have no idea where the next sentence came from or why I said it. It was betraying everything I felt.

“Because maybe I want you to stay.” 

Then I realized that despite all that happened years ago. Deep in my heart I still loved him.

At once everything within me had to know. I became a little boy again as I cried out, “Do you still love me Dad?   Do you still love me?”

He turned around; his eyes squinted as if holding back the same flood of tears which was streaming down my cheeks. He stumbled rather than walked back to me. He fell against me and threw his arms around me in a tight hug. I reciprocated. 

“I’d like to see you again, dad.” 

He nodded silently. 

“Same time? Same place?”

“That would be great.” 

I wondered in my mind if I was doing the right thing. What would Mom think? Should I even tell her?

That night at Supper, I held nothing back. I knew it was better that I tell her lest she find it out from another source. She stared at her plate for a long moment. When she broke her silence she said, “If that’s what you want. You’re a grown man now.”

Then she broke down. Her hands flew to cover her face. She uttered just three words. “Why? Why? Why?” She threw down her fork; jumped from the table; ran to her bedroom and slammed the door. I got up slowly and walked cautiously to her door. I could hear her sobbing. I ambled on to my own room. Now was not the time to talk. 

I continued to see him, but nothing was said in the house until three weeks later. Mom broke her silence.   

“Are you still seeing him?”                                                                                                                          

“Every Tuesday, in the park.”

She sat with her hands clasped in her lap; silent; staring into nothingness.

“Mom. I’m sorry.” 

I wasn’t sure how to continue. 

“I can understand your hurt; your anger…”

“No, Jimmy you can’t understand. No one can understand until it happens to them.”

She paused and looked away. Then she breathed a deep sigh before beginning again.

“You’ll never know until the one you love the best; the very best in all the world tears your heart into a million pieces and throws it into your face. For your own sake I hope you never have to understand that. I know as a son you were hurt deeply. But for a wife; a lover, it’s different.” 

I walked to her and held her close. 

“If it hurts you that I have been seeing him, I just won’t talk to him anymore.  When I said I was going to tell you he begged me not to if it would cause you pain all over again.”

“No. He’s your Father and you have a right to have a relationship with him if you want. I won’t stand in the way of that.” 

Several weeks passed. One day after breakfast Mom was standing at the kitchen sink looking out the window. 

“Jimmy.”

“Yeh, Mom.”

“Will you be seeing him today?”

“Yes.”

She took a deep breath. 

“Ask him…ask him…”

She seemed reluctant to go on. 

“Ask him if I could come with you.”

I stood looking at her back. I couldn’t see what emotions were playing out on her face.

“There are some things that perhaps we could…should talk about.”

My heart was beating wildly.

“Sure. I’ll ask him.”

That was three weeks ago and they have met twice and are planning to meet again next week. My heart is whispering. “Maybe. Just, maybe…”