THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 16, 1996 TAG: 9606140216
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: In Passing
SOURCE: Diane Guyer
LENGTH: 84 lines
My father was a gentle, flawed man who smoked and drank too much. He worked hard as a carpenter but never earned more than $10,000 in any year of his life.
His skin was like brown leather by the end of summer from working in the hot sun. He never held a degree nor owned any stocks or bonds, and he never drove a car that was less than 10 years old. In the eyes of the world, he was not a success. Yet he succeeded in giving his children and grandchildren a priceless sense of joy in living.
My father was never what you would call an evangelical Christian, although he went to church now and then.
When he spoke of ``Mother Nature,'' it was with the kind of reverence most Christians show when speaking of their ``Heavenly Father.'' He never lost his childlike awe of the little everyday miracles performed by nature, and the best gift he ever gave our family was this sense of reverence for our amazing world.
One day we went on a picnic near a pond, and my sister and I slid in some mud. Instead of scolding us for getting dirty, my father examined the mud and announced that it was very good quality clay. He took a bucket of it home for us and my sister and I made little dishes and cups and pots from it and dried them in the sun.
We pretended we were Americans Indians - except we called them ``Indians'' back then. Our father never let us play cowboys and Indians with the other children. He told us it was disrespectful to a great race of people who lived in peace with nature and worshiped the ``Great Spirit.'' I think that in his heart, he was an Indian without a tribe.
Ours was the only father in the neighborhood who delighted in watching a convoy of ants transporting crumbs from one end of the sidewalk to the other, or observing spiders weaving their intricate nets or squatting on the ground to get a better view of a praying mantis grooming its long arms. He shared everything he had learned about ``critters'' with my sister and me as though he were imparting classified information.
He had a way of making up parables about the wisdom of the creatures he observed. We soaked up every bit of information like little sponges, blissfully unaware that we were learning science and philosophy at the same time.
One day, a baby starling - a bird considered a nuisance by many - fell from its nest in a tall tree. The bird was naked and bulgy-eyed and totally vulnerable.
My father said it was beautiful because it was one of God's creations and we became its surrogate parents. We fed it and kept it warm and spoke kindly to it and named it ``Baby.'' On the day when its feathers had grown in and it seemed strong enough, I took the bird back outdoors and set it on a branch.
Baby flew away and I cried for hours. My father hugged me. He understood.
My father had become an expert marksman in the Army, but he never owned a gun or had an inclination to hunt. He said he would be an excellent deer hunter if he ``had a mind to,'' because he would learn the ways of the deer and how to track them. But, he said, there was no need to kill such beautiful creatures when plenty of fresh meat was available at the market. When there was enough money, that is. Sometimes, we ate noodles or rice or vegetable soup, instead.
Fresh fish was not so easily available at the market, however, and so my father became the best fisherman I've ever known. My sister and I began fishing with him as soon as we were old enough to hold a fishing pole.
My father kept a fishing diary and this book is now one of my most treasured possessions. People used to come to him for advice on fishing. They asked him what his secret was, since he never came home empty-handed. ``You have to think like a fish,'' he would say. And he did! Fish were his brothers. He understood them. He never caught more fish than we could eat.
I loved to watch my father clean fish. He taught me about the insides of a fish - the swim bladder that allowed the fish to swim upright; the stomach, which we opened to discover the creature's feeding preferences; the way the bone structure varied from one species to another - and all this he taught with a great respect for the life that had been sacrificed to put food on our table.
We would put the remains of the fish into the ground to feed the corn we grew in the backyard. In this way, my father said, the fish lived on.
My father died several years ago. He was neither perfect nor invincible, as I had thought when I was a child.
The smoking and drinking caught up with him at last. The only material possessions he left me were a fishing diary, a harmonica and an old accordion. Yet this unsophisticated, leathery-skinned man of the earth planted in my heart a joyous love and respect for Mother Nature. Now, my own children exhibit a similar reverence for life. It comforts me to think that, in this way, my father lives on. by CNB