Sunday, June 16, 2013

As my Dad tells the story, they didn’t know what my name would be.  Dad came home and said, “We’ll name it Eldon.”  And that is my first and longest lasting contact with my Dad.  After that, of course, he became my idol. Anything Dad did, I wanted to do too.  Working on a car or building something or fixing anything, there was nothing that he couldn’t tackle, and that is how I modeled my life’s outlook. Because he was raised on a farm in rural Iowa in the 1930’s and 40’s, he learned how to do it all.  There weren’t a lot of options, and if you couldn’t do it, then it probably didn’t get done.  If you met his brothers, you would not be surprised that they are proficient in mechanics and construction and farming.  It would be convenient to say that those abilities are inherited, but it is much more realistic to believe that they are learned by observation and by instruction.  Working beside my Dad while he rebuilt the engine for our truck gave me the confidence to rebuild the engine in my motorcycle.  Confidence, practice, and common sense go a long ways in developing abilities in most fields of endeavor, and because Dad had those in spades, I developed them too.  I look at my sons and the men my daughters have chosen as their husbands and I see with appreciation those same attributes and skills being developed and honed.  By the time I took a firearms safety course, I had been hunting with Dad most of my life.  I saw the care that he exercised with his guns and developed the same respect.  I saw the patience that he demonstrated in training our dog as a hunter and the patience he showed in raising his children and it gave me a pattern to follow in raising my own.  I saw the curiosity and appreciation he had for the beauties of God’s creations as we traveled around America in the back of our shell camper on vacation each year, and have striven to give my own children the same sorts of experiences. If report cards mean anything, he wasn’t a straight A student in school, but in life he has proved to be worthy of straight A’s.  Dad recently celebrated his 86^th birthday.  Over the last several years as his health has declined, I see the challenges he has had to face as his abilities have lost acuity.  He works in his garden and around the house some, but I am still surprised to see that he has called a plumber or has had his oil changed at a garage instead of doing it himself.  I see in him the decline that all of us will face, and the sadness and frustration that it engenders.  When I was young, I thought that living ‘til 80 meant that I would have years and years after retirement to do the things I had put off doing.  Now that I am nearing 60 with the incumbent aches and pains, I realize that the worthwhile part of living has to go on every day.  There’s no saving it up, and in fact, the most worthwhile part of living is in raising a family.  It is an honor to be a father, and it is a privilege to have been raised by a great one.