Of His Time

Oct 3 2017

My father was a different man

when I saw him with his friends.

Like a vaguely familiar acquaintance

you can't quite place

but feel sure you've met.

A boyish smile lit his eyes

as his face relaxed

in easy laughter.

Nothing had changed

yet he'd somehow shifted;

like a duplicate image

that had lost its sharpness

in reproduction.

And the odd profanity

that would pass his lips

with the thrilled vehemence of transgression,

a buttoned-down man

who rarely misbehaved.

He told a good story

but was an even better listener,

admiring his buddies' embellishments and stretches,

the well of spot-on jokes

gushing up.

Good stories

he would tell, and re-tell

as advancing age hobbled him;

while we affectionately sat

nodding indulgently.

It is so hard

to truly know another.

And to know a parent

as anything but

comes late in life

if it comes at all.

Alone with my mother

man and wife.

The boss at work

spending life.

Then lunch with the regulars,

ordering the usual

at their customary table.

Did he wisecrack with the waitress?

Flirt shamelessly?

Forget to leave a tip?

The quiet man

in his sovereign Buick

on his early morning drive.

A time I think he prized,

thoughts drifting in and out

as the radio droned.

When he was so much younger

than I am now,

the foreign country of the past

I find myself imagining

in snapshots and newsreels

in scratchy black-and-white.

The only way I know the man

whose hair was full

and skin unlined.

We are all multiple personality disordered.

So inexplicably different

with the different people in our lives.

And the inner voice

that remembers every version

as it struggles for coherence,

hoping

that by the end of life

we will have found ourselves.

There's the version

who thinks presence is enough.

Then the one who shows his love

by doing.

And the one who feels free

to say it out loud.

Or the man

who was too much of his time

to be so bold.