It’s the summer of 1939 and I’m a two-year old, not even aware of what’s going on. The blood and fear and tears have all been properly hidden from innocence. In later years, older eyes in my family will point out how the pain has etched the granite of my father’s face, chipped new hollows under his eyes, carved away the always ready laugh to reveal the seriousness of his inner pilgrimage. The determined squaring of her chin that will mark my mother through the coming years as she struggles to raise her family alone is already evident through her smile. But I’m a toddler, and can play and laugh through that short summer oblivious to the pain.
My backward glimpse into the old photograph through that veil of tears and blood haunts me always with the remembrance of how innocence can play along side tragedy, but life has taught me since how to see truth from different angles. Now I also can see the valedictory blessing passed forward through the years from that old front porch. My father was smiling as he lifted me in the sun, celebrating through his inner tears as he held me, his longest future, toward the light.
LOOKING THROUGH BLOOD
My father stands there, tall and solid in his farm-raised grace, lifting me towards me, reaching out through the veil of tears and blood and time that makes what actually happened seem so dim and far away. He’s dying as I watch, rapidly withering as the leukemia consumes body, life and family indiscriminately. In another brief month there won’t be much left of him to bury. Surrounded on the old porch steps by my mother and the eight older children, squinting into the sun as he holds me, the youngest, up for the photographer, he doesn’t seem alone, but he is.
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