June 17, 2012

• The Conversation: Question #6 [Happy Father's Day!]

  EngagingMy80s to LovingMy50s: “The vital necessities are air, water and food.  What are the next three?”

  Lovingmy50s to Engagingmy80s: I’d balk at the premise, but find the answer easy (and an apt one for this Father’s Day): it’s true the corpus can’t make it without air, food and water, but the soul can’t do without what I’d call the “concurrent,” not the “next,”  three either:  giving, getting, and a sated ego.

  I have a friend who’s heavily pregnant, here in the impending mid-summer (she’s due the day my youngest was born, so I know very well how heavy the heat weighs on taut skin; rivulets tickling constantly on aching back and itchy extremities).  She loves it.  Everyone around her loves it too: this most visible evidence of the ‘giving essential.’  We all need to give of ourselves: of our physical being, our material wealth, our time, effort and adoration.  People who do not give are deemed lacking in the human essential; people who give inordinately are sainted.

  Sainted though giving may be, saints are also sufferers, and it’s equally widely recognized that giving without receipt wastes one to the core.  The less-than-saints among us require equal measure of the giving and the getting.  In my own distinctly unsaintly life, there have been long stretches when the weight of what seemed like unequal outflow for inflow etched lines at the downward sides of my mouth that mirrored my internal unmet emotional chasm.  For me in the current moment, an overflow of gifts both material and immaterial only lets me increase my own outflow without a sense of burden.

  It is, however, possible to give and to get in abundance, yet to remain miserable.  Having just weathered ‘awards season’ here during graduation days at our university-centric community, and gearing up currently for similar ceremonies with our community theater, I’m reminded of the power of ego.  People will go to amazing, amazing lengths for a pat on the back.  “Awesome!” says my eldest idly when I suggest something that doesn’t displease her, and that’s all I need to sit out the next blistering storm of other-directed teen angst.

  So: to breathe air, to drink water, to eat food, to love, to love back, and to feel recognition of our own worth.  The vital sextuplet.

  Feeling blessed, today on the day of the celebration of paternity, that you’ve afforded me – and given me – the basis for all this:

  “You’re Awesome, Dad!”

  (and you can lean on that, when my next midlife-angst vent comes along.  These midlifers: so overwrought! )

  Your loving daughter.

   

  • 8:23 am
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