Painted Ponies

I had watched them for several years and didn’t think much of it; a boy riding a paint pony with his father walking besides the two holding the lead line of the halter. I just thought the Father was a little over protective since the child was nearly my age judging from his height. It wasn’t until the rider’s feet hung half way between the pony’s belly and the ground that I became concerned. At first I thought my parents were angry when I asked if the teenager was too big to be riding him. “You just don’t need to worry yourself about that pony. We should all be so well taken care of.” It was a double team. “They don’t go that far. It’s barely a mile to the lake from their place. Besides he barely weighs a hundred pounds!” It wasn’t anger though; it was more like fear, more like dread. There was something else, something they wouldn’t tell, or couldn’t tell me. It got quiet at the dinner table after that. They didn’t look at me. They didn't look at each other.

Now they had a element of mystery for me. I stationed myself in the boat at the north end of our lake where they passed by every Saturday and Sunday and I could observe. On Sunday they were like clockwork, one PM, after church. The Father and Son dressed alike -matching actually - khakis, work boots, flannel shirts and St. Louis Cardinals baseball caps. They had the same sandy brown hair. They wore matching eyeglasses.  But the Boy’s clothes fit differently. His shirt was untucked and oversized and his neck and wrists swam in their openings.  He was emaciated. His head wobbled as the pony walked and he leaned to one side. But they smiled, always, Father and Son the same smile. The paint was fat and slick and spotless, and if ponies could smile I am sure he would have too.

***

My half Arabian gelding, Banner, knew what was about to happen. The pavement dead ended into a long abandoned coal company road and the gravel that would harm his hooves had long ago washed away.  I shortened the stirrups on the old hunt seat English saddle to nearly Jockey length and gathered the reins in either hand short and tight as he strained in anticipation. My barely audible verbal click was the downbeat. He coiled into a half rear and leapt down the road. A hundred yards flashed by before I could catch my next breath and this was punctuated by the impact of landing as he jumped a mud puddle. Then we came to the stretch where he always turned on that extra gear he had. Standing in a tight crouch with my head beside Banners neck I was fixed in the space we shared except for my hands, now in front of me, moved forward and back as each stride lengthed. His mane whipped my face and the world was a swirl of light and early autumn’s first falling leaves. Four beats and silence. Four beats and silence. In the silence, when all four hooves were off the ground, we were flying.
Banner pranced in a hard trot for half the trip home. He was never one to bolt for the barn, but the weather was cool and it took him a while to relax after all the excitement. He finally slowed to a walk as we turned down Parklane which would take us home.  This is where I always saw the happy trio, as I had come to think of them and I realize I had not seen them in weeks. I had never spoken to them but we always waved . It was too cold to spray Banner with the hose , which he loved when it was warm, so I took extra time to walk him until all the sweat had dryed where the saddle pad had been. His winter coat was already coming in and brushing out the salt and the mud that had splashed all over him from our run worked up a sweat of my own. I turned him loose to rejoin his pasture mates and immediately he laid down and rolled in his usual spot in the middle of the pasture. All the brushing was erased in an instant but that's part of the bargain, brushing your horse after a ride is not optional. I kissed my Mom on the cheek and grabbed a fried chicken leg and a tall glass of milk from the refrigerator. We sat at the kitchen table as I talked about my ride, and school, and college the next fall. "you know mom I haven't seen those two and that little paint lately, have you?" She turned white, visibly shaken. She took my glass and plate and turned to rinse them in the sink. She looked out the window as she methodically wiped the plate dry. “He died two nights ago. I was working in the emergency room when they brought him in. He.." She couldn't finish the sentence. "You never get used to seeing the children go, especially like that. It's just not right."

***

Horses are spiritual beings. They are the substance of dreams. You can learn a lot about justice by spending time in their company as well. Foremost, don't expect too much from it, at least not all at once. The same type of noble beast would carry the boy and I down the same path for just a little while. These horses bound us to our families in joy and sorrow and gave us dreams of our own. He would leave his horse with the living and I would leave mine to go to college. I would get to drive cars. I would learn to make beautiful things. I would kiss girls.

It wasn’t until my own little girl was born that I learned my Mother had taken thalidomide during pregnancy. For her, to have healthy children was it’s own spiritual burden. When you are standing in the warmth and sunshine it is easy to see the grace of God to be as wide as an ocean. But when you see the pain of others you realize that grace has a border as hard and clear as the edge of a razor. You know what side of the line you are on today. You know the line will be drawn anew tomorrow. So In the morning I will kiss my perfect, healthy daughter awake. I will try to be a good father, and pay my debt to painted ponies.

New Collage November #2 Progress - Continued on my new site One Child's Icon

Day 2 Morning

Petals for underwater section

Day 3 Morning

Day 4 Morning

Day 6 Morning

Day 4 detail

Day 6 Detail

One Hundred

The grizzled old Nashville song writer chastised the audience “You’ll never be a songwriter by writing two songs a year.” It was one of those events I was paid to be a technical baby sitter. My job was to be there in case something went wrong. We were in a cozy hotel ballroom and chances of disaster at the “Song Writers Symposium” were remote in the extreme. Being devoted to my paycheck, however, I sat behind the lighting console reading a book until this guy in his 2 pack a day gravel baritone started talking.  “You want to write the perfect song, but if the song don’t flow when you’re writing it, it won’t flow when someone’s singing it.” He had my attention. “I set my sights on writing one hundred songs. The first few dozen were junk, but I got better and I didn’t give up. I got better and faster at the same time. Number ninety eight got recorded. Number ninety nine made it to the top forty on the Country charts which at the time meant I could afford to buy a new car. Number  one  hundred made it to number five on the charts and after that I quit my job to write songs full time.  It took me a little short of three years. You have to let go of a song sometime.  Once someone sings it on a record it ain’t yours no more anyway”. I’m sure the lawyers that had the stage later that day would have argued that last point. I was reading intently by then and never heard a word they had to say. 

When a friend told me that something in one of my posts helped her at a time she really needed help, I was taken a little aback. I write for myself.  In many ways it is purgative. It is like placing troubles on a leaf and letting them float down the river. The Songwriter’s words came back to me, however, when I noticed I had passed 40 posts. My writing was getting better. At the same time, I was posting more often.  It hurts now to go back and look at my early things. I had wanted to write about things important to me, but my thoughts, while clear in my head, where incoherent on the page.   There are so many things I want to say but I still lack the ability. Perhaps after 50 more posts the words will flow, perhaps sing.

The confidence my progression as a writer has given me has inspired me to again follow the path I set out on when I was 17. I will be an Artist. I have decided to produce 100 Water Lilly Icons. I will not dally. I have set a goal of producing one every two weeks.  It is enough time to be creative but not enough to ponder. I must paint, not think. I must trust my instincts, accept accidents and use them in my composition. It has become a great lesson in loving life, as it flows. 

90 Left

The finished Collage from the post One Child's Icon.

Grief

I'm not OK.


It's been two months since my Mother died. I can walk around without falling because after the miscarriage I learned how to pretend there was solid earth beneath my feet. I learned to work through the sensation of plummeting down the pit. It is an act. It is a conceit. I try to time and confine the worst despair to the rare moments I can be alone. I fail often at this. It still comes at random moments. Those are the easy times. Knowing what brings it on is the scary thing. It was the "O" word that got me. Orphan; the word folded me up like a cheap lawn chair. I am a Parent. I know about bottomless love, the unquenchable pride. The people who felt that way about me are dead.

I miss being a son.

Do I sound angry? I am. But if you sit with me a while I will only be sad soon. After that I may be happy for a brief time that my mother is no longer imprisoned a body that tormented her. After that I will be very quiet; when I realize again what that means and curse myself for it. I will be quiet for a long time.

Don't tell me it will get better. My Father died nearly three decades ago and I miss him every day. It gets worse because I understand more about my loss. I can add up all the things that should have been.

If there is one thing all the living can share it is grief. The feeling is exactly the same for the poorest child or the richest man. Know this. When you look into the eyes of stranger, behind whatever expression the eyes can veil, there is loss, infinite longing for someone they still love. If there isn't, there will be. If knowing this is not enough for you to treat each and every person with all the compassion you can muster, then Hell cannot damn you. You are damned as you walk this Earth.

Please forgive my anger, it will fade. In a little while I will smile, then I will be quiet.

One Child's Icon

It was my wife Rowena that taught me. The bread in the Priest’s hands is not a symbol of the body of Christ. It is the body of Christ. The wine is the blood of Christ.  An icon offers the same chance for communion. The young girl at the Gates of Dawn in Vilnius does more than view an artifact. She becomes part of its history, the history of the church that kept this image for centuries and the community that has protected the church. She participates in the embodiment of a young Palestinian girl in fear for her life and the life of her newborn child fleeing a great evil. She becomes part of an ongoing act of creation; the ethereal eternal life of the meaning of Faith.

Whether it is the story of the Last Supper, the Ghost Dance of the First Nations, the  Sufi Sama or the Silver Madonna each culture offers communion.  A transcendent and epiphanic experience that embodies a larger understanding. But it is always a work of art that is the point of contact, the navel from which Vishnu’s lotus springs. In Eastern cultures the Lotus represents many important concepts and appears in countless images and sculptures. One image pervasive to  Hinduism is Vishnu in repose, Lakshmi at his feet, as he dreams the Universe. A lotus grows from his navel and within the lotus is Brahma, the creator.  Everywhere the Buddha steps a lotus  flower blooms. The opening petals embody the expansion of the soul. It embodies the ascension of the spirit from the earthly depths to the light of Heaven, the spirit that cannot be blemished.

It was the holy book “Outdoor Life Magazine” that led me.  “Lunker Largemouth Lurk Beneath the Lily Pads” proclaimed the cover that featured a Bass with a feathered jig in its mouth soaring above a water lily. It looked just like the five pounder that hung on my friend's wall, and if there was anything my twelve-year-old self wanted it was a stuffed fish I could call my own. I knew just where to go. The east shore of City Lake was covered with Lily pads, completely covered. There was not an opening for my cast much larger than a truck tire and it was nearly impossible to reel in the lure without snagging the pads' long underwater stems.  I decided to try the old standby of bait and bobber. But as it turns out the promised bass were not fond of this combo and I would spend many fishless hours watching the red and white plastic orb float motionlessly. Eventually I left the rod and reel at home and spent the days at the water’s edge amongst the enormous purple, pink and white flowers in solitude

This was my first Aesthetic experience. Something I chose for myself that had no desired outcome save its own existence.  It is here that I learned about the bond of beauty and silence.  I came because those two things dwelled there. I told no one, not even my family, of this. I didn’t know how.  In college I tried. Our Eastern Art class spent a couple of days on the symbolism of the lotus. I found it quite exciting that half the world found significance in the same thing I did. But my understanding of the lotus was very different from the text and since my ideas wouldn’t be on the test they were greeted with a profound blank stare by the circle of friends that study grouped Art History 205.

As an artist I don’t just want to make pretty pictures; I want to give. And if I were to give you anything it would be the experience of being a young boy learning how beautiful the world is. How beautiful he is. We would follow the Tao down to the low places that most avoid and although we would walk through mud to get there, we would not be blemished. We would be there to witness the expansion of his soul. We would travel Vishnu’s universe together. We would never leave this place.

Until I can offer this experience, I will offer you its familiar. I will take paper and ink and paint and whatever else helps me find the image that I have held dear for four decades. I will bind all these things together. I will offer you One Child’s Icon. 

Family Icon

Icon 2

Why the scent of turpentine summons the spirit of my Father

Hanging on the wall in the part of our kitchen that is now Ella's one room school house is a painting of my Father's. It is one of my most prized possessions. Not because it is a great painting. It is not my Father's best, however we were together when he made it. He set up our easels side by side at Scales Lake State Park by one of the small lakes just off the road that circles the main lake on a warm Fall Saturday. He painted with oils. I had finger paints. He had just returned from his third war and now the art lessons that had begun two years before could begin in earnest again.  He painted trees by the water. I painted "baby trees" just Autumn colors with no trunks or branches,  swirls of yellow and red and green. I was just seven, but I remember the feel of the plastic paint between my fingers and the paper and the scent of my Father's turpentine.

Ella was asleep on our bed when Rowena presented me a page of her day's homework and shattered my illusion of control over what the future shall be. The exercise was to diagram the "hidden lines" in the painting Bathers at Asnières by Seurat. On the page were two lines that not only perfectly illustrated the internal composition but recreated visual impact of the original through their weight and sensitivity. My daughter has the eyes of an artist. The hands of an artist. She has an artists soul. Until I saw these lines on the page something inside me had hoped this was not true. For a year Ella has told everyone that she was going to going to be a Veterinarian. Yes, please, I thought to myself; be a Vet and your life will be easier than mine has been.
"This is my Son. He's an artist." There was never any equivocation when my Father said this. No parent has ever introduced their Daughter the investment banker or Son the engineer with any more pride.  In the decades since his death I told myself that he just didn't know how hard it is to be an artist. He didn't know about the doubt and derision. I wondered, how the oldest Son of a coal miner that quit school after sixth grade to labor plowing the fields behind the family mule would want me to work through the poverty and struggle to scrape up money for paint? Now I know. Two lines on a sheet of paper later I know. My Father wanted many things for me, but my Father knew me. My life was never going to be easy. I am too deeply in love with struggle and I do not readily accept the things I cannot change.

Ella has a finely tuned sense of Justice. She lives an honest, truthful, loving way and I know that because of this her life will be difficult. There is nothing I can do to ease her way, short of changing the world. So I will do what I can do. I will show her beautiful ways to see the world. I will give her ways to show the world what is inside her. I will set up our easels side by side in a quiet place, and together we will paint the world around us.

To Witness: Prologue

It was gray Mid-Winter when I stepped into my back yard and a flock of 20 or so sparrows burst from the ground and formed into a tight formation at full speed. As they came to the Maple they spread without collision to pass through the barren tree without touching a single branch. On the other side they formed into a flight not much larger than myself and disappeared into the cold landscape beyond the fence. As I watched all these beautiful souls pass through another beautiful soul I felt a familiar presence.

To Witness

I want to thank organized religion for three gifts. First I would like to thank the Catholic Church and specifically Pope Urban VIII for the persecution of Galileo Galilei. Scientific matters aside, it was the motivation for Rene' Descartes writing of Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Millions have created their intellectual structures on the foundations made possible by this treatise, exclusive of the Holy Roman Church's designs. Thanks to Urban VII I have only one possession - my own consciousness as the creation of dialog between the world and my own existence. My life is: what I see, what I hear, what I think, what I choose.

I would like to thank the Deacons of the Baptist Church my family attended when I was a child. When they discovered that wine was consumed at dinners with our family and the Pastor they fired him. I loved the Reverend. I enjoyed the conversations between him and my Father. I knew it was a great injustice and it severed my attachment to religious institutions permanently. He was then free to become President of a local university and I was free to look for God on my own. 

The most profound gift I received from a church, however, came during Sunday School just before our exile from the Baptist Church. The lesson was about the Creation and I was moved by the idea that God had desires. There was something that seemed strange about God needing something more than what he is so I asked the teacher" Why did He make us?" Her name is lost to me but her answer is not: "Perhaps he was lonely. He wanted someone to share with all the beautiful things he had made. God needs us. He sees the world through us. We are his eyes and his ears on Earth." The meaning of the moment was amplified perhaps because it is where my conversation left off with religious institutions. But it was the way she said it. She spoke directly to me. Her voice soft. Her words were complete the way a subtle gesture is complete.

Adults become conditioned to loneliness, but survival has instilled a special discomfort for this feeling in children. Lonely. A child understands another child's grief in solitude. A child would create the universe to not be lonely anymore. In my child's mind God was a child like me. One that loves to make things and to tell stories. He was inviting me to play with him. My life, the act of living, was part of Him. My seeing. My hearing. The tasting of fresh milk and my Grandmother's Pie, the feeling of my fifth grade girlfriend's hand in mine. All of these things an essential part of God's knowing and dreaming. And in the moments that I was conscious of the connection I wanted God to see the best of me.

                                                                            ***

"Yes, I'll sit by you. I love you too, I love you with all my heart. I am so proud of you. Be careful climbing that. AAAAAaaare you OK? Your knee? Yes, I'll blow that part a kiss. Great daddy take down. Sure, let's watch Ratatouille again. No I didn't know that Painted Lady Butterflies had ten thousand eyes. They migrate a thousand miles! Read that for me again. I'll read one for you too. Again?!? Great ballet jump. I love to see you dance!"

She wants a witness, and until she finds the one inside her I will witness everything she has to offer. In my adult’s mind God, a child like her, is the vessel that contains all of her experiences. Within God is the culmination- the full measure of everything she has seen, heard, tasted, felt, thought, feared and loved. My wife's years before we knew each other are there. The perfect life of the child, unborn, we mourned but I never met. We are there together - along with the singular, complete experience of every living thing there has ever been in the expanse of space and time. The flight of every bird, the stretching of their muscle and the flowing of wind across feather. The breathing of trees and the sense of what it means to flower. The sight from ten thousand Painted Lady Butterfly eyes on a thousand mile journey. 

Now that I am constantly aware of the connection I want God to see the best of me; for us to see the best of each other. "Yes God, I will sit with you. I like to paint flowers too. What a beautiful story. My friends tell stories - I need to take Ella to hear them. Great sunset! Remember the one I did for Little Shop? OK I'll keep trying. Yes, very proud of her. I love you too. With all my heart. I love to see you dance!"

Hard to Mow the Grass

It's is Sunday morning and the grass is well past ankle deep and shaggy as Ella and I play "Pitch and Catch" in the front yard. But it is hard to mow the grass now that I'm a Dad, especially early in the spring. The backyard is covered in little flowers. Violets identical to the ones on the dress she is wearing. The tiny blooms that as a two year old she gathered in tiny hand fulls. She cupped them to her nose to sigh in rapture. Buttercups that proclaimed her sweetness when held beneath her chin. Tall spindly flowers she calls Daisies whose blossoms are smaller than a dime with white petals as fine as her eye lashes. To my child the back yard is a Garden graced with all that word can offer.

And then there are dandelions and the hummingbirds. At a lecture about being good friends of hummingbirds we learned dandelion seed tufts are an important to the construction of their nests. They help hold the other materials together. We know now that they fly thousands of miles a year and always remember where they have been, who was kind with bottles of syrup and soft trumpet shaped flowers. They will return every year. I would love for them to each become a regular visitor so it seems I should work to promote a supply of natural nesting materials. Ella will help in this effort, seeding the world one puffball at a time. The tufts float through the air like the animated musical notes whistled from pursed lips.

On my way to the storage shed I pass our honeysuckle bush. There was one in the back yard of my child hood home. The boughs swept into the lawn like the crest of a wave leaving a curved hollow cave just boy sized. I loved to hide there and pull the flowers inner string to release the sweet drop of nectar within. I fill the mower with gas with little enthusiasm. It had quit running at the end of last years mowing season, but I hoped It would just work long enough to keep the neighbors from revolting in reaction to my sloth. To my chagrin it roars to life. Perhaps it was just tired in October. I let the self propelled front wheel drive help drag the machine  towards the front yard where I traditionally start this effort. When I reach the deck I turn to look behind me and stop in my tracks. Laughing out loud. The mower has merely temporarily pushed the "Daisies" over and they stand tall once more. The violets have only been topped and countless purple and blue flowers lay in the swath where I have just passed. It seems that a 250 pound man with a 6 horsepower rotary knife can only claim limited dominion over the beautiful things that yield and persist. 

I am so Happy.

My Mother is Dying

People who do not believe in demons have never seen a disease remove someone they love. Not kill them, but take them away slowly by destroying their ability to love the world around them. Arthritis has tormented my Mother for decades. The comfort everywhere within her where bone meets bone has dissolved. Joints that were once straight are now jarring angles. As her ability to walk in this world fades, as her ability to hold it in her hands fades her attachment to this world fades. There is little left of her consciousness but need, and fragments of dreams. When I sit beside her I can feel it coming; the world that does not contain her pride, the world without her love for her children, for animals, for the taste of sweet things. It is coming as sure as the earth is turning.
The only sudden thing in this process was my realization that there would no reckoning of the child's accounts of all the wrongs she had ever committed. I had carried them with me until it was to late for atonement. Too late for her even to say "I'm sorry". An accidental act of mercy. I have carried this ledger long enough to fear my own transgressions towards my child. To fear all the good I can do will be shattered by the wrong word an undeserved or ill considered comment, by doing nothing when something was needed. So on the pages where I have listed the debits to her character I will add ; She created children who love God and God's creations. A caring spirit is a rare and special thing and the formation of one is no accident. If you have this as as a possession there a debt is owed to those who love you. I will use this ledger now to light the pyre for all the things that never should never have come between us. To cleanse this world. To clear the way for her passage.
 A child knows what mother says is truth. It is their definition of the absolute that cannot be questioned. As you find yourself this is lost. But it is no easier to find the truth within yourself than it is to find your way in this world alone.Mother is the only objective truth you will ever know. Truth is in the dark months in the womb where there is only her. Truth that all the world is only one thing.

One and a Half Miles

It is the middle of November 1972. My Father and I leave this home on South 7th Street in Boonville Indiana for our thrice weekly mile and a half jog.  Well, it is a mile and a half of walking and jogging for me. When I cannot go with him he runs for three miles. You can take the man out of the Rangers but the Ranger never leaves the man. He loves to run, loved leading PT as a Drill Instructor. On a trip to see my Mom's family in Louisville he and I drove to Fort Knox to see one of his old friends, a Major who had flown helicopters with him. He pulled off the road to watch some soldiers do drills with what looked like half of a telephone pole. He watched them in silence. I could feel the weight of the heavy beam in his memories as we sat together on the bench seat of our 68 Chevy Biscayne. He was very pleased in their efforts. "That's the way it's done Son. That's how you learn to work together and trust each other."

The first 150 yards are always easy down the gentle slope of the street. Just where it levels off the the vacant lot where all the local boys play football. This is not touch football. The teenagers rule the field. Injuries to the smaller kids are always accompanied by insults, and laughter. But if you play without fear you get your own shots in. Without fear the game is worth playing. We go Fifty yards more yards and we pass over the railroad tracks, the finish line for our bike races. Eight and nine year olds racing hell bent for leather towards heavy machinery. Our parents knew about this, and thought little if anything of it. It was the time when in small towns mothers would hold the door open and state without equivocation "You are going outside to play"  The only safety guideline we had to honor; " Be home before dark!"
The tracks are where I always slowed to a walk. "Walking is as good for you as running as long as you walk like you have somewhere to go" My Father always said. It was a way to make me feel better, as well as the truth, but I noticed he would always run.  A misty rain had began to fall, cooling me down, and I kept jogging. "Two counts" he said as we reached the bottom of a short but steep hill. It was a breath control trick he had taught me. You exhale in rhythmic puffs in tempo with your strides. Never more than four counts. If you were struggling on two counts it is time to ease the pace or walk. The shot of oxygenation helps and we keep going past the crest, down the rest of seventh street, take right were the streets Ts and start down the long hill that leads to City Lake.  By the time we reach the lake I am puffing on four counts again.

I spent countless days of my childhood at this park. The swimming area was where I learned to blow bubbles in the water, to dog paddle, the backstroke and the Australian crawl. The right to go to the high dive was earned by swimming the width of the pool and back without stopping under the watchful eye of the superintendent and the life guards. My first jump from the 15 foot height was a disaster that knocked the wind out of me. But by the next Summer I was could manage a reasonably good swan dive and if I entered just right I could touch the muddy bottom.
We jog past the swimming area down the steep hill to Third Street and turned left following the levee that is the western border of the park. My Father asks me questions about chess strategy. He knows what I am trying to do. We are at the half way mark and coming to another hill. If I can talk I can keep going, if not we will walk. We pass the hill and turn left on Lake Shore. On the left is the spot I caught my first fish. I was using my Gramps' cane pole with a red and white bobber and a worm from Nanny's garden. Gramps and my Father chuckled when I declared the four inch blue gill to be "a keeper" My Grandfather took the fish off the hook and lowered it back into the lake."We'll let him grow grow a little more cowboy" One of the tough things about being a kid is triumph and despair so closely follow one another.
The rain grows heavier as we continued down the winding lane to the road  on the eastern border. I had read in one of my Outdoor Life Magazines that "Lunker Largemouth Lurk Beneath Lily Pads"  This side of the lake is very shallow and covered by water lilies with enormous maroon and white flowers. I will spend many hours here and never catch anything. It is here I learn the bond between silence and beauty.
"Can you keep going?" My Father asks. When I say "Yes" things change. Before there where two sets of footfalls. Now there is one. His breathing  syncs to mine.  It feels like I am half of a powerful machine. I am drawing not just from my father's strength but his instincts. There are none of the normal small stumbles in my strides. I am running with confidence and purpose. We are doing this together. We glide past the railroad tracks and up the hill towards home. The last half mile is passed without a word between us, but we have never been so completely connected. His hand clasps my shoulder and squeezes at the base of my neck."Good work Son"
Now that I am a Father myself there are many times I stumble. There are many times I feel I do not know the way forward, but as my confidence grows and I overcome my fears I can feel the connection.  My Father is beside me; step for step and breath for breath.