Soulful Muse

Dutifully went to work at the newly formed credit union for over 40 years.  The adverb cannot be emphasized enough.  8-5 and Fridays until 8 pm were the hours he kept while continually warning clients that a credit union is not a bank but a safe place to invest your money.  He was its manager begun with a small group of investors who all gave $1.00 except my dad, because as he said later, “I wasn’t sure it would make it.”

At 46 years old he had me which made my friends ask, “How’s your grandfather?” not knowing there’s three siblings before me and one after.

He wanted to take the car to work but my mother insisted that he should walk for the exercise, a simple 30 minute walk.  I long to hear his thoughts as he made his way to work.

A secretary and my dad comprised the early days of credit unions.  A simple call from home with the extension “395 please” connected us with this silent, tall man with a gentle smile.  “Mom wanted us to call if you’d be home for supper,” asked the grandson/son and he’d say, “You kids go ahead without me.”

Today’s TV version of my dad’s late nights would have him cooped up in the local motel with his secretary or the Warren’s Restaurant waitress or selling drugs on Washington Street in Manitowoc, Wisconsin to help pay the bills or worse yet in a van in a hit series making drugs for the already drugged-from-the-small-ghetto-town kids that Manitowoc produced.

The fireplace was his “man cave” as we call it today except it was built to extend the kitchen.  There he’d sit with his cigar and glowing fireplace flame, one less than the other.  I wonder today what thoughts he had as he exhaled the cigar smoke with his stolid stare outside the kitchen window.  To interrupt him during those hours was always surprising to him.  He’d answer the kid’s question and then return to the stare.  (As years wore on he’d sometimes mistaken my name for our dead cat but that’s beside the point.)

Born in 1906 and a child  along side the number of a small day care center today, Walter finished high school and enrolled in a seminary in the big city in the 1920’s only to leave the seminary and return to begin this new business.

No one knows today why he left.  He loved his retirement as much as he loved his work, over 30 years of retirement.  My mother, the outgoing parent, passed away first and my dad’s final 8 years were spent with the five of us kids.

He stilled smoked the cheap cigar and still stared out the new window from his new home.  Our neighboring hospital wished to expand its parking lot (small town, remember? parking problem?) and 13 homes were relocated through Habitat for Humanity.  My dad was the last to sell his house in this growing non-metropolis.  The hospital’s finance director visits him along with my sister and me.

His cigars and staring may have paid off.  The hospital guy offers top dollar for Walter’s house.  He likes that but asks for another home, rent free for the rest of his life.  The hospital guy smiles and says, “yes.”  My dad adds, “snow, grass removal included.”  Hospital guy smirks and says, “yes.”   I told my dad, “What about cable?” and he looked at me to keep my mouth shut.  “Washer and dryer,” my dad returns with and the hospital guy again gives in.  The papers are placed before him, he signs them and says, “I like that pen.”  Hospital guy then did, well you know what he did.

I was never into sports but playing with my aging dad would have meant disaster if I’d hit him in the head with his arms folded in front of me wondering what the two of us were doing.  Didn’t happen.  But he did listen.

Rarely, if ever, responded but he listened to all the stories we kids were willing to tell him.  Some sordid and others just about growing up.  He sat there and listened; absorbed and absorbed all the information.  The squeeze?  It never happened.  He absorbed.

My dad.  He worked very well, he wanted to be priest for some reason, marries giving five children not knowing what to do with them nor always knowing their names, retires well and dies peacefully at 93.  The squeeze?  The five of us are still waiting.

Who needs Julia Childs?  Who needs Graham Kerr, “The Galloping Gourmet?”  Do you remember Graham Kerr?  I remember that he drank double the wine that he used in his cooking.

We have a superb chef who easily knows his way around the kitchen, Jesus Christ.  He can boil any liability out of our lives.  The yeast that he offers is himself, the leaven that rises to every need and concern in our lives.  This chef becomes the meal, he gave himself.  He offers up for us the ultimate recipe, the ultimate formula for living life.  “I give you life and it will be given back to you” – a full course meal of peace, fortitude and joy.

The trickiest meal to prepare may very well be prime rib.  It has way of looking like a rump roast but actually is prime rib. Chef Christ uses the prime rib to remind us that things aren’t always what they appear to be.  People we perceive and label as selfish may be insecure and unsure of themselves.  Give your boiling attitudes time to simmer and let your feelings cool down after  heated discussions.

Cooking demands patience, self restraint and resilience.  Give yourself enough preparation time before you mix and mash up your opinions into an oven or bake them until they’re overcooked.  Knead out those bumps that so often enter our judging minds that quickly evaluate another person.  Smooth them out so that you may see more deeply and clearer the motivations of another.  Let the ingredients of someone’s life allow you to see them more completely.  You may very well find that who you thought was just a rump roast turned out to be prime rib and that includes yourself.

These two guys had eight, handy tools surrounding them for easy access.  I know because I’m watching them and count the tools wrapped around their waists as though preparing for a gun fight with the town’s villain.  Sometimes this tool is used but now this smaller tool is needed for that sharp corner.  In tandem, one outside and the other inside they perform their task and warn the other that the smudge is on his side.
I watch them while waiting for a doctor’s appointment (never read the magazines; who touches them except sick people!) as they diligently complete one before moving to the second.  Their faces are task orientated and focused, one completed job only leads to the next one.
I walk into a hospital room knowing only an unknown name and possibly a diagnosis that I may or may not know.  Another minister enters a prison cell wondering how he/she will be received.  I’m stopped after Mass and a stranger says, “May I have a word with you right now?”  You bring home your first child and wonder what you will do with this living, needy thing that needs housing for at least 18 years.  (Even longer, these days!)  You promised yourself that things would be different than the way you were raised but slowly you hear your parents talking through your mouth.  (Ah, the promises we make to ourselves…)  You find yourself “tool-less” as you raise your own child while nursing the parent who once nursed you.  What do you say and how firmly do you need to say it?  You say, “Dad, you simply cannot drive anymore.  You need to admit it,” the same morning you gave the car keys to your son for the first time.
We don’t have John the Baptist’s leather belt to support us or the eight tools that the window washers so easily used.

I only have that “Hi” followed by anything and everything that follows; rarely with a solution especially for that tough corner of life no one’s been able to reach.  I’m searching for tools in my head in milliseconds only to find that my eyes are listening and my ears are seeing the conflict or turmoil or pain.  In how many situations are we all looking for the right tool for the right job at the right moment.  (And, is there even such a tool?!)   We all can only hope that the window to the souls of those we love may be ready to be seen through and somehow lovingly assure them that all will be spotlessly clean and somehow “okay.”