A New Day and Another Memory

Have you ever walked out the door of your home, felt and smelled the air, looked around at the emerging day, and suddenly found your mind wandering back to a day when you were a kid that felt and smelled and looked just like today? "Deja vu all over again," said the great cultural anthropologist, Yogi Berra, I thought. Life has a funny way of coming back to us through our senses.

The day I went back to was a rather non-descript day in nearly every respect, save one: I was about 12 years old and Dad and I were moving cattle around in the lots. Don't ask me why that image came to my mind. I haven't remembered that day since the time it happened, some 40+ years ago, yet, there is was . . . the smell of the 'Little Barn', the heifers milling around, and Dad working with me to move cattle from one lot to another, Dad's gentle, yet strong, "Hep! Hep!" sounding every so often to guide and quiet the cattle. Nothing more exciting than that. Just an event, but one marked in every way by my senses and their resounding capacity to remember a moment captured in time with my Dad . . . and I am the richer for it today.

Many of the lessons I learned, much of the love I felt, most of the experiences of my youth which are lodged in my mind and heart, like the one remembered this morning, especially those of my parents, have to do with time spent together. Who would remember moving cattle from one pen to another on an early Spring morning? But then, who could ever forget the time spent with someone you deeply loved, admired and wanted to emulate? Oh, I am not so much a romantic that I have forgotten the times I never wanted to be like my Dad, but those are times which would come later in life. Today, remembering back then and watching my Dad work the cattle and teach me how to do it well, there was no-one else I wanted to be like.

'Weird kid', you think. You have a right to your opinion, but I think, 'Lucky kid'. My old German Dad told me how much he loved me by working beside me as he taught me the simple lessons of life. Not one given much to hugging in those days, Dad embraced me, and each of my brothers, with a love that would not let us go as he pushed, chided, chewed out, forgave, loved, and taught again each lesson of life which moved us towards manhood . . . and this morning I was blessed to remember that feeling all over again.

As it is with our families, so it is with all of God's family. Remember and give thanks. I think I'm going to give Dad a call today just to tell him how much I love him, while I savor the memory of moving cattle not so very long ago.