Mutual incomprehension
by chuckofish
“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
―
Today is our father’s birthday. He would have been 97!
I have forgiven my father for a lot and forgotten even more.
I am grateful to him for tying the knot with my mother and for going to work all those years and supporting us when he might have been doing something else. We were a boisterous trio of kids and we annoyed him frequently, if not endlessly. That’s the impression he gave anyway. I wish he could have enjoyed us more. I think all fathers should enjoy their children. They grow up pretty fast and move on and have children of their own.
Well, I know for a fact that the boy enjoys his children.
May it always be so.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; 5 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; 7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
–Deuteronomy 6:4-9
(Pssst. A frontlet is a decorative band or ornament worn on the forehead.)
Personally I am leaning toward a Cary Grant marathon, which could include any of these favorites: Gunga Din (1939), The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Houseboat (1958), North By Northwest (1959), Charade (1963), or Father Goose (1964) or The Bishop’s Wife (1947) if you missed it at Christmas.
It might also be time to revisit Silverado (1985)–completely derivative, but entertaining nonetheless.
We should also mention that today on the Episcopal Church calendar is the feast day of Amy Carmichael (1867-1951), Protestant missionary in India, who was the real deal. She opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for fifty-five years without furlough and authored many books about the missionary work there. Her most notable work was with girls and young women, some of whom were saved from customs that amounted to forced prostitution. You can read about her 
Here she is on a dig in Jordan back in 1985 when she was a twenty-something graduate student, back when we had waistlines and tucked in our shirts.
However you want to spend the 4th of July, I’ll take my cue from those three American flyers in the German prisoner of war camp (surrounded by British officers) in The Great Escape (1962)…waving the flag, playing loud music and sipping some moonshine. (“WOW!”)
We hope this is a “big year” for him, at least in the birding sense. Come see a Pied-billed grebe or a Marbled godwit sometime! We have them in Missouri, you know. After all, we live on the Mississippi flyway.
Over the three day weekend we managed to fit in trips to the botanical garden and Grant’s Farm, lunch out and Ted Drewe’s, a night at the Sheldon with a red hot bluegrass band, plus three visits with the wee babes. We also watched Guys and Dolls (1955)! I even managed to squeeze in church–albeit the 8:00 a.m. service where I saw people I hadn’t seen in years!
Of course, she starred in one of my top-five favorite movies of all time–Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)–but I like her in anything. Indeed, she is like John Wayne in that she makes even an average movie worth watching.
dual personalities 