Moving On

One last scene from the Brandon Road house.  Far beyond the comprehension of my toddler mind, the fracturing of our family was taking place.  Memories of my Dad are vague: a dark-haired man with glasses wearing Hawaiian print shirts whom I saw but spent little time with.  Though he was in the Marines, I have no memories of him in uniform.  

A clue that something was up came when Dad moved the furniture out of the living and dining rooms one evening.  The following morning I ate breakfast seated on several volumes of a children's encyclopedia set.  The novelty of being perched on a stack of untapped knowledge while eating congealing oatmeal out of a small bowl held precariously on my lap has stayed with me.

It would be easy to find fault with my father.  In the intervening years of rarely broken silence, he has volunteered little, and nothing of significance, about himself.  Like many men of that generation, he is quiet, hard-working, not given to self-disclosure.  My father-in-law, a man similarly inclined to keep his own counsel, was and is a diligent, faithful father to his own kids.  He asked recently how often I hear from my Dad.  After I told him really not at all, he remarked that he just couldn't understand how a man could leave his children.  As a father myself, I wrestle with that question, too.  If I knew more, I might understand more.  Or not.

One obvious reason for his leaving was the talkative, friendly divorcee with red hair and Southern accent who worked at the Non-Commissioned Officers Club on Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base.  I know the difficulty of getting a word in at home with a houseful of children, the relative peace of doing work that you enjoy.  It is easy to see where a stopping for a beer after a long day mucking around the innards of military equipment could lead.  Lacking a faith-grounded commitment to marriage, my father chose a path that had been modeled for him: his parents divorced when he was a teenager.  Dad and Marguritte were married for over 20 years before her death from cancer.  Her children were mostly grown when they married, they had none together.

Redemption only happens in a fallen world.  Every life has flaws, brokenness; some imposed on us, some of our own making.  If nothing else, Dad was necessary to the means God used to bring me into the world.  And my life is grand.  Dad's absence planted in me a haunting hunger to both give and receive a Father's love.  I have found that, too.

I am not sure how long afterwards we moved into Trailer Village, but that breakfast seated on encyclopedias closed the door on the only 'real' house I would live in for the next decade.  The move into a mobile home marked the beginning of an often difficult existence for my mother, my two older sisters, myself and my younger brother. The aroma of cooking oats often takes me back to that morning in the house on Brandon Road.  To this day, I prefer books over furniture.