Guest blog by Roger L. Durham
I was downstairs, lighting a fire in the fireplace, turning on the Christmas lights, checking to see if Santa had paid a visit. My two boys, 3 and 5 years old, were sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting, with their mother. I came around the corner, with camera in hand, ready to capture the moment.
But when I turned the corner and saw the look on their faces, I was transported, as if by some twist of time, and I was the one sitting at the top of the stairs, looking down into the smiling face of my father as he snapped a Polaroid and said, He was here. Santa was here!
I didnt get the photograph that Christmas morning. I was too startled by the wonder I saw in my boys eyes. It was as if I was looking into a mirror that erased 25 years. I saw my own wonder in those bright, young faces that so resembled my own. Before I could raise the camera, my sons brushed past me and rounded the corner to see what Santa had left them. And Christmas has never been the same for me since.
In that moment, I realized the gift that my father had given me, over the course of my life. In that time-shattering moment, I finally captured what my father had been teaching me all along, about what it means to be a dad. Maybe the lesson had been building gradually before that, but from that moment on, I looked at my dad, and myself, through an entirely different lens.
I remembered the vacations we had taken, and realized what sacrifices dad had to make in order to afford them. I remembered the Saturdays in the yard, raking leaves, and I realized the lessons of responsibility and hard work my dad had been instilling in me. I remembered the rounds on the golf course, and I understood what he had been teaching me about competition and perseverance and sportsmanship. I remembered watching him read and enjoy classical music and tend, in his quiet way, to my mother, and I realized that he was teaching me about what was important in life.
We never had conversations about money and marriage and career. That was not Dads style. He was not that direct. Other friends had dads who were, and I thought I was missing something by not having a dad who would talk to me about things like that. But that Christmas morning, I realized the thing I had missed was the way Dad was teaching me.
What had escaped me previously were the lessons I had learned from him without even knowing it. All along, at every turn, my dad had been teaching me life lessons. But he was so subtle about it, so quiet and unassuming, that I had missed the fact that he had been teaching meuntil that Christmas morning, when I saw myself in the wonder of my own sons faces.
Christmas is different now. I look forward to givingnot so much the what of giving as the how. Thats what my dad taught me: the quiet, humble, gracious way in which he gave. The older I become, the less I need or want. But the act of giving remains important. And the art of receiving is as much a part of the gift as the giving. So I find myself focusing on those things. And I think of my dad. And I look for ways to give that will mean something to someone.
This year, Christmas came a little early for me. I am part of two mens groups. We meet monthly to discuss issues of importance and enjoy some man time together. This year, both groups decided to do something for Christmas. One group volunteered to serve a meal at a homeless shelter. Nine guys left their well-paying jobs and their homes on the comfortable side of town and drove into the city to serve hot meals to 300 men and women who otherwise would not have eaten that night. One member of the group donated the food, and the rest helped serve it. To a man, each was struck by the simple joy of serving and the powerful significance of giving some part of himself in a way that was so meaningful to grateful recipients.
The other group looked for a family to adopt this Christmas. There are lots of groups helping lots of people with gifts, but there are families who are not the typical recipients of such generosity, families who have fallen on hard times and fallen under the net of care at Christmas time. They have braced themselves for a lean Christmas.
We found two such families and decided to help both. The local Catholic church identified the families for us, and Sister Mary graciously helped coordinate the efforts. We gave gift cards and cash to both families, so they could buy the gifts for the children themselves, a gesture Sister Mary found very touching. We wanted the gifts to be anonymous. We wanted these families to know that there were people wishing them well.
I mentioned to my mother what my friends and I were doing. She looked at me with a look I didnt quite recognize. She got up from her chair, went into the other room of her two-room apartment at the retirement communitymy father died several years agoand she came back with two stuffed animals that she received earlier that day from a group that had come to entertain the old people, as she fondly refers to herself and her friends. I am so proud of you and your friends, she said. Please take these and include them in the gifts to the families.
She wanted to be part of the gift; she wanted to give to those families as well. As for that look on her face, I realized it must have been much like the look on my face that Christmas morning when I looked up the stairs into the wonder-filled faces of my sons. I think my mother was seeing a reflection of my dad, in the eyes of her son, who had learned the lesson, after all, that her beloved had tried to teach. I cant say for sure, but if I could have read her mind, I think I would have heard her saying, You understood your dad, didnt you. You learned what he so wanted to teach you.
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Roger L. Durham is an ordained Presbyterian minister currently working as a client development manager for Summit Energy Services in Louisville, Kentucky. As a student of culture, faith and men’s issues, Roger works with men’s groups in Louisville. He has a BA in psychology from Wake Forest University and a doctor of ministry degree from Union Seminary in Virginia.
