A letter to my father

"Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." — Isaiah 41:10

Dear Daddy,

It is Father's Day this weekend and I have been thinking about you, which I suppose I should say I do every day but the truth is I do not. I think about you the way a person thinks about the ground. It is there. You do not look at it. You walk on it and trust it to hold.

You were not a man who talked about himself. You went to the store every morning and came home every evening and the store was on Main Street and the evening was on the porch and that was your life for most of your working years and you did not seem to think it needed explaining. When I was small I thought you were quiet because you had nothing to say. When I got older I understood you were quiet because you had too much to say and no way to say it that would not cost you something.

Mama knew. She always knew. She hung the laundry and she noticed what people carried and she noticed what you carried and she did not ask you to put it down. She just stood next to you while you held it.

I married a man who was not like you. Earl was loud where you were quiet. He worried out loud. He gardened the way he felt, which was too much and all at once. But he was like you in one way, which is that he kept showing up, every morning, to the same table, to the same life, and he did not ask for credit for it because it did not occur to him that showing up was something a person could take credit for.

I do not know what you saw over there in the war. You never told us. I do not think you told Mama either, though she may have understood without being told. What I know is that you came home and you ran the store and you raised us and you died on a Saturday morning in the kitchen with the coffee still warm, and the life you built between the war and the kitchen was a life that held us all up and we did not thank you enough for it.

Thank you.

With love, Ruby

Lord, he carried what he carried and he did not put it down.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.