At Trinity on Father's Day

"Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray." — Proverbs 22:6

Pastor Holloway asked the fathers to stand this morning and most of them did, the young ones with babies on their hips and the older ones who stood the way men stand when they are being asked to stand, which is slowly and with a look that says they are not sure this is necessary but they will do it because they were asked.

Earl would have been one of the slow ones. He would have stood and looked at the floor and waited for it to be over and sat back down and not mentioned it again. He was not a man who needed to be recognized for being a father. He was a father the way he was everything else, which was completely and without commentary.

Dan was there this morning. He is always there, which is something I do not say enough about Dan, that he comes every Sunday and he sits where he sits and he sings the hymns and he does not make a production of it. His children were beside him. Jack on one side looking like he would rather be anywhere else, which is the look of a twelve-year-old boy in church on any given Sunday, and Olivia on the other side paying attention the way she pays attention to everything, with her whole body pointed at whoever is talking.

When the fathers stood, Dan stood, and for a moment I saw Earl in him, the way Dan holds his shoulders, the way his hands go to his sides like he is not sure what to do with them. It was not the first time I have seen Earl in Dan and it will not be the last, and every time it happens it is a thing I do not have a word for. Not grief. Not joy. Something in between that lives in the body and not in the language.

Earl was a father who showed up. He showed up to the hayfield and to the hospital and to the kitchen table and to the church and to the porch. He did not always know what to say when he got there. He did not always say the right thing. But he was there, and being there was the thing, and Dan is there now, being there the way his father was there, and the line holds.

After the service I told Dan that his father would have been proud of him. Dan said thank you, Mama. And then he said, I know. And the way he said it told me that he did.

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