To My Father...

My father used to be a yard stick
By which I measured manhood

And myself

Often unrealistically

Always unfavorably

Through his eyes, I projected my own weakness

Assumed his judgment in his silence

And shirked away, afraid of the false evidence

I wrongly perceived in his every word and gesture

Then, one time and then another, he said, "Me, too"

He said I am what you are

I have been where you have been

And the difference it made was slow and infinite

As my mind and spirit grew to understand the vastness

Of his love

So my father was no longer a yard stick and instead he became

A cement mixer

Not with a large rotating cylinder on the back of some ponderous truck

But a personal, manageable barrel

Sturdy and strong

From which his manhood was mixed, poured, and leveled

All by his hand

And made into a walking path for his life

After it was earned

Once it was filled

With hard work

Personal strength

Integrity

Independence

Straight-forward speech

And a gentle steadiness that embraces everything but yields to nothing

And while the barrel needs to be filled

Up to the highest line marked by my father before me and his before him,

I know from him that I am free to mix it

With my own contents in my own way

With my own hard work

As long as it is hard work

My own personal strength

Because another's strength won't hold

My own integrity

Born out of honest choices I alone make

Then with independence and true speech and steadiness

Like stones sprinkled in for texture and color

But, always in the amounts and in the order that work for me

My father's mixture is his own and cannot be mine

Should not be mine

But, he gave me the barrel to use and showed me how to fill it.