“Brian?”

“Ryan.”

“Who?”

“Ryan.  Your son.”

“Oh, Ryan!  Hey!  How ya doing?”

And then we both laughed.  I cannot say that I’ve learned the small laugh that is a common part of my speech pattern from him.  Maybe it’s genetic, I don’t know.  Once in a business meeting, someone accused me of being either flip or nervous because I offered a hard answer with a bit of laughter.  We were supposed to speak direly, with great pomp.  I wasn’t memo-ed.  It’s just part of my way of speaking.  In my preaching days, I used to listen to myself once a year to make sure that I wasn’t laughing too much in my delivery.  It was a tough thing to remove, but I did for the most part.

My father and I talked for about 30 minutes over the phone.  That is almost forever in telephone time for either one of us.  There was the common laughter.  The last time we had spoken it was summer.  Our van had just broken down; Molly and I had decided that we weren’t going to visit my family in Minnesota.

I don’t know why I fear calling my dad.  I wonder if he fears the same thing, and maybe that’s why we don’t talk but a couple times a year.  When he and I are on the phone I walk in circles through my house; in the yard is even better.  I think the passage of time between conversations builds up into a tension that is only relieved by making the call.  I still fear calling, though it always has the same results.  We both hang up better, in some way, for dialing.

It was his birthday.  He is getting old.  Though he is still spry: golfing nearly everyday, playing pool competitively, generally active; he now sounds a bit closer to his age than I wish he did.

A year and a half has passed since I’ve seen him.  My daughter had just turned 4, grandpa took her and the rest of my family out on the boat, and she caught more fish than the rest of us.  We were dropping crawlers into a hole about twenty feet deep on Nest Lake, fishing for Sunnies.  “Tugging!” Iris would say, and then she’d start reeling in jerks, her little hands slipping with sweat and knuckles translucent.  The fish were as big as they used to be.  We always talk about that day.  One of the best days in my recent register.

You have those things that you know you should do.  You even enjoy doing them once you’ve begun, but you meet them tentatively.  With caution.  (Yesterday I posted about fear and compassion.)  It’s not that I “feel sorry for him,” and therefore I muster up some compassion and courage to dial a phone.  That’s condescension.  (Courage to dial a phone?)  Like I said yesterday, I am not sure if compassion removes fear, or if when you remove fear compassion replaces it.

All I know is that it always feels good to talk to your dad.  Even if you’ve both taken turns walking away.  I think we all carry around more trivial bullshit than is spiritually or emotionally healthy.  The lists of who did what to whom, and who did it first, or which crime was of greatest severity weigh heavy on a soul.  You don’t forget.  That isn’t even possible.  You just choose.  You dial the phone when its laying red hot in your hand almost begging.  You choose caring, not because it’s easy.  Fear is easiest by far.  Forgiveness is fueled by compassion.  Or is the other way around?  Again I don’t know.  The sequence probably doesn’t matter.