On a recent Saturday as I completed my errands, I nearly tripped over a father and daughter exiting Shaw’s in Falmouth in a specially made shopping cart for toddlers.

I was struck by the fact that in just the last three hours of this, my lazy Saturday off, I had seen multiple groupings of fathers and daughters — in each of the three places I had been.

It made me pause for a moment and realize that this is the time of year that I really notice fathers and daughters, as it is coming up on the anniversary of my dad’s death — that December day when I kissed him goodbye as he was wheeled off into surgery and then never saw him alive again.

Just the previous evening, I had been sitting with one of my nieces and we were laughing and remembering some things about him and about my mother, too. She confided to me that as she continues along her spiritual path of following Jesus, she is sometimes perplexed because the answers to things appear before the questions!

That day, when I mused upon the significance of all the father and daughter sightings, I felt a lingering sadness that I never had the chance to spend a lot of time with my dad when I was small — it was always , or mostly always, me and Mom. Dad was busy hunting and fishing and working and coaching and serving the town … and I was hanging out with Mom.

It is a little like my niece’s observation that she seems to go into things backwards — I spent the bulk of my time with my dad the last 10 years of his life — and not much before that. Was that wrong, I wondered?

Theological thinking, a term casually tossed around in seminaries and some church circles, is kind of a way of making sense (meaning) of things in a biblical framework. I thought of Psalm 16:6, a verse I have often used at memorial services — “the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” — and I realized that there were times and memories from my childhood where Dad was very present.

I remembered spreading manure with him in the back field — manure generated from the horse my parents bought for me when I was a horse-crazed 13-year-old.

I remembered my dad coming down the hill at my grandparents’ camp one early evening when I was 7 or 8 with a bucket of fresh peas for me and Mom to shell. I remembered with not a little chagrin how Dad went to all my high school basketball games where I never made it past jayvee — a true embarrassment for a Smith in those days.

As I browsed these memories of a younger father and daughter, I realized that my boundary lines were pleasant indeed. My father required me to be present and contribute to the things I wanted — like a horse. He never took me shopping, but the things I got from him were much better than a new scarf or the opportunity to pick out my own breakfast cereal. He taught me that privileges are earned, that everything comes with a price (what 13-year-old enjoys spreading manure?), and that a family is only as strong as its weakest link. Thanks, Dad.

The Rev. Marilyn Smith Glavin has served as pastor at Second Congregational Church in Biddeford since 2004. She can be contacted at:

marsglavin@yahoo.com.

 

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