Five Iron Friday #12

Battle Creek

Something that you said last week

Is eating me with sharpened teeth

And I am so afraid

Not something thrown out flippantly

But to my heart and very core

I may not see you anymore

Or something even worse

And in my bones

Your twenty-three same chromosomes

Reside in twisted prophecy

Likening our destinies I genuflect.

I'll hold my breath I'll wait and see

Your blood is swimming inside me

And there is no love

Like fathers have for their sons

-Always Just Beneath the Dawn, BS2

 

I remember the first time I heard this song, I thought Reese wrote it just for me. I feel a lot of these things. I feel the tendencies that I have, that my father has exhibited. I feel the close-ness, but also, almost the

"matter-of-fact" way that Reese talks about the love that fathers have for their sons.

I was never a fan of father's day. It was always a tough day. You always hope for better, to be a better son, to connect with your father in a way that is better for the both of you. But I have felt for such a long time that I have to be careful with any word I say. I have to think through any message before I send it. I'm nervous meeting with him, that he might hear me the wrong way, that I'd give more ammo for him to be disappointed with. For him to really let me know when I stand with him.

But I also have to believe that, like Reese says in the chorus:

"Boys need fathers,
every daughter, every broken heart so gone.
I believe that love is greater,
never ceasing, always hoping,
always just beneath the dawn."