Friday, November 26, 2010

Dad At 35,000'

(The following was written a couple of weeks ago in the middle of a first time flight to Australia and New Zealand.)  

He sneaks up on me when I least expect him.  Certainly as I attempt sleep at umpity ump thousand feet somewhere over the South Pacific it is a surprise to be talking with my dad.  People never tell you about stuff like this.  At least nobody ever mentioned it to me.  Or, maybe they did and I just wasn't listening.

Dad ankled the planet nearly sixteen years ago but strangely has had more to say to me in the past few years than he ever did while still blowing smoke rings from is favorite green easy chair.  Or, maybe he did and I just wasn't listening.

No mater.
What strikes me in the wee smalls of a fourteen hour flight to Sydney is the enormity of what was asked of so many Americans of dad's generation not so long ago.  The scope of the challenge handed to those young guys at the threshold of their adult lives is hard to grasp.  Even more impressive is the fact that they delivered.  How did it feel to be a young man from the cornbelt who, like most of his peers, had never been far from home, on board a ship bobbing on an ocean you'd never seen?  
What sacrifice!  There were no guarantees of victory; no assurance of going home in one piece.  Yet, they did it because the alternative to victory was unthinkable.  A triumphant Imperial Japan and, or Nazi Germany was simply unacceptable.
They anted up irreplaceable hunks of their young lives.  Some gave all in places they couldn't find on a map.

It isn't lost on me that their grit and determination allows me to now muse at 35,000 feet as I wend my way to a part of the globe I will visit under very different circumstances from dad and his buddies.

In this season of thanks and redemption I remember as a grateful son and hope that it's enough.

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