Bob Collins
There’s a scene in Field of Dreams, a movie more about fathers than baseball, in which Ray Kinsella’s long-ago father appears and his world changes when he sees his father as a young man.
That is not how we see parents. It’s only later, when a shoebox full of old pictures is hauled out of a closet, that we stop to observe, “Wow, he (she) was younger in this picture than I am now.”
This picture above was sent to me by a sibling not long after I spent part of last summer painting my mother’s house. It’s my dad painting my mothers house. He was younger in this picture than I am now.
These are the pictures, I think, when we most closely identify with our parents, when they become more “us” to us than “them” to us.
Got a similar picture of your father that makes you pause? Send it to me with the story behind it and I’ll post it up.
In the meantime, happy Father’s Day.
“This photo of my dad (that’s him on the left with other guys from the American Beagle Squadron) reminds me that he had a life before I or my mom knew him. He learned to fly as a teenager, worked for the CCC and joined the army. They learned he knew how to fly and routed him to the Air Corps. He was based in Italy late in the war. After service, he met my mom at a party. After the party he was on his way to be a pilot in South Amerca. He was so taken with my mom he got as far as Florida when he turned around and came back to Minnesota. Prety much all of this information came from my mom. Dad wasn’t big on talking about it. I don’t know where it was taken, but probably in Italy.” — John Peschken, Maple Grove, MN.
