Finite Resources

I went to breakfast with my father this morning.

It's a recently minted once-a-month-on-Sundays tradition. The venue changes each time. Some mornings we do an instagram-worthy brunch with fancy coffee drinks. Others, we go for the greasy ambience and mediocre industrial brewed drip coffee. The restaurant doesn't matter. What matters is that it offers us a chance to connect one-on-one; a chance that hasn't always been readily available and I haven't availed myself of often enough when it was.

Like most men perched on the early cusp of stately middle age, I am more aware of the reality of my parents' mortality every time I see them. They both are (thankfully) in relatively good health at the moment, free of specific illnesses or maladies. But they are still subject to the same forces of entropy and decay as the rest of us and are clearly further along that curve than any of us feel completely comfortable with. The malady of time and the illness of age chips away at their vitality and substance in ways both subtle and profound.

It's the curse of those who survive to old age to be diminished by it. But (to paraphrase a motivational poster in my parents' bathroom) it sure beats the alternative.

Of course, the memory selves of my parents that I carry for them in my head creates a contrast with their current selves that does them no favors. Would my father appear as frail and shaky to me if he did not stand so tall and self-assured in my recollections of him?

I try not to dwell on this when my doorbell rings much earlier than I would otherwise rise on a Sunday morning. I consciously put aside thoughts of mortality and frailty; age and senescence. Instead I think of how grateful I am to be able to go out to breakfast with the man who taught me so much as I open the door to him. I think about how awesome it is that he is willing and able to make the 60 (or so) mile drive to come eat a meal with me and catch up on our lives; lives that diverged a very long time ago in terms of commonality and substance but which are tied still with bonds of love, pride, and obligation. Not uncomplicated bonds, but real ones.

All of this runs through my mind as I open the door (generally at least 15 minutes before the agreed upon time) and see him smiling at me, genuinely, I think, happy to see his son.

And I return the smile.