My life is but a collection of opportunities with a Mother unwilling to share love and an absentee Father. I hungered for a parent to share my accomplishments and assist in guiding me along my life path. I had to await the arrival of my wife Anne to help me to focus upon my tremendously developed ego, my attendant pride. Anne brought joy into my life and an alternative way of living. I experienced one of those watershed moments at age fifty when the Lord asked me if it was time for me to forgive my Father. I remember it clearly as I was in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I did release me hatred that evening and then began a process of reflecting upon my relationship with my Father. What came out of that reflection process was this book of poems and my new-found ability to pray for my Father. My hatred for the most part had never damaged my Father. I was the one suffering and I would need to be the one to deal with the hatred. This was my healing process. When I began to share some of my poetry with my spiritual and poetry communities there seemed to connections that came up o a regular basis. Many connected back to their relationships with their parents to understand from what root-stalk they had come from and how they ended up where they were today. Some of us have been imprinted clearly with our parents’ gifts and lessons they taught us. Others were left to their own devices floating about in a world without a rudder. Some of us are survivors that despite the worst intentions of our parents we chose a straight and narrow recovery path through the brambles choosing to succeed where we were never given a chance. I am a survivor and this book is dedicated to all of the survivors out there who made the conscious decision to grow out of their childhood struggles.
The scars levied upon me as a child built up layer upon layer of armor to keep me whole, functioning and others always guessing, if they took the time. There are two ways of viewing my relationship with my Father: first as a string of pearls and second as a never-ending chess game. Viewed as a string of pearls there were valuable lessons inculcated as a granule covered in protective nacre to insulate, protect and save. The granule of lesson was thus stowed until the right time to be rebirthed and put to use. These lessons did help me to be a better Father in my own relationships with my children.
The notion of a chess game with an Opening, Mid-Game and End-Game has been used in this book. The opening period covered how the entire process got kick started including what led up to a silver-spoon being placed into my mouth. The mid-game dealt with my Father’s first fall and the abrupt removal of the silver-spoon. The end-game dealt with my Father’s second fall, recovery, death and my fiftieth-year revelation. I had become a proficient chess player at a young age defeating easily my friends and relatives. The vision which came to me when I was assembling this book was first: me as a single white pawn and my Father as the black king. This dramatically demonstrates the distance that existed between us. I could not move towards my Father without fear of being damaged or causing him some form of distress. My Father would not move towards me for many reasons including an inability to share love. This has been presented as a 50’s syndrome… where fathers took on the responsibility for providing for the family without taking on any of the nurturing of the family… please the Urban Dictionary on the Web for more information. As I continued to revel in my own new understanding, especially after God reveled to me my Father’s post-traumatic stress syndrome and his reluctance to deal with the relative peace and quiet of a family suburban life, I could forgive this man if not his actions. My Father was chased by his own demons from WW II and nurturing a love-filled home was just not in his dealt hand of cards.
The second part of the chess board vision was a collection of new pieces that my Father introduced occasionally into the game. Each new piece would have its own set of powers and situational abilities to move. My chore as a child was to try and deal with each one of these new pieces so I could continue to survive the game. Many of the pieces had a nugget of lesson for me to learn and place in my tool bag of life-situational tools. I was not fully aware of using these lesson-tools until after the revelation. My family and friends and acquaintances have shared similar experiences from their upbringing.
The front-cover dramatically shows me up against the onslaught of new game pieces which my Father had introduced in our relationship. The back-cover similarly shows dramatically how all of the pieces have been stowed away and my Father and me can finally share in our own relationship resurrection as well as the resurrection of the Lord. I am at peace and I can now pray for my Father as a gift bearer and as a person who loved me but just did not have the abilities to express it. If nothing else, I am love to all around me. I see the face of Christ on everyone. This is the resurrection of a previously severed Father and son relationship which has blossomed.
Robert Little Lanphar
September 2009