(HOST) Commentator Vic Henningsen is a teacher and historian, and recently he found himself reflecting on how – without warning – small objects and small moments can bring us face to face with some very large issues.
(HENNINGSEN) In the pre-dawn darkness, I dressed in a rush, fumbling in the closet for a coat to ward off the morning chill. As I stuffed keys into a pocket my fingers closed over an unfamiliar object – a small penknife – and I realized I was wearing my father’s coat.
When my dad died, I put some of his old jackets in the back of my closet while I figured out what to do with them. It never occurred to me they might fit – that we were in fact the same size. He seemed so much bigger.
As I stood there, fingering the penknife, the memories flooded in. Trying on my Dad’s old midshipman’s uniform when I was eight or nine: tight on him, it enveloped me like a bathrobe. In the winter, two kids could fit into his ancient but incredibly warm watch coat, issued to those unfortunate sailors destined for North Russian convoys – the Murmansk run. As luck would have it, Dad missed that trip – his ship was sent to Senegal instead – but he kept the coat and we’d occasionally climb into it and try to imagine ourselves as Dad, braving the wartime North Atlantic. Later, when I was starting out on my own, he gave me one of his old suits, but it hung on me and no amount of taking it in could make it really fit well.
So what happened?
I grew a bit, I guess, and, yes, he did get thinner – especially in his final year. But fathers are larger than life – he always appeared bigger than I guess he actually was. Even in his last illness, as soon as he started talking in that rich, booming voice, he seemed to grow, to fill out, to resume his full stature. Was it real, or was I just projecting what I so desperately wished to be real?
So here I am, I thought. Will I become him, a bit, when I wear his coat – stand a little straighter, hold my head a little higher? Will I always be enveloped in these memories – this sadness – every time I put this on, or knot one of his old ties?
Unbidden, the words of English novelist J.L. Carr came to mind. He wrote, "We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever – the way things looked . . . a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass."
Well Dad, I thought, I don’t think of myself as your equal in size or stature – no matter what the measurements tell me – but somewhere along the line I seem to have caught up with you. Wish we could have talked about it.
I shivered, buttoned the coat – my coat now – and went into the morning dark.