Generations
When Abraham Lincoln was born, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were still alive and kicking. Imagine that. Our third and fourth presidents, respectively, still hanging around this brand-new country they did so much to create while our 16th was a boy.
When Lincoln was assassinated, his casket passed down the streets of New York, and six-year-old Teddy Roosevelt watched from a window.
When Roosevelt ran for president again in 1912, he shook the hand of a small boy.
When that small boy was an old man, he shook mine.
As I say, imagine that. It makes you think.
It makes me think, anyway.
Four lives skipped over centuries to touch the beginning. The whole thing just seems so short, somehow.
I got an early Father's Day present. I knew my mother had been writing, trying to capture and come to terms with the life she shared with my father, but still it was a surprise to find it in the mail, all bound and finished and ready for reading.
I poked around it for a while, picking out a year here and there at random. I knew a lot of it. Some details were new. Some things I'd forgotten.
This was a gracious thing to do, sharing your life so that generations to come will have an idea. My children will know more. Their children.
But that wasn't really the present.
At the bottom of the box, underneath the packing peanuts, was a beautiful frame and a picture of my father.
I have lots of pictures. They make impromptu appearances in my daily routine, popping up on my screensaver and floating past. Dad in Arizona. Dad in New Mexico. Dad with John, standing in my yard, looking at the house being built next door.
And then there are the ones stored on my personal hard drive. Dad standing over me in the emergency room after my car accident, making jokes. Dad smiling, an unusual smile, after my first high school play. Dad at my wedding, the same age I am now.
But this one was new. This was the man I didn't know, the man at the beginning, 15-16 years old, all skin and bones and attitude. There are echoes of the future here. The cigarette in his right hand. The remarkable resemblance to my sister's son.
I try to animate this in my mind, fill in the background from movies and grainy film, morph the older man into the younger, try to get some sense of the moment.
This is harder than it sounds.
I skip through history, then, fifty years, trying to grasp this kid in the picture. I know what will happen to him. I know about the joy and pain, the ups and downs. I know how the story will end.
And it was just a moment. Just a click, a quick pose and a little grin. He couldn't possibly have imagined that, all these calendar pages away, his 45-year-old son would be looking at it, typing these words on his laptop in Washington. Looking at him, way back when.
What I wonder about, though, is if in some way, way back when, he might have suspected that he was looking at me. 
12:51:25 PM 
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