Gifts from Dad

There are two things that I still own and use that my dad got for me thirty years ago. They are items that have little inherent relationship to one another, but that embody what I appreciate most about him. My Rawlings baseball glove is one of them. The other day, when I was out pitching to my oldest son Benjamin, i let myself just feel the glove again. I put it to my face and breathed in and it brought back the days of playing catch with Dad in the yard, of the years that he spent driving me to practices and coaching my teams. It reminded me of the way he took time to nurture my appreciation for this game through trips to spring training in Vero Beach and the stories that he told about listening to the Cardinals play on the radio. I remember the pride I felt in looking at the newspaper clippings from when he played ball. This glove has the characteristic of all good gloves and my relationship with my dad. It is well-broken in, it wears like it was made for me, having adjusted to years of catching. It could easily suit me for the rest of my life. It has become a steady presence in my life, even if there have been years when it has remained tucked away in a closet or a storage box.

And then there is my Bible. While I have a vague idea of when I received my baseball glove, I know exactly when dad gave me the Bible, as he wrote the date in it when he gave it to me in the summer before my thirteenth birthday. It is a book that has lost its covers, not necessarily from admirable use, but from the carelessness of a teenager who allows the beagle puppy to get at it. Still, it saw me through many years of study, though for a while I set it aside for a more slim, subtle NAS version and for some six months or a year when I was in college I thought I had lost it for good. It made its way back to me because of Dad’s inscription and just in the past year it has become again my Bible of choice, minus the 80s-style cover that I bought for it to mask the tears on the front. Now I am again met by notes made in moments of crisis and in day-to-day reading and it is a comfort to be back on a journey again with an old friend. Such a journey brings my father to mind. He is not the kind of person who has tended to be center-stage with his faith. He was not a pastor by profession. He was never on a church payroll. But he has steadily and skillfully taught the same Sunday School class since before this Bible came into my hands. He has been present for those in pain. And he has nurtured my own thinking about this book, engaging with my difficult and sometimes surely exasperating questions and issues. As I flip through the thin pages that have been crinkled by time and use and abuse I am reminded of those same sounds as my dad turned to verses in his old Bible, checking things during a sermon, or studying for Sunday School on Saturday night to the background sounds and sights of Auburn football on TV. These memories of my dad remind me that my life as a believer is the uncelebrated long-run, not the glorious sprint.

Many things have been lost through the years. Many (thankfully in some cases) long forgotten or set aside. But using my glove and using my Bible are in some way Dad’s tangible presence, even if while I am living in Kansas our visits are far between. Happy birthday, Dad. And thanks for these gifts, because they are so much more than they look lying here on the table.