Those Winter Sundays

I teach a poem called "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden about fatherhood that ends "What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?"
I always teach it at the end of the year, during baseball season, and we watch Field of Dreams and read "Once More to the Lake" by E.B. White, and when we get to the scene Ray's father asks him "Is this heaven?" and he replies, "No, it's Iowa..." and his father replies, "I could have sworn it was heaven" and he says, "Is there a heaven?" and John replies, "Oh, yeah." I weep like a baby (because it's a cornfield because I think of my dad, and of my farmer grandfather, etc).

What do I know about love, and love's lonely offices? I learned an awfully lot this year, this Christmas. You see, I can't buy my dad a Christmas present. I can buy him "stuff." I try every year to get him "stuff." And some years, I try to "do stuff" for him that he wouldn't do for himself. In fact, my family is big into doing stuff for other people. We do crazy stuff for each other, like finishing basements over and over again. We hang out at each other's houses; we move and and help move and move some more (like pioneer children some years).

Still, my father can surprise me. Case in point. One night, before Christmas, he called me up. He said he needed to get something at Costco that was too big for him to pick up. I was certain we were going to pick up a gift for my mother. No. Instead, he was there to make sure my cute children were being fed. He knew my husband has been paid sporadically, and he wanted to make sure we had the basics, and he filled up a cart and sent me on my way, because he's like that. Just a quiet, breathless whirlwind tour through Costco.

I was so caught off guard I didn't even hug him before I drove away. The poem says:
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices? 

On Christmas morning, as he and my mother drove away from my house, I understood a little bit more about Christmas. There's definitely much, much more joy in the giving, and it takes a lot of time to gain parenthood perspective. The older I get, the more I realize that the picture is more incomplete. The more I know I see through the glass darkly. My father quoted "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" and there are miles to go. I can't wait to travel them to see what else there is to see along the journey.