MY FATHER'S SON
May 16, 2002

I am not sure why, but I have always preferred the current moon phase over all of the others. Within this phase, the moon reflects only a tiny sliver of the sun's rays to the earth. Subsequently, one can see most of the moon as a mere shadow. It looks especially great on clear nights. Even on hazy nights, such as last night, it caught my eye and made me think. Maybe that's why I prefer it. That phase makes me think - it causes my mind's gears to grind and produce thoughts rarely experienced. I had one such thought last night regarding my father.

Yesterday I received in the mail a letter announcing my family's reunion to be held in Wichita in a few months. I found this invitation both surprising and comforting, as our family has never had a reunion in the years since I have been alive. I have decided I want to go, and mainly to meet relatives I have never even met or heard existed. You see, this reunion is for my family on my father's side. When he died, my brother and I rarely visited with his sisters and brothers, and his nephews and nieces (our cousins). So they are all strangers to me. However, I feel that they are the link to the father I never knew.

My father died when he was 27. I am now 27. I am only a few months shy of the limit of my father's life, so I have been reflecting a lot on my own short existence lately, as well as his. Am I parallel to where he was in life? Did he experience more or less than I have at this mark? Was he facing life's questions head-on and failing at some obstacles and bounding over others such as I am currently? I will never be sure. He is only a mere image to me. Much like the moonlight, only a sliver of his soul is reflected back from the photographs I cherish. I study his eyes, and no clue is given. I study his lips from which words of love and hate surely were spoken, yet nothing speaks. I study his hands for markings of life, however they remain still.

Once again last night, I questioned the moon. I know my father once gazed upon that heavenly body in his youth. So I wanted to ask it a question regarding my father. I asked the moon what my father's favorite moon phase was? The answer obviously never came, but I take comfort in knowing he had one, and maybe, by chance it was the same as mine.