The Inheritance
HE WAS NOT MY USUAL HERO, neither swordsman nor words man. Words are what I have to offer, however, as my Dad’s birthday approaches – the first one we’ll celebrate without him – and I contemplate a man who never needed many.
It’s possible that I knew Floyd Brown better than anyone, but I doubt it. A person encounters too many people over nearly a century, forging friendships and sharing experiences shallow and deep, for that to be true.
I was his son for 64 or his 96 years. Being his son and knowing my father were not always the same thing. He was the father I didn’t always know; now his life is just a part of my memory. As teenage rebellions and self-indulgent 20s yielded to my settled adulthood, there were days then and later when Dad lived mostly a lone wolf existence. That is, until health scares reunited us for the last decade of his life.
What he gave me began with what life gave him.
Dad was deeply acquainted with poverty and hardship, especially during childhood. Life was unimaginably tough for people in his hardscrabble part of Tennessee during the Depression era. Not an educated man, yet he learned quickly from those lean years. He learned contentment because he had so little. He practiced contentment because he needed so little.
He applied that wisdom over a lifetime, not by chasing riches or fame but by mining comfort from the resources he had – both for himself and for the creatures about whom he cared most.
Even later in life, his world remained comparatively small, but he seemed to want little more from it. His dogs, his comfy recliner, his Lunchables, his TV shows. By the standards of his childhood, he was living like a king – albeit a king whose idea of haute cuisine involved a plastic tray of bologna and crackers. I can still picture him in that recliner, thumb-worn remote in hand, with Abby or Rocky or Sadie beside him, perfectly at ease in his small universe.
And that level of contentment is my ambition now, even as I acknowledge how my modern life built around words and images contrasts greatly with his. I try to emulate his simple pleasures, especially when distracted by my worldly wants. (Damn you, Amazon!) Be like Dad, I say, who somehow managed to understand the difference between wanting something and needing it. (I’m still conducting field research.)
Contentment wasn’t all I’ve inherited. My so-called wit and tragic dad humor, too, are rooted in his genuinely funny influence – the sturdy sense of humor his generation wore like armor against poverty, hardship, war, and whatever came next. Papa Bear could find something funny in almost anything, which was probably cheaper than therapy and decidedly more entertaining.
His birthday used to be a reason for cake, neighbor visits, or those yummy apple pies from his devoted friend, Cathy the Mail Lady. Now it will be a reason to remember a man who accidentally taught me that a good life doesn’t necessarily have to be a big one. What does a son inherit from a father who didn’t leave him much materially? Maybe the ability to recognize when what I have is enough.
Perhaps that’s why the last decade means so much to me. We got another chance to be father and son. He got to shine as a grandfather and great-grandfather. And I got one more stretch of years to discover the man behind the father I didn’t always know.
That’s a pretty good gift, birthday or otherwise.
