A Dad's Tale ...

When I was being a Daddy to my darling daughters they liked me telling them made-up stories.

 There was one theme I remember about a family that lived next to a deep, dark wood. The story plot centered on the little girl going into the woods, and all the things that happened on her way. What the story lacked was some organizing idea. Why did she go there? What did she learn? Did she find her way back? Things like that.

 I wasn’t in touch with my creative imagination much then and the story never seemed to get legs.

 So, now, here’s a story ...

Once upon a time, there was a family who lived in a cottage in the country. They grew their own food and were pretty much self-reliant. And, happy. Picture your best vision of the bucolic life.

 So happy, in fact, that the family never paid too much attention to what was in their surroundings. I don’t know how that’s really possible; but, it’s my story so I can have it any way I want. No? Stay with me.

 One day, the Father, by some happenstance — That Lord who works in His mysterious ways, don’t you know — sees the wood. He also hears a beautiful, haunting voice saying, “What you want most is here. Come.” Talk about offers you can’t refuse.

 Off he went. Without much of a ceremony for proper goodbyes and tears. Most difficult, not much of an explanation. Yet, what could he have said. It was a mystery to him also at the time.

Of course, the little girl missed her Daddy. It breaks the heart to see grief in such a young heart. Grief has its blessings, properly understood and fully accepted. But, to the child, with her limited experience and understanding of life, it looked like abandonment. Who could blame her. It did look like that. So, as the years passed, so it was. A story fixed in Amber. Not pleasant, mostly hidden away.

Dad saw it as a necessity. Not just for himself. What good Dad doesn’t want all the best for his family? True wealth, you automatically share. It’s in the nature of things.

 So, off he went. Never mind the twists and turns and false starts, and circles he encountered on the trail.

Trail. Well. “Trail” in the sense of where he was going. Not marked for him; marked by him. New territory. Brave, he was.

Would the darling daughter keep faith with him? Cherish her heartfelt connection. In her heart, no question. But, on the level of the personal point of view, quite a challenge. How could she know what he was up to? Even if he could tell it himself, would the little one know how to take it? Who knows. Things go the way they go.

The thing about that Dad going into the forest all alone was that he carried with him an Infinite spool of trusty, strong string. Letting it trail behind him as he pressed on. His own thought was that his beloveds would take hold of that string and follow him. Trusting. Loving.

Well, they didn’t. On the level of personal point of view, that is. And, the Father looked back so very often to see if the string had got taught from them grasping it as they went to follow. Well, again, no.

He even managed to get messages back to them, with hints on how to navigate the landscaped. She had her mind made up. The story she saw him through was a settled matter. Those messages, really annoying. They grated against her cherished pictures. 

I do have hope. The universe has a way of bringing things to itself. I call it Karmic Gravity. You can only go off course so far before the Universe will conspire to get you back on track. It's like this: "Opportunity only knocks once." Sure, but it has always been knocking, and won't stop ... until you stop that is; stop being an ignorant slave to the illusions created in your personality mind.

What’s a Dad to do? What can you do with a situation where you don’t know what to do, or even that there is anything you can do?

Let me take a sidebar to this: The forest is a metaphor. For going inside oneself. Enough on that. If you know, fine. Want to know more, look it up. Don't know, don't care ... fine, be that way. All roads lead to Rome. 

The question has an answer. To just sit with it. Be with it. Stop trying to figure it out, or make it into some understandable shape. To fix it.

At the moment when he surrendered to the impossibility of answering the question, something amazing —miraculous, really — happened. What the promise that was made that he set off to find was right there in front of him. Not some fairy tale pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Better. Infinitely. T. S. Elliot said it well, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Think on that. Deep, true and powerful stuff.

 In truth, he never left. Oh, it seemed so, but not really. You know how it’s said, “Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal doesn’t exist”? It is just that.

Moral of the story: Appearances can be deceiving. The little girl deceived herself that her Daddy left. The Dad, that they might not be there when he arrived.

That’s a story with a happy ending. For you who have cared to read it through to the end.

See if you can fit this into the sense of the story: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.” That's Doctor Tom Dooley famously quoting Robert Frost.

PS Dad's sometimes have to do things little girls might not understand. Yet do them without any expectation — ever — that they will understand, or even want to. Or, could. Love finds a way.

[This story is inspired and offered to my own Daughters who are pure mirrors to me in my life.]