The Keeping Room: My Father

Thursday, June 16, 2011

My Father

John Patterson

He did not go gentle...

My father has been dead for forty years as of this month. For the last ten years of his life, he suffered from cancer, likely caused from radiation poisoning that he experienced while doing post WWII research at the Pentagon in 1951. I was eleven when he had his first surgery and ironically, radiation treatments. All during my early teens and, as I was becoming an adult, he was dying -- and quietly raging. He never complained or said anything about his suffering to me. He stayed busy, kept his sense of humor, and took in as much of life as he could. He was a wonderful dad. I was twenty when the "dying of the light" claimed him. Click on the the image above to hear Dylan Thomas read his famous villanelle. I never teach or read the poem without thinking of my father.

NOTE: The link was taken down from YouTube. Sorry if you missed it. 10/18/13 MPL

7 comments:

Lyn said...: A lovely tribute to your father, a courageous man indeed, and to Dylan Thomas, a poet of great strength and purpose. Many years ago I saw Alec Guiness portray him on Broadway..more than thrilling!
Bless our Dads on Father's Day!; June 16, 2011 at 5:45 PM
FireLight said...: Wow, you saw Sir Alec Guiness!
Thank, Bless our Dads! Thank you for stopping by, Lyn.; June 16, 2011 at 5:50 PM
Tom Stephenson said...: Our generation have had it so easy, eh?; June 17, 2011 at 3:52 AM
Rowan said...: Such a sad anniversary for you but you have the solace of having a brave and loving Dad.; June 17, 2011 at 1:47 PM
Betsy Brock said...: Wow..40 years! I know you still miss him. So very said when they are gone at such a young age! Lovely photo of him! Thanks for visiting today! xo; June 19, 2011 at 8:43 PM
Tess Kincaid said...: This is a beautiful, beautiful tribute to a handsome and courageous man. I know he is smiling, Marnie. xo; June 20, 2011 at 9:31 AM
FireLight said...: Update...Sorry you missed the video that has been removed....currently looking ofr a substitute.; February 1, 2013 at 1:15 PM

Here is what I often call Crumbly Gingerbread

I found the recipe on a postcard I sent home to a friend when I visited Grasmere in 1986. This is very close to the gingerbread sold at St. Oswald's church there in Grasmere. This is marvelous with your hot tea. The real secret is adding the sugar at the very last-not blending it with the margerine. I use either a fork or pastry blender to "rub" in the margarine with flour and oats. I have copied it as it appeared on the postcard and added my American interpretation of measurements for certain ingredients.

9 oz brown wheatmeal flour
(1 rounded cup wholewheat flour)
3 oz porridge oats
(1/2 cup Three Minute Quaker oats)
3/4 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 level tsp cream of tartar
3 level teaspoons ground ginger
9 oz hard margarine
(1 to 1 1/2 sticks od Parkay-the less you use, the more crumbly the texture)
9 oz soft brown sugar
(1 rounded cup)

Set oven to 325 degrees or Mark 3. Well grease a shallow tin 14" by 9". Put flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, and ginger in a bowl. Add the margarine cut into small pieces. Rub in well with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Put into tin and press down firmly with a floured fork. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until pale brown. Cut into squares whilst warm and leave in tin until completely cold. Keeps well in airtight tin.

The Secret Heart

Here is my Valentine to every parent who remembers looking on a sleeping child...and lingering in the moment....
Enjoy & linger,
Firelight

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.

May 20th is the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets: Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare

Thursday, June 16, 2011

My Father

7 comments:

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