He will be seventy-eight this fall. He looks good. He blames his strong health on poor diet and Coca-Cola.
His father was a Pentecostal preacher. As a boy, he grew up underneath a microscope. He was a good kid. He did things all good preacher’s kids do. He sang in church, attended Wednesday services, youth groups, Saturday prayers, and marathon Sundays.
Until age eighteen.
“My girlfriend got pregnant,” he said. “It was hard. People were so judgmental.”
His father kicked him out. The eighteen-year-old gathered his clothes and stayed at a friend’s house.
“All happened so fast,” he said. “One minute I was a straight-A student, the next second I was homeless.”
He and his girlfriend left town. He took a low-paying job. A full two years went by. He called his father and arranged a visit.
He appeared at the church office. He and the preacher spoke for ten minutes before tempers flared.
Old wounds ran deep.
He had a tantrum. He kicked
a hole in his father’s office door, and for almost two decades he and his father had nothing to do with each other. Nothing.
On his forty-sixth birthday, his mother called. It was bad news. His father was sick, they expected him to pass at any moment.
He made an all-night drive to a familiar town. He pulled his car into a familiar driveway. He walked through a familiar front door, into a home he still knew by heart.
“The house was smaller than I remembered,” he said.
His father sat in a recliner. They held one another. They cried. Apologies came easy.
Father and son stayed awake half the night, sipping coffee, telling stories. They laughed. They shed tears enough to fill gallon jugs. One…