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| Wellington Morley Cramer, III |
As I kept trying to write, I realized I was holding a mental picture of my father when he was in assisted living quarters. I’d bought him a scarf from India that I’d sent in a tightly-taped, cut-up paper grocery bag to save money. Rather than wearing the scarf, he’d laid it over his dresser where he could see it every day, and for some reason, this pleased me enormously. He’d told me he’d had a "hell of a time" opening the package, and I’d heard my mistake.
Aging is changing me—not only physically, but mentally and emotionally, and with it, increasing my understanding of my father. Like him, I invent ways to compensate the losses and appreciate new perspectives. It may have been my needing scissors one day for the metallic packets of my supplements, that my fingers couldn’t fully tear open that first brought back the memory of the scarf package, and with it, fuller remorse than I’d felt that day. Why hadn’t I known better?
As a girl, my father was my hero—a tall one whose hand I held walking home from church—who taught me to catch a ball, and start the power mower. But being a woman, I realized that with his fine principles and his flaws, my father was one of my hardest teachers. It was his inability to understand me—at first frustrating—that ultimately would power my learning to understand myself, so I could teach him who I was.
My realization is, "We can move beyond why we didn’t do things differently in the past and be grateful for a change in present understanding."