Perspective

In the last ten years of his life, my father-in-law would often tell a story, always unprompted. We could be taking him to the Czech Plaza, his favorite restaurant, down the street from us or visiting in his rec room. “Do you know what my favorite time was then?” he’d ask Michele. At first, she answered with, “No, Dad, what?” until he had asked this particular question so often she responded with, “Yes, I do.” The “when” concerned the time Bob Harris and his young family of five still lived in a two-bed apartment in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood on the North Side. And it would be Sunday. That was the day a father and his not-yet ten-year old would venture out for a walk to the drugstore; he bought tobacco of some sort and made sure his little girl had whatever Colorforms she wanted. The story grated on me because if my wife was rendered ten again, that made me all of twelve and safely out of the picture. I don’t take well to being rendered invisible. But I had to cut the man some slack. He met the love of his life when he was just eight years old, and that’s much sadder than it sounds because they first crossed paths in an orphanage, put there by mothers unable to cope with the burdens of parenting alone. Then, when Bob Harris was nineteen, the Army stuck a bullseye on his back which the Chinese and North Koreans tried their best to shoot off. They mostly failed, save for the shrapnel he caught in one hand while carrying a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) up and down the hills of the Korean Peninsula. And now I find myself suppressing my own favorite-time story, only my little girl isn’t ten. No, she’s twenty and standing in against pitchers who’d throw her high and tight. God, could she hit, and with power that belied a compact frame no more than 5’6”. Twice her sophomore year she hit ball that would’ve gone 450 feet or more had they been baseballs. But times don’t come back however much we want them to. So, I hope my daughter and son-in-law have their own favorite-time memories to cherish the way a veteran of the Korean War and the South Sider who married into his family were blessed with.