Garrison Keillor tells us something about our fathers.

Monday, June 11, 2001

Garrison Keillor tells us something about our fathers

Sunday was the first Fathers Day for Garrison Keillor without a father. In March and at age 81, John Keillor died in the Brooklyn Park home he built with his own hands. The son wrote, while they both lived, of his father and their love for each other, but his father died before the essay could appear in Time magazine. I hope the son let his father read the manuscript, because they both would have learned something important about each other-and about themselves. Fathers and their children can learn from what Garrison Keillor reflects in his essay. Children must understand the absence of Father’s confession of love does not deny its actuality, and fathers must understand expressing it will allow their children to experience its reality.

John Keillor was, his children tell us, a no-nonsense, practical, and serious man. He was a child during World War I, but served in the Army during the second war. He was a carpenter and a railway mail clerk. A Christian believer, he was a member of a Plymouth Brethren assembly and took the Bible at face value and sought to practice its values. (His son betrays evidence of similar faith, despite working hard to cover it with sophisticated nonchalance.)

Garrison may well at the time have felt his father callous and indifferent when he refused "to pay a penny for my college education," bt he soon learned it awarded "the gift of independence, an inestimable gift." John leaves six children, and this one judges it "about what you need if you’re hoping to die at home and not in a warehouse."

One of the most skillful and successful writers of our time as he has become, Garrison Keillor is reminded of how great and powerful was his father’s influence. "But I stand in the doorway and look at him, asleep, and I am afraid of him. He is still my dad, and his power is greater than that of the New York Times."

While away in the Army in 1945, John wrote to his children telling how much he missed them, thought about them every day, and wished they could be with him. He signed it, "Love, Daddy." Garrison concluded his essay: "I never saw the letter until a week ago. It never occurred to me that he loved me, but of course he did, and it was nice to hear about it at last."

People whose fathers are, or were at the time of their deaths, of the elder Keillor’s generation must not expect them to be as straightforward in verbal expressions of love or as physically demonstrative as we have come to advocate in this generation. This is often too much to expect, and it is not actually necessary unless you insist upon it. Moreover, we have already passed the stage of its maximum impact that it has become so easy it sometimes lacks credibility. Recall the uncritical love you felt for him as a child, and know something in him implanted that love. Don’t doubt it now. Look at what your father has done for you through the years. More important yet: feel who your father is to you. Lock in on these realities, and cherish them as you do him.

And, fathers, it is not too late to tell your children: "I love you." In exactly these words. Not, "Your mother and I" or "you children," but "I love you." If you can’t get over it and bring yourself to say it, write a note and tell them. Especially your sons, being easier with girls. He is a real father who says: "Son, I love you." As long as this son lives, so will his father.

Many means are available for fathers and children to tell each other of their love. Find those that work best for you and then put them to work.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays