THE SPENDING OF IT'S NEVER DONE

It’s interesting how the passing of time and the accumulation of years can change a guy.
These days I seem to move a little slower and pay a lot more attention to what happens around me.

I seem to make more connections between past, present, and future.

I don’t know whether it is the end of summer and the approaching fall season, or the fact that I’m entering the autumn of my years, but thoughts of ancestors and legacies are foremost in my mind.

I’ve noticed that the people across the street, a young couple with an infant son, have been doing a lot of work on their house this year.
Landscaping,
Exterior painting,
New gutters installed.
Most of the work is actually being overseen, and largely performed, by the husband’s dad.

Reminds me of our place.
My dad “helped” us in the same way with a lot of the projects on our house.
Installing doors,

Wiring circuits,

Pouring a concrete patio.

When considering his legacy after he passed away in January of 2012 we kept circling back to the building that dad did over the years.

Pre-fab houses while in college,

The lake home in Ely,
And church congregations throughout his career.

Building tangible things that will survive beyond your days.
What a great legacy for dad to leave.

I was considering that, on Labor Day, as I sat on our front porch deck that dad and Junior built together years ago. Looking across the street I watched as the neighbors jack-hammered the cement stoop off of their house, and began framing in a front porch deck of their own.

Knowing the enormity of such a project I waited until early evening, when the work was being completed for the day, and tools were getting packed up, to wander over to check on their progress.

I introduced myself to the grandfather/foreman of the project.
I asked a few questions about how the project was taking shape when the older man said,
“We’re trying to build it similar to the one over there.” as he pointed at our house.

I laughed and said, “That’s my place. My dad and son built that deck a few years back.”

“Well,” he said, “My hat’s off to them. All my son kept saying was, ‘My neighbor has a deck out front and he sits out there all the time! I‘d like one of those too.’”
The man continued, “How could I say no to that?”

As a dad and grandfather myself I know he couldn’t say no.

It wasn’t until I arrived back on my deck that it struck me.
Not only did we have physical evidence of dad’s impact on the world, I now had proof that, more than 7 years after he was gone, he was still inspiring others with his works and the example he set.

While pondering that I came across this passage from Ernest Hemingway’s FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS,

“I had an inheritance from my father,

It was the moon and the sun.

And though I roam all over the world,

The spending of it’s never done.”

Yep dad, your legacy is constant, like night following day.
It’s universal, I see it in so many of the places I go.
And, I’m beginning to believe it’s everlasting, that it’ll carry on long after I am gone.

I guess that’s how things pass; from father to son.

And the spending of it is never done.