Lesson From My Father
“Interest is something you earn — never something you pay.”
The truck stop diner smelled like chicken fried steak and despair. I sat on a sticky vinyl seat in a booth across from my father, who was at home there.
When I was a child my father reminded me of a red-haired JFK; wise, handsome, and strong. He always had the answers. But now his hair had gone white and the skin on his hands had grown thin. Suddenly I was more aware of his bones than his muscles.
We lived hundreds of miles apart by then; I was grown with kids of my own. I saw him no more than twice in a year, but when I did it could be predicted that we’d spend at least one meal in a truck stop diner. Nothing made him happier: copious plain food along with his ability to pay for it with ease.
“In the orphanage they wouldn’t let you eat until after you said grace” my father said with a smirk, his southern drawl emphasizing the word grace and stretching it out to three syllables. “I’d sooner starve than say a prayer thanking God for my food, so they made me sit there for hours in silence and I got nothing to eat. I was used to hunger, but the other kids felt sorry for me and they’d sneak me an apple or an extra piece of bread. It held me over until I could run away from there with my little brothers.”
