It may seem like I am whining and pining for my Late Father, especially now that Father’s Day has come and gone (
how dolorous), but what You may not realize is that my Father is not as Late as everyone has been led to believe.
It seems like only yesterday, well, okay, it was the Summer of 2010, when my Father (
my Dad) popped into my place of business and pretended to be
duly impressed with how little I‘ve managed to accomplish during my, at best, inconsequential stay on Earth.
He sauntered into the shop, looked around for nothing in particular and said, “Nice place you have here. I’d like to find a place just like this to live.”
Thinking he was admiring
the interior design, I offered to do the same for him should he settle on a place.
“No,” He says, “I meant I like
this one. Would you know how much they’re asking?”
“Well, Gee, I wasn’t aware that they were gonna sell it right out from under me!” I think to myself, but what I say is, “We are leasing the area upstairs if you’re interested, but for work since this is a commercial space; I don’t think you can actually live here.”
He looks to his right, and clearly says aloud, “
I Know she’s my daughter.”
At which point I think to myself,
“O, Gee, this must be my Dad, given his propensity to speak into the air where no one else is visibly standing around listening; there is no mistaking that genetic defect!”
I give him a careful once over, and think,
“He does look familiar, but nothing like the fella I kissed goodbye as he lay cold and blue-tinged in his coffin back in ’94.”
Yet, His keen insight makes me think,
“Well, I guess there’s no fooling You, Dad, given how I stacked on the pounds, and the swelling in my face and extremities turned me into a nicer smelling, non-drooling, version of Jabba-the-Hutt--I still couldn't fool you, could I?”
I actually became very self-conscious about my physical appearance at that point and tried to make imperceptible minor adjustments to my clothing to make sure, at the very least, that I was presentable; not because I was trying to impress him, but because I was disappointed for myself and didn't want it to be so obvious.
He kept chatting away about this and that and I tried to keep up with
the conversation, all the while thinking,
“Okay, while I’m not really sure how or why You’re here, and because what’s Yours is Mine anyway, say and do whatever You will, but please not another math problem out of You!” (About the only place I was ever allowed to make a mistake)
And, when He decided the conversation wound down to a satisfactory conclusion, He said his good-byes and promised to be back again.
“Hmmm, where have I heard promises like that before?” I wonder.
Since that last
surprise inspection tour, I make more of an effort to look presentable throughout the day whenever I’m out and about.
The kids don't mind my looking frumpled every so often, as long as I keep breathing, but if Dad catches me looking out of sorts, that usually spells
disaster
My Late Father's name, (Gramps or GDad, to You) is Abraham, and he spelled it true to his heritage, Ibrahim, (
roughly translated Free-Them or Their Freedom)--quite the activist in his youth, and the story often told in Sunday School is about Abraham Smashing the Idols, which often brings this type of imagery to mind:
21 Al-Anbiya (The Prophets)وَتَاللَّهِ لَأَكِيدَنَّ أَصْنَامَكُم بَعْدَ أَن تُوَلُّوا مُدْبِرِينَ
21:57
21:57 (Abraham said) "And, By God! I will Certainly/Surely/Ablate? your idols/fixations/images/copies/icons/Signs while your backs are turned (while you are unaware)!"
You can quote me on that, Sign 21:57, since I am afterall my father's daughter. If the conexion is not immediately obvious, the breakdown follows:
The word for idols is أَصْنَامَ which includes all the associated meanings: icons/statues/false gods/signs, etc. ;and Abe, in his own honest way, says he'll "make certain/sure" (لَأَكِيدَ, 'la-akeeda' ) of them while the pagans are not watching.
On the face of it this sounds like a safe bet to have them entrusted to Abe's care, because that's the part the idolators want to believe; that Abe feels the same way about the false gods (idols) they love and will 'take care' of them accordingly.
It is in the very next Sign 21:58 that we, the reader, see what Abe meant by 'take care' or 'make certain' of the idols/images/signs/icons/statues/false gods (which he apparently was not too fond of). Sign 21:58 starts off by stating that he
'ablated them' فَجَعَلَهُمْ جُذَاذًا ('faja3alahum jathethen'); the root for jathethen is 'jthe' جُذَ (the letters j + the). The linguistic manuever speaks to Abe's honesty as well as his eloquence, since that little (2-letter) word includes all of the meanings tabulated below (and then some):
Given how Abe took care of the things he found so irksome, including everything from defacing the statues, to whitewashing, to pouring acid on them, and whatever he saw fit to do to work this thing out of his system, must have called for a great deal of effort on his part; physical force, stress, intellect---he must have called on all of his resources to accomplish this task in the few hours he thought no one else was looking.
And now, I am expected to do the very same thing my Father did without breaking a sweat or getting a hair out of place. Calls for some assistance...eh?
The brute force tactics would have involved ablation as it pertains to physical destruction, like sandblasting, abrasion, and filing them down, that don't necessarily have to have a negative outcome since these same processes can be used to polish, scrub, and refine the idols, too, which was his duty to his father, the idol maker, to look after what his father produced as his means of livelihood; the weathering process related to ablation would have taken a bit longer since it would involve wear and tear, erosion, and general attrition due to the ravages of time, and since
Abe is not a slave to time, he probably had enough time to see all this get done, too; the utterly destructive connotation to ablation is 'conflagration' which would have been a rather intense fire, but as we know, fire is also a way to purify something, like when smelting metals. So, in reality, since Abe did the brunt of the work in accomplishing this task, there is no need to have to cover the same territory my father did when dealing with false objects that call for my attention.
The more accessible methods to me would be those that involve usage/consumption including
expenditure in time, money, effort, ingestion (or in my special case,
indigestion, and I've covered that thoroughly), an
asynchronous phase in an electromagnetic field (I was able to verify that my EEG slowed in some areas, including the beta and theta bands, and were indeed
out of synch with 'normal' (everyone else's)); the leakage aspect (
yes, that too) has to do with publishing this blog, which based on my own children not being able to find it, shows that it has some information that gets stymied in
an attempt to keep the information from getting out. But the one aspect of living up to my father's name (expectations) is ablatation as it pertains to
'abstraction' in that
'breaking the Signs' it led (at least me, anyway) to develop
some new concepts.
{If anyone else deigns to claim any part in my turning an abysmally tragic event into this kind of positive, they should reconsider. Since as part of my conversation with my Dad, He actually gave me some sound advise. He said, "You know, there is a way to negotiate with terrorists. You basically say, 'Either I get it All, or you get Nothing!"}.
{It's about an hour after I jotted down that last sentence and then You Know What You Did!
I take it You didn't like what I was wearing?--sheesh!}
And while Abe waited 'til everyone else's backs were turned to have at it, my personal take on the familial duty was to do it while they were watching (
right under their noses)--thinking, well, if the job description called for diplomacy, Ms. Shirley Temple or Audrey Hepburn would have been the more suitable candidates, or at the very least, a better
poker player.
Figuring that chances are
the messenger never makes it out alive, what have I to lose if I was already
handed my own death sentence ?(I still
wish it didn't have to hurt so much). So, the conclusion was that
going out with a little flourish would intrigue
the kids (seeing the affect the
'love story' angle had on them,
the levity from this counter approach seemed a tad more apropos).
Mom: That had to be the longest silent phone call I have ever witnessed.
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