A Faraway Father

By Alice Scott-Ferguson

In my journey of five thousand miles the last five are the worst. And yet these final few miles in the ferry boat are the best. Over the heaving horizon, created by enormous waves that never fail either to scare me or render me hopelessly seasick, the sight of that little green isle emerging through the mist and spray of the sea heralds my arrival home to see my Dad.

After decades of exile, he has returned to live on his native Shetland Islands flung far out in the North Sea. Until a recent significant oil spill put the Islands on the world news, few people knew of their existence never mind their whereabouts. But for my Dad, they are his homeland, his habitat and his haven of shelter before going on to his final destination--heaven.  The sea surrounds him and reflects the ever-changing moods of the Island's whimsical weather that—were it not for the tempering influence of the Gulf Stream—at latitude sixty degrees are far enough north to freeze:Islands that are buffeted by wind and yet remain rugged and solid though standing alone. This environment is a metaphor of my father's life.
His hard journey has been tempered by his faith, his courage and a sharp sense of humor.  A life lived never far from the influence of the sea. At the tender age of 15 he forfeited his chance for higher education to join the Merchant Navy. This was a was a very common occurrence then for young men, especially the eldest sons, who had to go to sea in order to eke out the meager family incomes scraped off the land. In the 1950's and 60's he spent many months at the Antarctic on whaling expeditions--not for sport--but to provide money for his wife and two children left behind on the Islands. In the nineteen thirties he experienced the privations of the Great Depression and then the horror and uncertainty of World War II. Geography and the economy dictated lengthy separations from home and family. The sorest of separations and enforced solitude though has been to live almost thirty years as a widower. My mother’s untimely death from cancer caused pain and loneliness that he has carried with quiet grace and fortitude.

I can still see my mother, ear clapped up against the loudspeaker to catch the faint transmission from a radio whose batteries were low; listening to the most recent roster of ships sunk by enemy torpedoes or mines during the War. I'd peer into her face to read what she heard. Her expression of relief told me that Dad's ship was not one of them today. He had a distinctive white patch of hair in the front that was the only way I recognized him when he would suddenly appear on occasional unannounced leave from his ship. This memory underscores just how little I saw of my father in those early days of my life. He was, in modern parlance, an absentee father. His sense of duty stacked up against his own preference to spend more time with his family, earned him a place of honor in my heart. He may have been absent but he was not a dead beat Dad!

That caliber of courage and deeply held sense of right and wrong is woven into the fabric of his life.  Ever an advocate for the underdog and the common man, my father is never more eloquent than when pleading the case against injustice and exploitation. He quotes often from Robert Burns, the Scottish bard who espoused equality among all people and that became—not surprisingly--popular in Communist Russia. Sometimes his passion and outrage against the inequities of government give the impression that his sympathies lie more with socialistic ideologies than with capitalism.  Lively debates sometimes degenerate into acrimonious arguments and icy disagreements. On those occasions his hasty temper soon abates and gives way to a ready remorse for the hurt he may have caused. Garrison Keillor says it so well. "You can't live without hurting other people. And they will get mad at you and they'll be right, and you'll just have to ask them to forgive you."

And he is always more than ready to forgive. He never scolded or censored me for being pregnant when I got married over thirty years ago. At that particularly painful time, he simply took me in his arms, held me tightly and softly cried. His source of strength is the Scriptures. He has known them from his youth and they have, as he often says, kept him from evil. He can never get through the telling of the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac without crying.  Such tenderness and tenacity; such fierce independence belied by unashamed dependence on God. His faith has always been unorthodox; never a regular church-goer and yet, in word and deed, a living example of what Christianity is all about. My dad is a giant of love.

A love that embraces all of Nature from which he draws endless analogies from the seasons, the soil and the prolific wild life that surrounds him. His lack of formal education does not detract from his formidable photographic memory. From that repository, he can recite all 176 verses of the 119th Psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible. He is a veritable repository of historical information, spilling out the dates of battles, the duration of the reigns of monarchs as well as reciting the names of rivers and mountain ranges around the world that he learned by rote many years ago. He reads voraciously and keeps apprised of current events on which he always has a commentary. He grieved over the Gulf War and did not share the sense of mission held by many. With sadness he said, "We were told that WW II was the war to end all wars." With equal effrontery did he respond to the TV ads for the use of condoms to encourage safe sex at the advent of the AIDS crisis. The method of use was demonstrated on a banana. My dad, who was particularly partial to this fruit, exclaimed, "I don't think I'll ever eat a banana again!" So off he went to puff on his pipe and contemplate the changing mores and manners of the late twentieth century.

And no change could have been greater for him personally than living with my family in Germany for two years. He could speak not a word of the language yet he communicated to neighbors with expansive smiles and waves impressing everyone with his friendliness. Most poignant and impressive was his regular visit to the village barber, a man of his vintage and probably one of the young men who served for Nazi Germany during the War in which they served on opposite sides. After I had made the introductions and instructions in German, I left my father effusively interacting with a man who didn't know a word of English. Dad's ability to connect and communicate far exceeds that of the information super highway of which he lives in ignorance. His savvy of human nature and respect for his fellow man need no Internet to interpret and transmit his tenderness.

With a heartfelt hug he greets my arrival saying, "Alice you are so brave and courageous to make the long journey to see me." My response is, "It isn’t courage that caused me to come Dad. It’s love." The father whose wit, wisdom, and words have echoed down the corridors of time and helped to keep me anchored in the rock of reality, stands before me.   He is shorter than I remember the white patch in his hair less marked because the still heavy head of hair is no longer brown but grey. But I can't fail to know him! The eyes still look tenderly into my soul though they look out from a face now limned like the rocks around the shore of his beloved island.

There, at eighty- four, he lives alone although near my brother and his family. He has hens that lay surplus eggs which he gives away; he cultivates a prolific flower and vegetable garden and from his modern cottage window he looks out over the bay where the boats come in. There he lives his latter days in a state of mellow godliness and he says, "I am really content and thankful to the Lord for all things and I am ready to go when He calls me.” He once told me that people are not ready to live before they are ready to die and now I believe it. His communion with his God through Christ is the source of his solace. He quotes Robert Burns again. "A correspondence fix'd wi Heaven, is sure a noble anchor!" 

In the often uncharted and unanchored mores of today, I found my way back to the fixed north of my father's world, but only briefly.  The stories he spun of his travels to me as a child, infected me with a yearning for far away places—one such placer is now my home. My heart heaves with pride and gratitude for such a legacy of love; for such a heritage of strength and integrity. On the boat again, my eyes fill with tears as I watch the little green isle disappear into the mist and spray of the ocean that separates us.

Written a year before his death and the last time I saw him alive.