DOWN HOME: Like father, like son

Posted: 11/11/05

DOWN HOME:
Like father, like son

“You remind me of your daddy,” Joanna said the other night.

Now, that's a comparison I like.

My daddy, Marvin Knox, is a straight-up guy, a devoted pastor and committed follower of Jesus Christ. He's also a teacher. He taught me much about how to be a father by the way he raised my sister, brother and me, and he showed me how to be a husband by the way he's always loved and doted on my mother. Plus, he lived at home the sermons he preached in the pulpit, so he has demonstrated a life of integrity and character.

But my wife wasn't talking about that. She was laughing, and I knew what she meant.

Immediately before her comparison, I had raved about the dinner she was cooking. It was one of my favorites–chicken piccata, mashed potatoes and asparagus. Over on the counter, past the stove, sat a pan of goldrush brownies.

My praise for her home-cooked meal probably was a bit effusive. I went on and on–not sarcastically, but ironically–about my joy in this tremendous meal we were about to enjoy.

“You remind me of your daddy,” she said. “This is exactly the way he talks when we go to your parents' house, and your mother fries chicken.”

Well, that's true. Daddy usually thanks us exorbitantly for coming for a visit–since it prompts Mother to pull out the skillet and prepare the best fried chicken any human being ever tasted. (And shame on anyone who ever ate it with a fork, but that's a story about a long-gone girlfriend.)

Someone once said, “The older we get, the more we become what we really are.” That's probably either scary or gratifying, depending upon the degree to which you manifest–or fail to manifest–grace, gladness, thankfulness, optimism, faith, energy and humor.

Someone also once said, “The older we get, the more we become like our parents.” I thought about that when Jo compared me to Daddy.

In an instant, it dawned on me that, now that our youngest daughter, Molly, has gone off to college, Jo and I have more in common with our parents than we have since we got married, or at least since Lindsay was born 22 years ago last week.

We have an “empty nest” now:

We're much more free to come and go, unbound from school schedules, youth events at church, the expectation of a child coming home from school every afternoon.

Given the absence of children to share our discussions, we're talking to each other more now. We've always been pretty good at communicating, but since Lindsay learned to talk and Molly chimed in three years later, we haven't gotten many words in edgewise.

Sometimes, we enjoy the solitude of an entire evening without TV, a feat once thought incomprehensible.

And with fewer mouths to feed, diminished expectations and the ease of eating out, I appreciate home cooking now more than ever.

–Marv Knox