I can see it clearly as this day. It was not a fancy jacket. It was well used, loved and his 'go to' jacket for a lot of things. Nothing as noble as a thinking jacket or what they use to call a smoking jacket. This jacket had had a full life with a few slight stains here and there and I remember oh so clearly a slight rip in it where I could see the insulation.
I remember this jacket now because of the Metta Institute.org training I am in right now. We are doing walking meditations - learning to train our minds to see clearly. But as I walk my mind wanders and then I bring it back to each step and each feeling I have in each step. But as I walk and walk and walk I remember my father's jacket, the look and feel of it and the smell of my father when I was his son so long ago and he towered over me. The jacket was my father.
I remember this jacket and walking with my father through the forest one late night in the dark. Maybe, to him, it was just another walk in the night, in the dark forest night to smoke a cigarette. Maybe it was time to escape the house or maybe he just wanted to walk and I like to think, I want to think . . . with me.
We did not say a thing that whole long walk down the road in the darkness through the forest. We were just together, he with his long strides in is black lace up Air Force boots and his white jacket, torn near the collar, smelling like Brylcreem or whatever he put on his hair. I had to scamper at times to keep up with him. I remember that jacket and loving him and being honored that my dad asked me to go for a walk.
Funny isn't it? The little things that are not so little that loom so large in our consciousness over the years. That was the night of our walking meditation, a son and his father, without words, not needful of words but just being together and loving each other without words, without thought. There was no intent to teach but to simply be . . . but that being, and silence in that being was my lesson and teaching that I have not understood till now.
I remember this jacket and my father. For years I searched for the jacket but of course it was long disappeared. Then I found it again in memory still as bright and precious and fresh as the night I remember and the walk we shared, in the night, down the road, through the forest of our memories.
