and so he said it to his children
and to theirs. Our fathers have a
knack for passing on such special
phrases, memories, events, the
proper way of doing a specific task.
The son of God might have been
suited for a life of study, or of medicine.
Instead, a carpenter put in the years
of raising him, and training him to
use the tools and love the wood.
I wonder, as he gasped upon the cross
some thirty-three years from when
he first appeared in Bethlehem,
if hanging there, he noticed what
the wood was, how the grain was
fine, and how it smelled of
Joseph's little shop in Nazareth.
The Christmas gift to all, I think
he loved his earthly father too,
as all of us, who grew up learning
things from fathers, papas, daddies,
love them and our mothers still,
remember how they held us when
we were so young, no matter what our
ages are tonight.
(c) Ellen Gillette, 2014
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