Written by Dr. Peter Colman Father of the Man

“Dad?”

“Peter? Is that you, son?”

“Yes, Dad, it’s me, your son, Peter. Are you alright?”

“I’m good,” he replied, raising his weakened frame. We kissed. I embraced this husk of one of the strongest men I had ever known. And I cried. How could such a man, with such a history of strength and pride, of tenacity and industry, of humor and a zest for life, of spiritual zeal and vibrant faith…come to this? Why have I come so far only to see a father, lost to me for the better part of forty-four years, in such a pathetic (by ‘pathetic’ I mean that which evokes strong feeling, or pathos) and debilitating condition? Is there some kind of strange pattern here? If the skein of our lives, as Thomas Colman’s Gaelic forefathers believed, is pre-woven, and its hues and colors carefully chosen and irrevocably interlaced, then how am I to understand how to decipher the nature and texture of the tapestry of my own experience, my sojourn, and that of my children and grandchildren (the Colman clan continues to expand and explore) through tenuous, twisting, but colorful corridors of my small world? Have the ‘fathers eaten sour grapes… (and) the children’s teeth been set on edge.’?

My mind couldn’t help but recall a familiar 19th-century New England writer, Edith Wharton, who, in early descriptions of the protagonists of her 1911 novel Ethan Fromme, commented, “They were, in truth, these figures, my granite outcroppings; but half-emerged from the soil, and scarcely more articulate.” Had I ever really known my father? Were there hidden recesses and reserves of truth, hidden colors and hues (or ugly stains and flaws) that would need to be exposed? Should I even care? Should anyone?






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