HADDONFIELD, N.J. - Sometimes I think of myself as threads of my father, angles of light that come forward in time to illuminate the years since he passed away.
On his famous marathon walks through the city, he taught me to read by mouthing words off overhead signs, window advertisements and billboards that plastered construction sites.
Six-foot-four with a mop of orange hair, he'd act like a kid sometimes. He loved to gawk at skyscraper excavations, which opened up like the Grand Canyon as gargantuan machines rumbled down earthen ramps and tiny men rode elephantine tractors and giraffe-like cranes to raise steel scaffolding high into the noonday sun.
Dad loved to share the mysteries of the world with us as kids, as if there were great secrets hiding behind every corner. He filled my childhood emotions with magical thoughts about how things worked, what people really meant when they talked.
In an untoward moment on a city street that stretched forever, he could make the mumbling masses seem exotic and mysterious, telling us stories about the denizens he met on his midnight wanderings as a Jersey City beat cop. Men dressed as women; rumbling trains blowing air up through the grates; neon lights that flashed on and off infinitely on a rain-swept street; the terrified woman he met at a chained door seeking protection from the big cop in blue.
In all of his dimensions, I can magnify my father's presence as I watched him, constantly amazed by his caring for people he didn't know. I loved him for being himself - a parent, a husband, a friend. But most of all for sharing it with me, being patient with me while I discovered who I was, even after his nurturing was done.
I sometimes regret the reckless way I lived my life, which I'm sure scared the hell out of him - cradling a rifle in ROTC in college, then replacing it with a protest sign and rambling with petty thieves, low-lifes and the homeless in pursuit of experience for the great American novel. I wanted to see my thirst for experience to the very end, record the misery and elation, living life with an attitude of challenge.
Yet these were all part of me that was spawned in him, probably during those crazy rambles through the city. And it was his example that ultimately led me to the positive choices in my life, a respect for the fruits of hard labor, a sound trusting relationship with my wife, the appreciation that we're all in this together, that people should help other people.
I'm sure he thought me mad at times, weak and foolish, yet I don't think he ever stopped confiding in me, challenging me to explain what I was thinking or feeling. He made me his confidant even when I was pulling away the hardest.
I like to fantasize that Dad and I still chat, even if it's only in my memories. I'm still looking for excavation sites to show my kids, holding them up to view the world's mystery.
And Dad? Well, he's that vastness on the other side, all the generosity of spirit I see in the world, a perspective I hope to teach my own son and daughter.
Thomas Belton is a free-lance writer who lives in Haddonfield, N.J.