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The Magic of Classnotes ©Robert Kiener Four times a year, I peek into my father's past. Let me explain. My father, Thomas Joseph Kiener, died 26 years ago, and while I miss him greatly, time has rounded the sharp edges of grief. Happily, his memory evokes more smiles than tears, since he led a rewarding life and survived into his late 60s. And although I was only a year or so out of college when he died, we had taken the time to become friends. Close friends.
Even though I tell myself that this fuzziness is inevitable, part of me wants to fight it. I guess I fear that if these memories do disappear, I'm in danger of losing my father for the second time. That's why I make an effort to peek into his past. Dad graduated from Notre Dame in 1929, the first of three brothers to pass through South Bend. By some fluke -- since I'm not an alumnus -- I was placed on the Notre Dame Magazine mailing list. So four times a year, with seasonal regularity, I turn to the back of the magazine and read the Classnotes for 1929. And I imagine. Surely, some of these men were my father's buddies. They must have rooted him on when he wore that split-fingered mitt and powered fastballs past bewildered batters. Or did they drive with Dad into Chicago for a weekend on the town? Perhaps one of them had even roomed with him. I don't know. But I like to imagine that he knew many of them. And as I do, I recall a long-lost picture of him when he was at Notre Dame. He was tall and handsome and had a golf bag slung jauntily across his back. Two classmates stood on either side of him. Yes, it's coming back into focus: Checked shirt, black and white golf shoes, pleated pants, and a cap in his right hand. And that smile. It works, you see, this sentimental exercise in fantasy of mine. And although these 1929 Classnotes seem mostly filled with news of illnesses, deaths and an ever-dwindling cast of characters, I don't mind. For as I read them, I envision my father as I never knew him -- a college student in his prime with that great ribbon of life stretching out in front of him. Soon, usually even before I've finished reading, real memories of him flood my mind. They're sharp and clear and sometimes it's almost as if he's still around. So, I know I'll keep reading these reports about men I've never met -- my father's classmates -- and thinking of him as I do. No; I'm in no danger of losing him again. ©Robert Kiener |
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But as time
passes, my memories of him invariably fade a bit. Like a slowly deteriorating
photograph, some of them grow cloudy, the edges blurred. For example,
there's the day he gave me that wonderful split-fingered baseball mitt,
so creased and worn and oiled that it literally glistened in the sunlight.
I was 6. Or was I even younger? I'm sure he had told me it was the same
mitt he'd used when he was pitching at Notre Dame in the late 1920s. At
least, I think that's what he told me.