My own profound weakness

The father of my father was loving man. His hand gripped the wheel of a Lancaster bomber. He flew sorties over Germany, bombed Dresden. My grandfather bombed Dresden. Then spend time in Buchenwald. Buchenwald. He did not know, as young men go - theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die. But he lived to tell me tales, to farm sheep and cattle. To pour out the poetic love of the shine of the sun on the backs of black angus. And walking the fields with him was old comfort. Picking stones from the field he had dreamt of cultivating with his late son - impregnated me with the dreams of my grandfather. To build something, to make something of myself. To fly away and be happy just by being myself. He gave me more than I know, just like you get a lot more molecule than caffeine when you drink coffee. I don’t know what those other compounds were. What bad dreams did he pass on to me? What blackened humanity and fear? There was spunk in him till the end. I favoured his wedding speech at mine above all. He was a glimmering soul and men flocked to him, felt his call to them to be mere than they thought they could be - more than they ought to be. And my grandmother - bless her solid kitchen - the filled bake tins, the over set into the wall that the family filled right on dinner time. She was his anchor in a way that I now know he could not be for me as a man. No man in my family could show me how to live this wound of disconnection from myself. No man in my family could fall in love with himself in a way that would save that part deep within all men that needs saving.