My Father

Guest post by Erik Peters

What My Father Found

My father worked what can charitably be called a thankless job.
For forty years he delivered cookies to grocery and convenience stores, often working late or on Saturdays to make sure the shelves were stocked.

Every display he built was mangled by the careless hands of customers.

Every delivery completed had to be remade a week or two later.

Every box carefully stacked in his storage unit had to be unstacked.

Every sale injected sugar into the already glutted North American market.

But despite sore backs and no sick days, despite vehicle maintenance and head office
'campaigns,' despite difficult floor managers and traffic to make your teeth curl, my father never shirked.
He never complained about working for our daily bread. He never cut corners or blamed others for the hardness of his job.
I am part of a generation that could learn from my father: a generation that must find what he found.

Hope and Love

My father found hope and love.
Not the hope of fame and riches or of changing the world. Not the garish love in jewelry and vacation advertisements.
Not the salacious love of music videos and films.

He clung to the hope of a family: the hope that is love.
Deep love.
Love that demands heavy tolls but makes them light to the bearer. Love that sacrifices without compulsion. Love that gives its first fruits, not its surplus. Love that looks forward, not to extravagance, but to old age, surrounded by family and peace which passes all understanding.

He looked forward to a love that asks nothing more than the hope of seeing the next
generation renew that same love, and therein realizes a joy no suffering can touch.
​
I am part of a generation, a world, that must find what my father found.

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Erik Peters is a teacher and avid mediaevalist from Canada. Erik's work with marginalized students has profoundly influenced his writing which has been published in numerous magazines including Coffin Bell, Superlative Lit, Prospectus, The Louisville Review, and The Dead Mule School. Read all Erik's publications at www.erikpeters.ca or @erikpeterswrites.