CityView Magazine

8 | July/August 2016 McFadyen's Musings Of Rainbows and Fledgling Flights F rom the first day of becoming a parent, one hears the clichéd advice repeatedly. It comes from people older than you or at least from ones whose children have aged to a point beyond the full need of parental guidance. My dad was the master of the philosophical phrase. He had profundities for all occasions. Sometimes he in- vented occasions to go along with his favorite phrase. From the moment I began receiving advice to make the most of my time with our children, I thought of Pop saying, "Someone else's wisdom is a lot cheaper than your own experience." I tried hard to use that borrowed wisdom and to consciously take the time to enjoy being with my children. Somewhere, a few years back, I realized that I was no longer a baseball coach and that I no longer even knew when the annual Daddy/Daughter Dance was being held. So despite my efforts to rely on someone else's wisdom, I recently completed the blur that began with holding my first child up to the hospital window so that we could look out at the world together to attending her high school graduation. I do not feel like the years have wasted away. Instead, I just have the confirmation of what I intuitively knew: time has blown by. As we walked to the window in her first moments out of the womb, I do not remember her rebelling against my embrace. at trait developed later in her life. I remember when she started kin- dergarten and we un- inhibitedly marched to the Barney theme song every morning. In middle school, when it was my turn to drive carpool, she had less enthusiasm for my childlike frivolity, especially aer the neighborhood kids got in. I remember laughs and wails and hugs and dirty looks. Most in- dividual days and hours are indistinguishable. At graduation, sit- ting in the sanctuary, waiting for her name to be called and her tas- sel to turn, I knew (intuitively, again) that those forgotten days did indeed come and go. As my graduation present, I wrote for her an allegory about a rainbow. It was an attempt to show her that on many more days than not, she lit the very sky above my head. Her older brother read it to her and our guests at her graduation party. It went like this: e Colors In e Sky Since I was a little boy, I watched for rainbows. All my life, I waited impatiently through the storms, rushing to the window or into my back yard as soon as the storms passed. I watched the heavens for the parting of the clouds and on very special days, the colors assembled in perfect symmetry before my very eyes. e world could once again see God's promise. One day, an Angel of the Lord came to me quietly in the night and whispered, "Because of your faithfulness and because God loves you so, you have been given a great gi. One of God's rainbows is not yet ready for its place in the sky, so you are to be its keeper. You are to do your very best to show it how to shine in such a way as to represent God's promise to His world." Day aer day and with the greatest of joys, I carried that rainbow with me in my pocket and also in my heart. On the days that it could not shine its brightest, I prayed that God would show it the way. On the days that it shined to its greatest potential, I took it out and showed it to all who were around me. ough I tried not to be prideful, I could not help but grin whenever I thought of my position as the keeper of the rainbow. BY BILL MCFADYEN Bill with Maggie, his daughter, before prom

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