Bomb Shelters and Bears

Someday, long from now I will be strong.  I don’t mean gym-lifting strong.  I mean strong like an old man.  Old man strength is an incredible phenomenon.  I’m not sure when I happens but there’s some equation of [Life experience]+[age] that when the mixture is right, an old man becomes strong.  It’s the kind of strength that allows a frail old man to shake your hand with a vice-like grip.  It’s the kind of strength that allows a 50 year old man to single handedly lift the boat off the beach and then captain it away from shore.  It’s the kind of strength that allows a 75 year old man to build a storage shed that will withstand The Big One.  It’s the kind of old man strength that I know I don’t have, but pray that someday I will.

 

My Opa is one of the strongest men I know.  Today is his birthday.  He is 76.  I intentionally say “is”, and “know”, not “was” and “knew”.  He will never be a “was.”  His legacy is too strong.  His Old Man Strength built his legacy and sustains it.  At 75 he built a storage shed complete with windows and rain gutters.  In his 60s he built the bear at California Adventure. In his 50s he build buildings in LA and Long Beach.  All throughout his life he was a builder.  Bridges, buildings, chicken houses (not really, but that’s a family thing), train sets, mangers, certain things, and the all important contraptions.  More importantly he built a home.  He built a marriage and a life for a family that in the beginning had very little.  He came to the U.S. in 1960 with something like $4 in his pocket.  That didn’t stop him.  The makings of his Old Man Strength were brewing within his soul, even back then.  Over the years he built his bank account, his status, his education.  And his strength continued to pour out of him onto the world.

 

Even with him in heaven, I can still see the ripples of his Old Man Strength.  I see it in his wife of 49 years as she continues to strive each day to live with the strength and joy he gave her.  I see it in his daughter as she provides for the family under her roof, her mom, and the families that have moved on to other parts of the state.  I see his Old Man Strength in his grandsons as they still take the lessons they learned from him and apply them to life and the people they see.  I see his Old Man Strength every time I visit my Oma and smile at the shed/bomb shelter he built.  I see his Old Man Strength when I stroll through California Adventure and the bear is smiling up towards heaven.

 

Old Man Strength is incredible.  It’s a force so strong, yet at the same time so delicate.  His touch at one moment is full of embrace and warmth in a hug, and bubbling beneath the surface of that embrace is a strength and determination of will and protection that seems endless.  Opa is strong.

 

Someday I want to be strong like my Opa.  When I’m 75 I want to be able to carry a 90lb sack of soil like it was 10.  I want to be able to embrace my wife of 54 years with utter devotion and tenderness.  I want to be able to live each day devoted to my Jesus, devoted to my family, striving to live with joy and compassion, and still under the surface be able to arm wrestle my grandkids and win.  Thanks Opa for your Old Man Strength.