What My Father Left Behind

Insight from his personal effects.

Philip Ballantyne. Author’s Collection.

I like to tell people that I was a hippie love child, even if it’s not completely true. According to my mother, my father didn’t identify as a hippie even though he looked the part and embodied a lot of what hippies stood for, including peace and taking care of the earth. My mother was a straight-laced Catholic girl, definitely not a hippie. Still, I am a love child and besides, it’s fun to say.

My father died before I was born, before he could marry my mother. He was young, only twenty. A car wreck, his own fault, would steal him away from me in the physical world. I don’t even know what his voice sounded like.

And yet, I know him.

I have memories passed down from my family and his possessions, and a strong connection that I relish but can’t explain.

The first of my father’s things that my grandmother gave to me when I was a child was one of the lenses from a pair of his broken glasses. That scratched-up lens became a sort of talisman and went on every trip with me for many years, beginning with Washington D.C. when I was in the 7th grade, then to Orlando (twice), Australia, Hawaii, and finally to Ireland in 2001 before I retired it to my dresser drawer for safekeeping. It resides there still to this day.