He sat uncomfortably at his parents’ home, trying to enjoy a meal during a break from college. His Mother, ever the worrier, hovered over his shoulder, warning persistently about bones in the fish.

His patience worn and his familiarity with the house rules having faded, he barked out “just leave me alone already!”

His aging Father sat across the room, dinner plate balanced in hand as he watched the evening news. 

His Father’s fiery temper, and several former beatings, had left him wary when in his presence. 

A short silence followed the outburst Eyebrows raised and then…

A dinner plate launched across the room.

The plate missed, being predictable as it was. 

His fish, perilous bones and all, fell to the floor with a crash…

The coffee table before him turned over as he met his Father in the center of the room. 

They locked arms in a moment of fear and rage, then fell silent. His Father grinned a sinister grin with which he had become all too familiar, then walked away. 

Perhaps his Father had realized he no longer held the physical advantage. Perhaps he had gone off to sulk in sadness. 

But whatever the case, he was compelled to follow up the stairs toward his Father’s room, where the man emerged into the hallway with a pistol in his hand.

Faced with this new reality, his former arguments and opinions seemed childlike and unimportant. 

Here was the man who had taught him from childhood never to threaten someone’s life unless you were prepared to take it, now pointing a pistol in his direction. 

Then his Father did something completely unexpected – He went back in his room and put the gun away. 

He dropped his defenses before the challenge was overcome, contrary to the code of existence they had each come to know, and their shared history.

At this moment he felt his Father truly loved him. He had felt it when that phrase was uttered in a hollow apology after some tirade, and even less so when it was insisted upon during a marathon lecture. But here, in this surrender of advantage, his Father told him that his love was real.

However, this left his father in a submissive position. He had threatened the life or his only Son and had failed to show good cause. The declining patriarch had all but admitted the error of his ways. 

Given the way he was raised, he knew what must be done.

So he grabbed his Father by the neck and lifted his frail body off its feet. Holding him over the edge of the stairway he screamed “I should kill you right now, and you know it”.

His Father’s sinister grin returned with its former vitality.

In an instant he felt their mutual understanding had been restored.

He put down his frail father and stormed out of the house. 

He passed his Mother’s sorrowful glance on the way as she cleaned the notoriously menacing bony fish from the floor. 

A tear welled in his eye as he drove back to campus. He looked in the rear view window and wiped it away, as calm returned he imagined something similar might be happening to his Father at that moment. 

A moment which reminded him of a scene from a book he’d read in High School. There was a young man who puts tea in his father’s usual morning cup of hot water– the young man receives a predictable beating – the gift is then given. 

By taking the blame for  spending the tea the young man allowed his Father to enjoy tea with breakfast on his birthday, a beautiful act.