I watched a great movie this weekend, Vozvrashchenie (The Return). I was doing my regular tour around Blockbuster trading out rentals and I just picked it up. I think everyone should watch it because it works on you. You’ll carry it with you for days after. It deals with subjects everyone has some experience with: having a father and being a father. There is at least one important female role, but most of the story revolves around two brothers and their estranged father who shows up out of nowhere to take them on a journey. The journey with this father they’ve never known is an initiation into manhood squeezed into 7 days. The sons are faced with harsh lessons and each reacts differently to the experience.
The older I get the more I think about what type of father I will be. I also find myself looking back at what I learned from my father and the role he played in helping to shape my character and personality. I don’t know how much was intentional, but there were often lessons woven into the things my dad did with my brother and me. Like how he would send us to help our elderly neighbors, or how we always had to help him work on projects for our grandmother like building a deck or cutting the grass. Family was always important, so was being a good neighbor. I still try to remember all those things.
