Part Of A Larger Legacy

it's sometimes mysterious how your roots have a way of presenting themselves..

This Father's Day is the fourth since my dad passed away.  Enough time has come and gone for the grief and shock to start to lose it's edge.  Inevitably, the next part of the journey of discovery is recognizing your inescapable thread to a larger legacy.

Being my mom's caregiver and the language barrier that comes with that has given a sense of immediacy to understanding my mom's heritage.  My dad's story has been less of a challenge to untangle.  It's more of a free flow of information that's just always there when I'm ready to find it.  It's funny how my interaction with their histories is itself a reflection of each of their personalities.

Much like the helicopters that flyover at the most interesting moments, my dad's story has a funny way of lingering.  He wrote a book which I intend to publish which gave a lot of clues about our part in a larger fabric.  It's a lot to reconcile.  The two threads that came together in my parents.  Different cultures from different sides of the world.  As a younger person, I don't think I recognized so much that the story was unusual.  To me, it played out more as a wanderlust.  A sense that I didn't quite belong anywhere and a relentless search to find that sense of belonging.  I think when parent's pass away, all roads lead home.  You realize that what you were looking for can be found there, and you better get going because there's only so much time left.

At the same time, there's also a realization that maybe home is less about a singular place and more about a shared history.  So while there's a sense of a finite moment in time, there's also a realization you can't really lose the thread.  You are the thread.  Exhibit A.  Palm Trees.  My dad was born in Los Angeles.  I followed in his footsteps being born there as well.  Even though I only lived there when I was a baby, I always seem to get drawn back there for big moments in life.  And there always seems to be a benevolent and powerful force there guiding my way.

My cheese business might be an example.  There always seemed to be a resonance for the product in Los Angeles (despite the company being based in Minneapolis).  Our only distributor outside the Midwest was in fact from Los Angeles.  Interestingly, when I went there to do the grocery store demos, I discovered the first store to pick up our product in distribution was a vegan cafe/grocery store in Canoga Park.   When I got there, I found out that it opened a few months before I was born AND that it was in fact the birthplace of vegan cheese.  Not only was this store ground zero for vegan cheese but it this was where I lived as a baby...Canoga Park.  Vegan cheese was invented at this cafe in the neighborhood I lived in as a baby.  It opened a few months before I was born.  AND I'm a vegan cheesemaker!  Pretty wild!  The product grew to be a globally recognized product called (strangely enough) 'Follow Your Heart'.  They were the first store to carry my cheese through our distributor.  

If that wasn't enough my even becoming a vegan cheesemaker was a huge point of contention between my father and me.  He did not understand why I was doing it, and he didn't think it was going to be successful.  He was literally incensed when I decided to 'Follow My Heart'.  So this constellation of events happening in this particular neighborhood was meaningful indeed.  It was almost like a divine force was making a point that would catch my dad's attention.  Listen here!  The kid is right.

Really the only person who could fully appreciate how unlikely this series of events was to come together in the way it did would be my father.  (And whoever made it to the end of this post perhaps). Wherever you go, there you are!  Fathers pass away, but love never dies.. (to be continued)