I’ve got no right to listen to the band America while I’m writing this, “Ventura Highway” to be exact, not exactly a deep cut but still way before my time. I used to listen to music I had a right to exclusively, I was the target demographic or audience and so my ears were filled with the non-confrontational sounds made for white, suburban, Christian kids. To be honest, I still listen to that music, some of which still holds up, but it doesn’t hold my heart like it used to. It was only when I moved into a home with a backyard and a grill that I “discovered” classic rock. Music from the 70s became my soundtrack for standing over a charcoal fire because the combination reminded me of my dad. It became a way to connect once I’d left his roof, even when he wasn’t there physically, his spirit lived on through these two pieces of the Dad starter kit.

“Amie” by Pure Prairie League now, a deeper cut but I’m hardly an aficionado. I’ve inherited a lot of things from my parents. I have a shelf full of the vinyls they collected when they knew every song on the radio. It’s a cool shelf, a great conversation starter, but for all of the classics, there are some duds in there that didn’t hold up. Apparently, music intended for white, suburban kids isn’t evergreen. But that’s the nature of things passed down, there’s duds and classics sharing shelf space and the only way to sort them out is to spin the vinyl and figure it out, even though it’s not always clear what it is we’re figuring out. Why did my mom have every Dan Fogelberg album ever? Why does dad keep raving about Alan Parsons Project (“I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You” currently playing)? The only way to figure it out is slap down the vinyl and let it rip at 33 ⅓ rotations per minute.

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Whenever my wife and I were starting to talk about trying to get pregnant, I started reflecting a lot more on my parents. Not only on the way that they raised my siblings and me, but I began speculating on the ways that my parents had been raised by their parents. What had been passed onto them that they passed onto us? What had they done differently from their parents?  When I asked my dad what his relationship was like with his dad, he told me about the things that he valued learning from his father and tried to pass on to his kids, the things he received from his dad that he didn’t want to pass on, and the things my granddad had wished he could have taught his sons. 

That’s the beauty of legacy, isn’t it? There are classics and duds sharing shelf space with the gaps where records could be. We get most of the good from our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc., but we get some bad too. In other words, for every classic there’s an album made for the suburban white kids of a certain vintage that we have to figure out what to do with. 

Legacy isn’t all good and rarely is it all bad. Some of it is embraced, some of it is imposed. The good, the bad, the beauty, the ugly, it’s all inevitable. I am a product of my parents’ legacy, who are products of their parents’, who are products of their parents’, ad infinitum. The only way that I can personalize my legacy for my daughter is to reflect on the legacy I’ve received, its strengths and weaknesses, its impacts and flaws, and address them with grace. It would be easy to be bitter about the injustice of generational sin/flaws/consequences that resulted from my parents’ actions or inactions, and I have been at points in my life. Yet that bitterness melts in the face of the love my parents had (and have) for me in my siblings. Offering grace to my parents, who might have passed these flaws on as unintended side effects or unaware consequences, is to recognize my own need for grace from them. Grace for the times I was a jerk, unkind, resentful, or otherwise pubescent. Grace makes the bad seem finite and renders the good infinite. The good is what marks the grave stones of my grandparents. It’s the words that mark their lives for those who knew them best as well as those who will never know them. 

My daughter won’t ever get to see her great grandparents at their best, at their most loving. She won’t wake up to the unmistakable smell of a Madine breakfast or let Pa John’s preaching voice lull her to sleep in her mom’s lap. She won’t get to recite all 66 books of the Bible to Granny Betts to get a “66 Club” t-shirt or learn how to shoot with Daddy Bill. Those are opportunities that she won’t have this side of heaven. Yet she will know the hardworking generosity, the faithfulness, the pervasive love, and the steadfastness of her grandparents. It courses through the veins of her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, her parents, like Foreigner’s greatest hits runs through my head: unprovoked and entirely welcomed. 

So as I finish writing with tears in my eyes, gratitude in my heart, and Gregg Allman’s soulful voice ringing in my ears (“Soulshine” naturally) I thank God for the good, the bad, the beauty, the ugly, and the inevitability of my family’s legacy. I thank him for the classics, the duds, and the gaps in between. May I be brave enough to slap on the record and let it rip at 33 ⅓ rpm, and may the hits grow sweeter with age.