Hardcore

 

Hardcore

 

I have struggled with what this term means for the better part of my life. 

Maybe even before I heard it. My father was considered by most of the people who knew him to be an expert about it. He epitomized it to most people. He grew up pretty hard. He went to work at a young age. Went in to the army by lying about his age. Worked his way up to the rank of sergeant. Trained troops that fought in WWII. As he started to think about leaving the service of his country, he decided to step into the role of police officer. A motorcycle cop to be exact. In a city that was known to have some pretty tough folks as it residents. His home town of Asbury Park N.J.. He was a proud man. He was a loyal man. He was a man who held the ideals of truth and honor above most things. He believed in all those old adages like God and country and the ability for men to do right by each other. And if they didn’t he was willing to put himself in harms way, step between them and demand justice.

    He was doing that one night, directing traffic at a busy intersection in a black night when the power had gone out. A drunk driver never saw him. He ran over him and never even slowed down. Never saw the six foot four inches of him standing there waving a flashlight.

    My father survived that accident. He had a broken back, ribs, multiple lacerations over most of his body. Deep wounds to his knees. Scars he would carry from that accident and the surgeries he endured would be part of him for the rest of his life. This happened the year I was born. During my life I saw him struggle with the damage from that night. But in all that I saw him go through in the way of physical pain, I never heard him cry out, never saw him take the pain out on anybody else or blame the world for the hand it had dealt him. I saw him stand as tall as he could at all times. I never saw his spirit diminish even once from being the warrior he was known to be to others.

    Nothing can be said by me about me father without also saying something about the woman who stood by his side my entire life, my mother. If my father was seen as strong, then my mother was a rock. She had a spirit that would match his step for step. She was with him through the thick and the thin. The sickness and the health of them both. The good and the bad. With all the many challenges I saw her face I never saw her wince once. I only saw her shed tears three times in my whole life. One of those times was when my father crossed over. She was a person who had great ability to see into the souls of others. She had a tongue that could lash as quickly as the fastest rapier in the world. But she had a side that understood passion and art as well. If my father was the simple, strong hard working defender that he was, she was the balance with wisdom, intuition and tenacity that was the kind of strength that a man like him wanted to come home to every night. As a girl growing up during the depression in New Jersey, she had seen both suffering and opulence. But above all else she admired strength. Not just physical strength, which she liked, but more importantly strength of character. 

Guts. Determination. And she infused them into her children.

   These were my parents. Most of what I am today is owed to them, good or bad. My strengths and short comings are all there for the most part. I am proud of both of them and all that they gave me. They certainly did their very best. I often let them down. But they never gave up on me. When I achieved something of merit or value it was celebrated. But I was also told many times that I could do better. Giving up was NOT an option. There would never be a surrender allowed. 

Defeat maybe, but never a surrender.