Ode to Flaxen

 

This post is a little different to my 'normal' stuff.

 It was my birthday a couple of months ago, when I reached the grand, nay majestic age of 70. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I received absolutely nothing from family or friend. Before you feel sorry for me, let me explain: this lack of pressies is by design. Our family decided several years ago that adults wouldn't send or receive material goods for our birthdays. Instead, we would reserve the transfer of material or monetary worth to the grandchildren. This sensible and practical resolution also extends to a very popular mid-winter festival. This birthday, however, my son sent, unbidden, a gift beyond tangible or monetary worth. I received a prose piece that, lending toward doggerel, provided cutting insight into my muddled, often contradictory psyche. Regardless, I was impressed. I've kept the original punctuation, or lack of it, style and formatting as it adds to the quirky, jarring nature of the piece.

Dat's my boy

In his own words, take it away, FS junior:

Ode to Flaxen

O Flaxen 

Septuagenarian of stable phenotype,

Mildly creaking joints,

Genome intact (largely).

The world does not merely mark your seventieth year —

It sequences it.

You, who beheld the double helix

Spiralling like divine fusilli,

And whispered,

“Yes. Let’s fiddle with that.”

Retired geneticist.

Chromosomal conjurer.

Splicer of destiny.

A mind formidable,

A tongue incorrigible.

In laboratories, sterile and humming

You spoke truths so scientifically precise

And so socially catastrophic

That colleagues lowered their goggles

As though shielding themselves from fallout.

Brilliant?

Indisputably.

Mad?

With supporting data.

Did the lab HR maintain a dedicated folder?

Bound. Indexed. Cross-referenced.

O tireless empiricist.

There was that moment —

Purely academic.

Entirely professional.

For science —

When you placed your own swimmers beneath the microscope

And peered into the wriggling abyss.

And there they were:

Ambitious.

Unusual.

Not entirely terrestrial.

Some mutated.

Some experimental.

One possibly poorly constructing a key box.

And thus arises the noble inquiry:

Am I your son?

The phenotype suggests it.

The facial deformities confirm it.

Yet until peer-reviewed and double-blinded,

The conclusion remains tantalisingly provisional.

O Founder of the Fartorium.

To lesser men: a simple office.

To you: an acoustically advantageous sanctum.

You entered with gravity.

You departed with lightness.

Some men leave reports.

You left resonance.

Some men leave legacies.

You adjusted atmospheres.

And now —

The Incident.

Circa 1972.

Let the record blaze — entirely fiction.

Yet rumours drift like smoke across time.

Whispers curl along memory’s rafters.

Tipton Secondary Modern.

No evidence.

No photographs.

Only the faint grin of a boy

Who understood thermodynamics

Slightly too early.

If flame ever danced,

It was surely pedagogy.

A misunderstood chemistry lesson.

An architectural re-imagining.

Spontaneous enthusiasm for oxidation.

The building stands.

History smoulders politely.

Outside laboratories and hypothetical combustion —

Beer.

Not merely consumed — annexed.

Acquired in strategic volume.

Installed reverently into The Beer Fridge of Doom,

A humming shrine of chilled abundance.

You drink with academic diligence.

Field research.

Comparative analysis.

Seven pints an hour?

A working hypothesis.

Traditional archery —

For why propel a projectile

Unless it be as our ancestors intended:

Wooden.

Taut.

And capable of piercing a Frenchman at 100 yards.

Modern bows are for the undecided.

You prefer tension you can hear,

History you can feel in the shoulder,

Danger you can politely ignore.

And the obsessions —

O the obsessions.

They do not arrive gently.

They descend.

Watches.

Knives.

Puzzles.

Fidget toys.

You do not simply become interested.

You become possessed —

Gloriously, unhealthily immersed —

Until mastery is achieved

Or boredom strikes like a gavel.

And then —

Abruptly —

You move on.

The previous passion, fully conquered,

Is placed gently into a drawer.

Somewhere in this house

There exists a graveyard of former fixations —

Perfectly organised.

Meticulously understood.

Abandoned without ceremony.

The drawer does not tremble.

It waits.

At seventy, O Flaxen,

You remain gloriously eccentric.

Curious.

Fearless.

Unconventional.

Occasionally best observed from a prudent radius.

And adored.

So stand, O probable father.

Geneticist.

Workplace wildcard.

Atmospheric innovator.

Archer of ancient inclinations.

Beer connoisseur.

Ferret confederate.

Alleged — yet legally unproven — enthusiast of Tipton thermodynamics.

Seventy years sequenced.

Still sharp.

Still strange.

Still muttering “for science” before doing something concerning.

May your arrows fly true,

Your beer remain cold,

Your puzzles capitulate,

Your microscopes reveal nothing too alarming,

And may Tipton Secondary Modern

Continue to stand —

In spirit.

Happy 70th, Dad.