father

"I have a photograph of him, taken during his only leave, at the beginning of 1915; my sister and I are on his knees. Ever since, this image has never shifted; but myself have grown older and little by little I have had to get used to the idea of a father who is younger than I, whereas at first I had the image of a man without age, situated above me. I have had to assimilate it as the figure of a young man whom I have gone beyond in life. Even today, I have difficulty dealing with my relation to this image, set for all eternity as that of a young man. I feel the same way in the presence of monuments to the dead, before the evocation of 'Our Children', wondering: but who are these children? Strangely, the monument speaks of a child who is my father, to another child who, himself, will not stop growing older".

Paul Ricoeur, Critique & Conviction, Polity Press, 1998.