Top of the first, bases loaded.

My father is dying.

Even saying out loud sounds weird, and I feel more than a little guilty that I am that kind of blunt, but it is true. His body is failing.  He is being kept in comfort, and pain controlled , which makes him “half” here, and only some of the time.  He is in the hospital and has been for the past 11 days.  We are now just waiting.

So before the only memory I have is the hospital smell in my nose, the taste of hospital food on my lips, and the sound of the snore-gurgle my father makes as he slips in and out of sleep in his bed, I thought I would write this.

This is about my daddy, as much as I can write right now.

I have a picture of me, about age two, riding a tricycle in front of our garage.  The tricycle was purple, though the faded picture makes it look like it was teal.  I am smiling  and being all cheesy for the camera.  My brother, just a baby of maybe 8 months old, is in a wind up swing, sleeping, in just a diaper, looking like he is about to fall out. Sitting in a lawn chair, in the shade created by the open garage door is my dad. Shorts. White T-shirt. Sandals. He is smiling at something, maybe something I just did, or maybe something my mom just said that made him laugh.  I only assume she is the one taking the photo.

In all the years since, as if this memory happened yesterday, this is how I see my dad. Happy.

My dad is the quiet one in our house.  Not a man of many words, though when he did say something, you knew to listen.  His voice and laugh was deep, and you could hear it across rooms, and baseball fields, and lakes.  It spoke volumes in one or two words, knowing right away his mood, or need. Praise was limited, but if given was meant.  There was never anything false in his words. You knew exactly what he meant.

He was not classically affectionate, and I would not need more than one hand to tell you how many times he felt comfortable with hugs, especially in public.  It was not his way.  I often wished it was because the couple of times I remember holding his hand, I knew I was safe. 

He showed love in ways you had to search for. 

He assembled and stained a desk for Christmas the year I was 10.  I still have that desk, and (when not being used as a catch all for laundry) has been a place I have read at, and written in my journal, and sat at just to ponder the world for years and years.  I think about seeing that desk for the first time, with the ribbon on the matching chair, every time I sit down.

He washed my car.  Grumbling the entire time about how I never took care of my stuff, and why did he have to do all the work.  It was spotlessly detailed, interior windows cleaned, vacuumed, and wax applied.

He took me to dinner on my 15^th birthday.  Just me.  We went together to the fanciest restaurant I knew at the time, and alone because one of the few things we had in common was that we both loved crab legs.  We ordered them and ate them by the bucket, which should have been a dead give-away the place was not all that fancy with its plastic bibs, and he ordered me a glass of wine, and then a second one, without even flinching.  We laughed, and tried to talk, maybe the only time we ever really did, and I walked out feeling deliciously happy, and maybe a little drunk.  It was fine.

He whipped me with a belt one time, for lying and being hours late, then cried more than I did because of it.  He never hit me again.

I only ever saw him cry two other times.  Once the day his father died, and once the day my son died.

He was a really good swimmer, and although he threw me in the lake off the swimming barge once when I am sure I was whiny and scared, he swam behind me all the way back to shore, just out of my reach.  I remember throwing sand at him when we got there I was so mad.  He still brought me a towel.

He made me do yard work. 

He liked to barbeque.

He was wicked skilled at horseshoes. And cribbage.

He built me a toybox at some point before I remember, and put a bunny decal on the front because supposedly I liked bunnies.  I have that toybox.  I refinished it back when my children were too little to remember, but I didn’t cover up the bunny.  It lives in my living room.

The most gentle I ever remember my dad being is when he became a grandfather.  My daughter had him wrapped around her little finger.  She could crawl on his lap any time she wanted.  She could get him to read any book she wanted.  She could give him kisses and hugs and he didn’t flinch. And she could make him smile just by being in the room.  For her (though maybe for other kids too, but not really) he worked the Easter Egg hunt every year, and would point out for her the “hidden” eggs.  My son, the ever crabby baby, could still crawl up on Papa’s lap, and they would watch TV together, both stretched out on the recliner.  My dad taught my son to love baseball.

Every memory I have right this minute, as I see my father struggle, reminds me how much I have loved him, do love him, will love him.  With all the imperfection, kept at bay, I can honor the parts that were and are really good, without any smoke and mirrors to what wasn’t perfect. I can do that right now.  Because there is a complete full life to know before I fall apart. And so much more to remember that is not limited to these final moments.   

This is just the first page, before I forget.

Hot Dogs and Burnt Bacon

A song came on the radio as I was driving to work this morning.  It talked about how if only the good die young, then he (the singer) would outlast them all.  This sorta goes with my theory of myself, that I have reserved seating on the party bus to hell (complete with a bbq, and vodka Jell-O shooters, and bacon, lots of bacon), and have applied, with conscious effort it seems, to be the intoxicated designated driver for this ride at the end of the world.

But I know that isn’t really true.  If there is a Hell, and no one actually has me convinced yet that I need to be worried about this, then the concept that I have been so terrible in this world that I would end up there just doesn’t fit.

Trust me that this is not me blowing sunshine up my own ass, or believing my own PR bullshit.  It is just a realization that I have already done both the Catholic acts of contrition, and the rites of forgiveness with enough programs, steps, and friends to know that the past does not get to define me.  I choose.  No fear.  All in.

Last night, in a rather amazing conversation (though why ALL of these conversations happen late at night while standing in the cold I have no idea. Worth it, but damn, couldn’t they happen at like noon, on a beach, with mai tais?) I admitted something that I hold really close to my heart.  It is about trust and the relationship that trust plays in my world, and in the love I have for people. And, frankly, what I know I am capable of in the really dark part of who I am.

Right up until the end of my first marriage, trust had never been an issue.  I have never been the “jealous-type”, always knowing that I had very little say over whether or not a man in my life stepped out of his committed words or not, and that my response to it was more often me blaming myself than to ever risk hurting him in any way. This is something I still struggle with, the feeling of never being good enough (or even just “enough”, without even considering the word “good”) while standing right in front of someone screaming notice me, notice me, notice me.  I have issues, clearly.  But trust was never one of them.  I either trusted you, or I didn’t. There was no gray scale here.  I suppose, with time and practice I might be able to learn to trust someone again depending on the infraction, but for the most part, I know when I won’t trust you.  The trust was always immediate, naive maybe, but never with any fear or reservation. Given.  Nothing else required.

Most people think that trust is earned.  I think that is one way to get it, say from and employer or from a paid professional.  A working relationship based on experience, a little forethought, and a great deal of follow through.  I don’t think trust inside of relationships works that way.

Back to my ex husband for a minute, and the whole conversation that brought him up at all.  When my ex and I split, two things had just occurred.  First, I found out that he had put his dick in another chick without the benefit of any form of appropriate protection against anything, and they were now set to spend the next nine months (or 18 years, depending on your perspective) with the consequences of their choice.  Second, he had left, taken nothing with him, and was now asking to come back, after asking me for a divorce based on whatever kind of guilt and desire was spinning in his head at the time.  My heart, unequivocally wanted this.  I wanted him in my life, back as my sweet and wonderful husband who made me stuffed French toast and knew my favorite color and left his socks next to the shower.  But that guy.  He was already gone. Because my husband could never have cheated on me, and the guy that was left in my world, had.  I loved my husband deeply, even in the middle of all of it, but knew that there was no way, way down where it counts, that I would ever trust him again.

I know, back to trust.  So when I say I knew that I would never trust him again, even as I loved him, I knew exactly what that meant.  It meant that I would torture him for being unfaithful.  I would make him pay for his mistake in a thousand different ways, even if I forgave him, and right then that was a huge if. In the future I imagined I might have questioned all the money transactions he made.  I might have questioned any overtime work he did.  I might have doubted his Christmas list, his choices from the Chinese restaurant menu, and the way he tied his shoes.  I would never have ever let him forget it that I was hurt, that I was scared, that I was lonely and unable to forgive myself for not being enough for him to hold on to me.  I would, everyday, then make him believe that mistakes cannot ever be forgiven, love cannot ever be given freely, that trust was not anything he deserved, and basically that he was worthless in my eyes.  The same kind of worthless that I was in my own eyes.  I had failed. And I would never have let him forget it, because truth is, I didn’t trust myself right then.  I didn’t trust myself to be faithful.  I didn’t trust myself to not give into whatever immediate desire I felt, because I couldn’t see a future.  It was dark.  And I knew, even as I made love to him that last time (which isn’t quite accurate, because it could best be described as a fuck, because there was not a whole lot of love involved) and let his arms wrap around me, I was already lonely. Grieving the man I adored who no longer existed.

So back to the conversation (you remember, the one in the cold, without mai tais), I figured out something about myself.  I no longer use trust as a weapon.  Somewhere along the path I have been on, my  belief in trust came back, and with it, the freedom to give it freely.  To trust and love without expectation, because I had learned, maybe on a really hard road, that I trusted myself again. 

The man that was there in the conversation, holding my hand, just as cold, just as present, just as vulnerable as I was, deserved more from me than my fear about ever really trusting anyone.  He already has his own demons, his own doubts about misplaced trust, his own reserved ticket on the bus to hell.  I am sure my ex husband had them, way back then, but I could not see them.  I was too lost in my own head and fears, that I couldn’t find love in his quiet words asking to come back.  This time, quietly, I am getting off the bus.  I am inviting everyone else to get off, too.  I am worthy.  The man standing in the cold with me is worthy.  Trust can be given and received, even in the middle of doubt and mistakes, even if the only person trusting me is me. 

I think am going to stop listening to the radio, or at least get a better playlist. And I am going to live a really really long time.  The future is fine, because the present is fine, and I kinda like it here.  Yep, turns out love and trust is like that.  I’ll bring the bbq tongs.

nothing...

Help..

Is there an off switch? An off switch would be good.

I think I did it again.

I have been letting my heart lead, openly, and without any walls for a while now.  Like maybe 4 or 5 months.  In the reality that is my world, 4 or 5 months in NOT a long time.  I have been alive for almost 49 years.  I have children who are 11 and 13 years, respectively.  I was married once for almost 7 years.  I was *married* (not legally, but same difference) once for over 10 years.  I have been split form that same non-husband for over 5 years, the same amount of time I have been dealing with courts, and dating bullshit, and figuring out depression and dependency.  So you would think that maybe I would know that things in my world need time, and space, and patience, and that maybe, just maybe, I am moving in my head and heart too fast.  5 months?  Yeah, that is just a tiny sliver of time. Patience.

I went to lunch yesterday with a woman who has been in the *shoes* of my world in the most literal sense.  She was involved for years in the same relationship we both left, just a decade difference.  She understands, completely, that there are things inside that relationship and that person that we loved, and still find attractive.  Not the person.  He is toxic. But the attraction to who and what each of us believed him to be as we saw him.  It was, in both of our opinions, something worth having in new people, because the good qualities really were attractive, even if the person wasn’t. I don’t want to lose that piece of knowledge.

So I find myself thinking a lot about what I find attractive, what I know is good for me, and how to be vulnerable enough without losing myself in the process.  Please note, I am talking specifically about men here.  Men I want in partnership in my world.  I have an amazing troupe of people, women and men both, that are friends.  I have a really solid core group of people who I know I share emotional intimacy with, even on a deep deep level. The part that I have been vulnerable and open to is the desire to share all of that with a man I can also be physical with, enjoy his bed and body, and know that when I am not at my best (stupid, fat, and ugly, and, more recently, deeply lonely and missing being touched) he can be my soft place to land.

When I say I miss being touched, I probably should explain.  Sex with my exes never was an “issue”. We had lots of it. Daily for both of my marriages.  I have written about this before, so if you have read it, you will understand that.  This has almost nothing to do with being touched.  I want to be held.  I want to be kissed in a way that is both desire and comfort. I want to have my hand held, and my tears wiped, and  feel safe and warm and loved, even as I am falling apart.  I want to not be judged for it when I feel needy.  And by judged, I totally mean that inside my head.  My worthiness in someone else’s eyes.  I am good enough to be fucked, not good enough to be loved or touched in a way that belongs to me.  I want to be told, in all the ways available through words and actions and touch, that I am important. (Fucked up much?) How does it feel to want? 

I am sure this is part of my current spin.  The timing of everything feels so good when I stay in the present.  I am not jealous or clingy.  I am not in a hurry, or planning my future.  I am reveling in happiness and only making plans that enhance that.  I have actually gotten really good at that in the last few years (see, measurement in years again, damn) and even my children know that I am always present, with them as things emerge and evolve. 

So why the doubt?  I am important in a lot of different ways to a lot of different people.  I am the stable and resilient rock for my children.  Anyone who has ever met them will tell you that I rock that shit, and my kids are amazing little monsters growing into amazing people.  I can model for them and provide for them the strength I cannot seem to find in myself.  I am a confident and competent employee.  I know my job, can facilitate growth in others, and accept responsibility by figuring out what needs to be done, and just doing it.  I am sure my employer recognizes this, though they don’t pay me enough to justify some of the work they assign me.  I am just that good at it.  I am a pretty good friend, all in all, though I hope to continue to grow and learn.  People before things, and I always strive to understand and participate, and love with an open mind and heart.  I can honestly say that the mistakes I make are never ones of intentional neglect, so I ask forgiveness if you are reading this and think I have injured you through my own selfishness.  I am just an idiot sometimes, with a way of saying shit without a filter.  So again, why the doubt, when I am really, truly, fucking awesome!

Because every single time I “knew” that the man in my life was exactly where I should be, happy, I was blindsided by an absolute stop.  A boyfriend of almost two years, that I had spent the day with in absolute bliss, who left in the middle of the night.  A husband I made love to in the morning, and taught how to give me the shots for the fertility meds we were using to try to have a baby, who asked for a divorce the same day because he just found out his mistress was pregnant.  The father of my children, and a decade long relationship, on a date to talk about love and the future and holding each other as the best part in each other’s lives (my agenda for the evening, clearly, being in love and all, even after a decade), who told me he had no issues with getting married, he just did not want to marry me.

So back to the attraction part.  Every one of those relationships had something in common.  I wanted them.  I was attracted to all the same things.  Stability, focus, honesty. They each had some quiet places that felt contemplative, some energy that felt exciting and fresh (yes, even after years), and some potential and openness to growth and understanding whether they were actually working on it or not (and usually not, but that is a different blog).  This is about me.  My wants and desires in the face of extreme self-doubt.  I have decided not to beat myself up for wanting this, for wanting a partner that not only has all the things that I am attracted to, but a complete openness and willingness/desire to share that with ME. Again, this is where I freak out. 

Wouldn’t it just be easier to be NOT vulnerable? Not open? Not willing?  Shouldn’t I just tell the man (that I am attracted to for all the right reasons) and that I have been doing this new found patience and openness with that “Hey, yeah, everything is going just fine, but that means it is all gonna hit rock bottom any day now, so I am just gonna check out now, ‘kay?” because I have zero experience with it working.  I might as well just shut off now because any minute he is going to figure out I am actually a basketcase and run screaming.  Or worse (as has been the case before) is just going to be done in a way that I won’t see coming.  The one that says I am not enough and proves it with vacancy.  Self-fulfilling prophecy I don’t know how to control.  And I am scared.  Not scared of him.  He is great in ways he does not even realize and that I have no word for (and I always have words). But scared that in the process of feeling all of this I am going to go missing.  Scared that I will crawl back into feeling nothing because all the other emotions are so strong, so powerful, and (fuck) so new.  Just 4 or 5 months.  Nothing at all.  I am hoping for years to feel it, without shutting down, because I let myself be here this time, eyes wide open.  

So (friends, lovers, family) please be patient with me as I do this again, but differently, and with more love.  And kind.  And honest. And let me be a wreck knowing that it is my wreck.  If I shut off, come after me, because honestly, I am totally worth it. Right now, present, I am totally worth it.