After the pennant

There are tons of anniversaries that are all about celebrating.

Today is not one of them.

One year ago today my father died.  Daddy.  

That pretty much covers the entire feeling of today.  Everyone knows exactly, or can imagine, what that feels like.  I miss him. 

That’s not really fair though, is it.? I have adjusted to life without him, and, to truly be honest, have to tell you that I had missed him for a long time.  He had been sick for so long.  The end of his 85 year long life had been capped with not being able to walk without pain, not being able to breathe without feeling like there was a brick on his chest, not being able to sleep, not being independent, and not having many friends left to commiserate with.  My mom would disagree with me. But my dad loved her so much that he stayed because of her.  He stayed because she needed him to. It was a gift.

Today I will find a way to connect with my mom, to acknowledge her hurt.  I will suck at it, because I am not sad the way she is.  I am much more like my dad that way, not afraid of carrying on, and not afraid of dying.  He wasn’t afraid of it for himself.  Maybe a little, like the rest of us, but he never showed it.  He was ready, in a way that was both resigned and graceful. I hope I can be that kind of cool.

So, to remember him, I invite you to read the blog I wrote about him last year, right before he died.  I loved him then.  I love him now. 

Top of the first, bases loaded:

http://wishesinthesand.blogspot.com/2015/04/top-of-first-bases-loaded.html

Emotional seaglass

I went for a walk on the beach this afternoon.  Seems like the usual thing to do when you end a relationship, it’s Father’s Day and your dad died 7 weeks ago, it is the Summer Solstice, and, in the absence of any clarity, you just keep moving. 

This is not a bash-my-ex kind of blog, not really.  Anyone that knows me will tell you that I write to release emotions, tell my story so that I can find my own journey and responsibility, learn, in some written flash of brilliant insight, and stop the spinning in my head that keeps me from taking it to the next level.  This should be like that (keeping fingers crossed) because really I am not clear, possibly about anything, and this is how I cope.

So I was walking on the beach at Surf and Tide.  A wonderful beach for families and bbqs and all the kinds of things that you would expect from a summer weekend when the weather is nice.  Low tide meant lots of things to look at, and since I was there to avoid families (feeling a little like I don’t have one now, both by design (the break up) and uncontrollable circumstances (my kids with their dad for the weekend, duh, and my first father’s day without my own dad) I wasn’t really in the mood to people watch.  I was in the mood to find seaglass.  Like a ton of it. Nothing says emotional stability like broken glass, right?  I needed to have something to use to slit my wrists or at least cut my foot.  Pain, I was looking for pain.  Feel anything, Elise, anything at all.  I hadn’t cried about any of it yet, and with my biggest fear always being that I will feel nothing, and no one will come get me because I will be invisible, this was a rather pathetic goal. Wallowing and shallow, and completely twisted in its fucked up kind of misery, but a goal.

So I rolled up my pant legs, took off my shoes, and started walking. No glass.  I kept walking, closer to the shoreline. No glass.  I went into the surf, took off my sunglasses so I could see the reflection of the light.  Still no glass.  Surf and Tide to Wharf #2, almost 2 miles and NO FUCKING GLASS.

What I did get was out of my head.  I couldn’t think my way through this.  I was smack raw in the middle of emotions I had been holding under for a really long time, and now, all I was getting was anger. No glass, and I had been looking.  Trying. Knowing it was out there, I just needed to be smarter about it, more careful about it, more sure about it.  And nothing.  Not one thing.  Empty beach, empty heart, emptiness that truly had been there for months.

On Friday, in an attempt to just be out of my office and away from my boss (a sleazy oily little man with zero integrity) I had attended a workshop billed as an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship.  Starting business, finding capital, blah blah blah.  If you look up Steve Blank, or Phil Randazzo, you will understand that there were going to be some heavy hitters, and I could learn a lot, if I cared.  I didn’t.  I just wanted an excuse to have my place of duty be somewhere else, and this was perfect. 

I knew I was in a place of transition with my job, my writing, my now-over relationship, but hadn’t any clue how to start the conversations necessary to make the leap to the next level.  How quickly or slowly I made that leap was entirely in my hands.  I was stuck in old patterns of thought, though I didn’t know it yet. Though by noon on Friday, in the middle of a small-business workshop, I had just listened to a speaker who had nothing to do with any business dealing, talking to us about clarity, and moving forward, and finding authenticity, and making decisions about relationships, and not settling.

I had a light bulb moment, with not many skills to act on it.  I had made a decision about my relationship needing to move into something else (I had already defined it as friendship in my head by the end of the talk) and while this was not really going to be a fun conversation, I knew both Jim and I would be happier about it if we could stay talking as openly and honestly as we had for the last nine months, and could become an amazing life long friendship.  I was excited.  Petrified, and confused, but excited.

Oh yeah, I guess I need to say something about my relationship at this point.  I have been in a relationship with what I can only describe as a complex man for the last nine months.  We met online, he asked me out, and we met three days later.  Just breakfast. No real touching, but the conversation and energy (in my heart) had me knowing I was already heading into something deeper than casual dating.  I also knew he was an alcoholic.  He admitted much later, after he had been sober for a few months, that our first few dates he had been pretty much drinking heavily.  I knew that.  It kept me at a distance, and I even wrote a blog about it in a couple months in (if you want to go back and find it, it is in Nov 2014) But he was changing, our conversations were becoming deeper, meaningful.  We stopped being guarded, if we ever actually were.  I was totally present, always authentic.  I never, not even once hid who I am from him.  Our dates became days.  Our days became weekends.  We didn’t do much more than cook or hang out, sometimes going here or there, but always there was conversation. Intimacy that rivaled anything I had ever done, and he said it was new and scary for him too.  The physical was a chore, neither one of us being what had been usual for past relationships, but it was good when it happened, and (again, in my heart) based in love and true affection, the way I had always thought long term relationships ended up with each persons desires ebbing and flowing, and negotiable.  I was liking it a lot, letting the love portion fill me up as the emotional intimacy grew. 

That probably would have been fine, but for the addiction.  Turns out that old relationships can be addictive, too.  Bad ones.  Ones that feel normal because it is all you had ever known.  Ones that you seek when emotional intimacy scares you, and the physical with the other person was the best thing about your world.  That happened in a full blown, and completely caught in lie two months ago.  I should have walked away then, when already I was compromising some my more intellectual desires for travel and adventure, and for shared reading, and for activism.  I had already convinced myself that I could do without those things because the man was kind and open and as we grew we would find out own paths both separately and together and start sharing support and love in whole new ways.  I was sure of it until that moment, the lie, and instead of being a fucking bitch, I listened and kept and open mind and found the time to admit my own struggles and found a level of forgiveness I didn’t even know I had. 

I know this now to be my codependency showing up in this relationship too, and I was determined not to go down that path.  Delusional somewhat, (okay, calling my own BS, completely delusional) but it was okay because I would talk with him, we would work it out because that was what love looked like in our world, and in the world I always thought I wanted to create inside of relationships, different from what I have ever done before.  The real me.  The trusting me.  The authentic me.  And sadly, in the process, I taught him how to treat me.  It became acceptable to lie, and then the lie became inevitable.  No matter what we talked about from that second on, the possibility to lie would always be there. And, because of fear, addiction, not moving forward on his own clarity, I became invisible.

Invisible?  Yeah.  I knew everything about this other woman in his life, and she knew nothing about me.  Well, maybe about my presence, kinda sorta, but nothing what-so-ever about the relationship we had created.  Nothing about the conversations. Nothing about the promises and commitments.  Nothing about plans, though vague, and had each of us committed to staying, to asking to stay, to not leaving out any conversation, about never being afraid, and showing up and making the emotional intimacy the strongest most important thing in our lives.  Creating bonds, that even if not clear, would be strong enough and we would build a friendship that would be able to weather anything just because it could.  I already knew that kind of emotionally intimate bond could happen, because I gratefully have one with someone else (who, when he reads this, and he will, will know how grateful I am).  So I was sure that all my effort, all my staying in truth and love was totally worth it, even if/when our relationship changed. 

That seems to not be that case on his end.  Seems, when it came to conversation he was having with this other woman, I meant nothing.  In the version she got, I was barely a friend.  We had never kissed. We had never touched.  We had never made love. Our conversations were shallow. His attraction to me was nonexistent. His words of commitment and love to me (and my children) had never happened.  I was completely invisible in his life. Unloved, unimportant, and unclaimed.

Whether or not any of that is actually true, I have no way of knowing. But what I do know is that on Friday I knew something had to change.  Something life changing.  Something about me, and I invited him along to join me in this leap forward.  A chance for us to get MORE emotionally entwined, but in a more healthy way, something new for both of us.  Something that gave me my visibility and dignity back, and allowed him to step up his vulnerability and truth, both.  Change. The next level. Clarity. Serenity.

Saturday morning, more of the misnamed entrepreneur seminar continued.  I had invited Jim, signed him up, almost begged him to come.  I knew something amazing was about to happen, and I wanted him to be part of it.  I love(d) him that much that even as I was becoming more clear that our relationship would be changing, I saw it as a positive, where we could both grow and understand and find clarity in our path.  I heard more words of inspiration about keeping yourself in light and honesty. I was sought out by a teacher/coach who listened to me for more than a half hour explain my fears and short comings and taking myself for granted an allowing that from other people.  I was taught words and techniques and feelings about how to improve my life right that minute with a tiny shift of the compass needle (and a little help from Jesus and some black magic) I would move my relationship, my thoughts, my life into a 100% better place, even if the change meant doing things differently.  I was clear for the frist time in months.  I knew.  I could not go back.  I was excited to share this with Jim. To help him grow, too.  To understand there is enough joy and light and happiness in the world for everyone, and we could both have it and still love each other.

As is true in my world for every time I am in transition, that did not happen.  In the course of one evening, one morning, and one short afternoon, both of our lives had changed.  I was moving out of codependency and towards more authenticity, and he had allowed the presence of the other woman to change his path away from his spoken choices. While I was seeking friendship, he was seeking dissolution.  Every conversation about growth together, every commitment we ever made to staying honest with each other, ever scared and unclear step that we had made together, was gone in one very pointed telephone conversation.  I was not given the chance to share everything I had just discovered, because he walked away.  His fear and insecurity and inability to change his past had just evaporated the us we had created.  I had a place of strength.  He had gone back to his past. He did not give me the courtesy I had asked that we talk and share in person.  He emotionally vomited all over me, and did so without any courage, over the phone within earshot of the woman who was now in control of his world.  The selfish alcoholic he had been 6 months ago was back, even if he hadn’t picked up.  I was just one more lie.

So all this came to me as I sat there at the end of the beach, angry, without seaglass or any other implements to commit suicide (ok, I am not suicidal.  This is a blog, and I am a writer who has some emotional license, get real folks).  And as I started to cry, realizing I hadn’t yet, I looked up and saw a single shiny piece of copper amber glass, not two inches from my foot.   I picked it up.  I laughed.   There was my sign, right in the fucking middle of my path, that I was on the right journey.  I got up.  Stopped my head spin right then, and used the gifts I had been given over the previous day to steady me.  Strengthen me. Lift me.  Reframe my way of thinking. 

And I did.  My reframing got me to where my father was not suffering any more and could be, if I was of a heaven and hell kinda nature, be holding my son in some really comfy chair in the pasture of forever.  My reframing got me to where I could see Jim as flawed and worthy, but not someone who could meet my needs, maybe not ever, as long as he keeps himself in darkness, and I don’t have the ability to stay there. I like the light, it is not an illusion.  I know better.  And I could also see how his absence in my path, though heartbreakingly sad in this moment (and it is, I am kinda a mess missing him, if I am honest), just created a space for the next level person to occupy.  I had no ability to invite that into my world with my honesty if I was too busy keeping closed with me moving pieces, that didn’t quite work, around hoping to find the fit.  I will be worth it, and not invisible.

On the walk back to the beginning of the beach, along the same exact path I had come, I found dozens of pieces of glass.  Shiny. Easy to see.  Right there in my path.  I did not even have to look for them.  It was easy. Showing me that I need to remember that even things right in front of you can’t be seen without the right mindset.  And that once I change my game, change what is acceptable, the path becomes inevitable.  A whole collection of seaglass to prove it.

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.

Green is the new Black

This morning, when I saw my daughter after her weekend with her father, she ran up to me and gave me a big hug.  She then pulled me aside and whispered “Mom, I am wearing a new bra.”

As a woman, I totally understand how new bras make you feel.  Pretty, worthy, flirty.  Do I dare say perky?  They are expensive items that are often rare in a poor girl’s world.  I was totally happy for her.  She picked out a totally appropriate bra for her age and size.  She is 12.  This is not her first bra; she has been “developing” for over a year, and the “first bra” ritual was over a year ago.  The one she showed me, and the two she described, were pretty cotton,  no push-ups or lacey things, and the exact right size for her long and lean, but growing body.

Her excitement was palpable.  I completely understood.

So it took every bit of my energy and theater skills to not sink in utter desperation that she did this not with her dad, but with her dad’s wife.

I am going to out-myself right this second and say that my main emotion was a kind of seriously fucked up jealousy.  Not just envy.  This was a total green-eyed monster bitch that almost made me pull out an nail file and sharpen my nails.  How the fuck did the psycho bitch my ex fucking married end up having any kind of girl bonding moment with MY daughter?  I mean, how the fuck does that happen?  And why the fuck did my daughter go with that bitch anyway?  Isn’t buying a bra (not the give-me-money kind of buy, THAT would have been acceptable) the kind of thing you do either alone, with your mom, or with someone you are having fun with (girlfriends and lovers are in the category)?  So what the fuck. How was this not something I was a part of.  I am her fucking mom.  

 My.Fucking.Job.She.Is.My.Fucking.Daughter.So.Hands.Off.Bitch.

Yes. Thank you.  That was my rant.  I felt every single bit of that rage kind of emotion in the first five second.  And then, I bit my tongue, told my daughter how pretty she was and that she made a good choice, and choked back the absolute knowledge that other people get a piece of her and I get no say. Not one tiny bit.  She gets to pick who and what she wants in her life, and I get to stand back and watch.  I can choose to either be the supportive mother I hope I am modeling (93% of the time), or I can be the controlling, angry, mean, psycho that reared her ugly fangs before getting a grip (and a clue) and taking a stab at the highroad.

So in the 15 seconds of ugly, and the five hours since of it rattling in my brain, I came to conclusion that kinda startled me (yeah, what delusional world was I living in?) and maybe made me grow up just a little.  I figured out that my daughter gets to have her own life (duh!) but that maybe, just maybe, I get my own life, too.  She can figure out what she wants, who she chooses to get it from, how the interactions go, whom she trusts, why someone is in her life, and what her own boundaries are.  And, wow, if I can get past my own fucked up head, so do I.

She is clearly handling this better than I am, the letting go of other people’s choices that have nothing to do with me.  I still crave consistency and control, left over insecurity from the chaos that was my relationship with my daughter’s father.  I wrap myself so tightly into the identity of her (and her brother’s) mother from a time when if I did not have that identity, I surely would have spun off the planet into some dangerous nebula of toxic gases, leaving in my wake a type of destruction that only addicts and asylum patients can relate to. (You did read my rant above, right?  Yeah, Jack Nicolson’s got nothing on me some days.)

I will go home tonight, and do the good mom thing, and fix dinner, and do laundry, and read over homework.  I will play some board game, and read to them, and talk about our days.  I may tell my daughter of my feelings, admit my weaknesses, but probably not.  I think I will also text some friends, read some porn, watch an R rated movie with my headphones, and paint my toenails, and try, somewhere in the midst of all of that, to keep trying to find my identity, and not be afraid to have it be something else, that letting go of the fear might just help me find another place to hang on.  Maybe that next place will be kinder, and feel like a star instead of a blackhole. 

I also think I will buy myself a new bra.

Crackerjacks and Insulin

Last week, my father spent five nights in the hospital.

It was not the first time this year he was there, and I have no doubt it will not be the last.  He is 84.  He is diabetic.  He has had colon cancer removed.  He has a heart issue that can best be described as failure from an unknown cause.  He has severe back pain from years and years of climbing in and out of a dump truck and using the heavy foot-operated pedals to do his job.

He was a heavy smoker for almost 60 years, quitting only after his heart doctor could not hear his heart with a stethoscope through the congestion in his lungs. I think that might have something to do with all the shortness of breath, but no one wants to say that because he quit 13 years ago, and no one wants to admit that crappy choices for decades could have anything to do with right now.

And right now, well, that is all we are concerned with.  Comfort, prolonging, and more comfort.

Our conversations while I visited him in the hospital usually revolved around his medical condition, his medications, and his daily routine.  And baseball.  Always baseball.  So while looking up the scores for the day before’s games, we talked about the nose bleeds.  While comparing pitching stats, we talked about sugar levels.  While watching the play from third for out number two, we discussed how to get in and out of the shower, and if we need to install grab bars, or ramps for the outside stairs.

He did not want to have any of these conversations. I don’t blame him, I didn’t want to have them, either.  We will need to have more because my mom is exhausted, and worried, and couldn’t possible lift him to help him get to the bathroom if it comes down to that.  Right now he is home, and stable.  But he is tired, so tired.

In the midst of all this conversation about health and baseball, the one thing my dad did want to talk about was me, my kids, and what, in his opinion, I am not doing right.

It took all my effort not to yell at him, or walk out. Instead, I listened to him say that my house repairs are behind, my yard work and fence needed to be taken care of and made presentable, and how he had not, in his entire life, ever taken more than a two-week a year vacation.

All those things are true.  I probably should finish putting in my baseboards, and replacing the sink and toilet in the Master bath.  I probably should pull out the dead plants in my front yard, and take the ugly watering hoses to the dump.  I probably should care that I don’t have a lawn, nor will I be winning any Yard-of-the-Month awards from my city. I actually feel blessed that they have not ticketed me for leaving my garbage cans on the street for days after the regular pick up.  What is not true is that I have any regrets that I take my kids on vacation to wherever we can go at every opportunity I have.

I knew, as my dad was complaining about my yard, and my garage, and about my vacation choices, that he was not really looking for me to say anything back.  He wasn’t even really mad at me about what I was doing, and why.  I don’t think he was really expecting me to suddenly like yard work (I haven’t in 48 years, so not like I will be starting that up any time soon), or for me to put a priority on painting my hallway. I will get to it, eventually.  I always do.

 And while I know that he thinks I should probably not be taking my kids to Kansas City in July (our next road trip) in favor of spending the money on a weed-whacker and a good handyman, I don’t think it was about me at all.  I think the entire conversation was about him.  About his decisions.  And about him being scared that I was judging his choices, for a perfect yard and no vacation, as something missing in my life, and maybe, in the long run, something he missed in his, by doing something different.

I will admit, I made that choice a long time ago, to not be him.  Not because of any judgment I have that his choices were wrong, but just that I wanted something different with my children.  I am grateful for the home and the security of my parent’s house.  I never wanted for anything, all  of the basic needs taken care of, though we were not rich.  I had clothes and food. I had a bike.  I always had gifts and parties for birthdays and Christmas.  I also have zero memory of a movie with my parents, or a museum with them, or a trip to a national monument or place of interest.

Every year we went on vacation.  Two weeks of camping, and either fishing or hunting.  The camping involved a trailer and cooking every meal.  The fishing was trout, either stream-fishing or fly-fishing.  The hunting was deer or boar, but since I never went out with my dad, I don’t actually know what that was about.  My experience of it (contrary to the memories my brother is sure to have) is that I sat around a lot, bored because I never brought enough books or paper or art supplies, in the dust and heat of whatever remote campsite near a lake that we were at.  I should sound more grateful that I was allowed nature, and any form of recreation, but I feel like I missed something.

The memories I have of vacations with my dad is of him, as I watched from the bank, as he fly-fished.  I have one intense memory of a wasp nest swarming because we parked our trailer a little too close. I remember the rifle shot that echoed from the hillside as my father and brother went after a deer that was illegally shot by someone else, and was now suffering and dying because of it.  They never fired a shot, but the sound is still in my ears, and I am still a slight bit frightened by the memory some 35 years later.

I have never been anywhere else with my parents.  No skiing trips.  No drive-ins.  No city cafes.  We never took a ferry.  We never went on a train.  We never took a trolley, or a gondola, or a horse.  We did the same thing, every year, once a year, for as long as I can remember.  There is no judgment about if this is right or wrong.  It is just is.  I wondered why the memory I have of losing a fish from the line one year is so strong , when it struck me that it is just because there were no other memories to hold on to that could make this small one less significant.

I picked something different for how I spend my time with my kids.  We have been to Yosemite, and Washington DC.  We have taken a train to Denver and a plane to Seattle.  We have visited monuments and historical places, and taken ferries to offbeat islands with weird little artist’s colonies.  We have gone to plays and movies and festivals and concerts.  We have road-tripped, and accidentally met potters who gave us pieces of clay to play with, and poets who wrote haiku for us about the color of our shirts, and musicians who sang us songs they just made up, and laughed at all the silliness of the moments as we let ice cream melt on our chins from homemade stands on the side of the road.

So back to my dad.  I did not point out to him that I was making specific different choices based almost solely on the lack of choices I had as a child.  That would have been cruel. And I am not cruel, I love my dad.  So I sat there, and listened as he planned how I was going to have to buckle down and get my lawn planted, and how I should not be driving my kids half way across the country in the heat of summer.  I knew he was not judging me with his words.  He was, in fact still taking care of me, like he did when I was little, knowing maybe that his time to do this is getting short.  He didn’t want compliance.  He wanted validation that his choices would be remembered.

I get that, dad, don’t worry.  If there is nothing else we can ever say to each other amidst all the talk of medicine and home safety, we will always have baseball.  As a matter of fact, on that road trip you don’t want me to take to Kansas City this summer we will be going to a Royals game.  Stay out of the hospital long enough for me to tell you all about it when we get back, so we can have some more memories together, with baseball at the center. I'll bring the Crackerjacks.