Skip to main content

Dad's wish

My dad has been in and out of the hospital for the past few weeks with heart trouble.  Many of you know that I did not grow up seeing my father.  In fact, I spent very little time with him in the years that have passed since my anticipated entrance into gravity bound existence.
Today we chatted on the phone while he lay beneath flowering vines and bird feeders on his deck in Bonsall and I sat on a round granite stone beside a gravel bottomed creek at REI where Bodhi frolicked with characteristic enthusiasm.  After a while it occurred to me that I didn't have any idea what my dad hoped for me in most aspects of my life, not the least of which was love.  Having grown up with my mom, I never had the barometer of a fathers affection and esteem.  So I asked him what he wished for me in matters of love, as water splashed and birds lighted on tree branches.
He said:
"I wish for you to be happy and to be loved."
"What does that look like dad?"
"I wish for you to be respected and cared for and for a man to spend time with you and to want to spend time with you...As much time as you want to spend with him.  And for a man to play with you!!! That's my wish for you."
I smiled.  "Thanks Dad, that's a good wish."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...
4 comments
Read more