My sister is also going through something terrible. Her very most important person, the one who said I do, he just didn't come home one day. She has a little boy. My nephew. He's three. My dad has been taking time off of work to be with them. He rode with them to the city to find a new place to live.
It's become important to me, the way we can create new histories with people.
If you're an asshole or a junky drop out, you can grow a person in your belly for almost a year. You can wake up every day and hold that little person and feed them and help them to grow. You can teach them language and kindness and how to sing. Pretty soon, you're something else. You're something amazing and nobody can say shit to you.
I think it's true for other people, too. People who spend a long time making mistakes.
There isn't anything they can do to fix things, or to make anything up to you, but they can show up on the morning after your husband has left you and they can stay until you're not afraid to breathe. They can love your kids, removed from them by a generation. They can want to be a part of your life, in the little ways you'll allow. They can wake up every day with good intentions, and maybe someday they'll be something new, too.
There's nothing that be done about what's already happened, but we're not done living, yet, either. I never thought I'd be open to anything but a tentative, one-sided arrangement with my father, where I'd let him bring the girls presents for Christmas, or whatever, but I'd never allow him in. I never thought my girls would run to him, have a nickname for him, and jump up and down with excitement at the mention of him. I never thought I'd be okay with them loving him, with their innocence and open hearts. I never thought I'd be anything but afraid of him, of what he means to me, of how he was the reason I spent my youth under water.
But I'm willing to let people change my mind, like I changed theirs. Little by little, like drops of water in the mouth of a river.
This brought tears to my eyes. XO
ReplyDeletewow, it's great that you are able to put the past in the past and start over. and i am SO sorry to hear about your sister, that is just terrible.
ReplyDeleteI relate believe me, i have a strained distant relationship with my father, and believe me I have experienced what you are talking about from about every angle, child, parent, step parent, and it boils down to one thing, we do what we can with the tools we have, and when we know better we do better. Your father is getting a re-do as it were, and let's all hope we get the grace of that one day. I have adult children and always thought i did a great job raising them, but one day....some thing you did or did not do rears its ugly head...Enjoy the circle of life and relationships you are in. You now get to be in an adult relationship with the your father, and that changes the game.
ReplyDeleteThis brought me, too, to tears. But I have 20 years on you, and I had reconciled not having to sort through the crap with my father, who looks really cool and really awesome but is not.
ReplyDeleteHe wrote me a letter. I got it yesterday. In it he talks reconciliation, but what he doesn't understand is that reconciliation comes with truth-telling, and those truths do not make him look very good.
I dread this path. I am in the market for a decent therapist. Again.
and sorry ... didn't *mean* to make your post about me ...
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry about your sister, so glad your dad saw a place he could give as a father and grandfather, and also with you, for a week in the summer. I believe that we lose out when we are not connected to the generations that come before us, when our children cannot know their people, flaws and all.
Your writing is so strong, true, beautiful and raw.