Just over a year ago, I returned home from having held my father's hand for the last time. I covered him with a blanked, fetched him crummy coffee, picked apart a war movie for inconsistencies with him. At least in this plane. In my interior space, we do these things often. We had spent thanksgiving together. I collected my bro-sin JD and his daughter from the airport and we checked into the Hospitality House. We visited my uncle and auntie, made my father laugh, bit back the usual sarcasm.
The last thanksgiving we were all together - the entire family - was at my wedding 17 years ago. My brother, mother, father, grandmother, uncles, aunts, the cousins...the last time we argued over food, '99,' hugged, laughed too much and fought over whose turn it was to carve the turkey.
The last Thanksgiving I had with my mom and dad, we were in Mississippi. My mom had accidently forgotten me at the petrol station and for once, I wasn't worried. I had everything I needed until we could reconnect and I knew my daughter was safe. We had a stilted Thanksgiving with my grandmother and ended up with food poisoning from the under-cooked turkey. But I don't think we could have laughed more on a holiday adventure. We talked about opportunities and dreams and about they are not always the same, dreams we have when we are asleep and the dreams we aspire to fulfill. And sometimes, the nightmares, well, they are more informative and useful than one could imagine or expect.
We drove passed our first non- Army house, in a neighborhood called 'The Reservation.' Then we drove passed the house on Fleetwood, where so much had started to unravel. We talked about my how hard it was after my sister died, how hard it was to get pregnant, how terrified she was and how that fear cut her and my father off from one another. She told me about how she threw herself into trying to unpick my father's romantic liaison. 'I just needed answers, confirmation. And to know it was finished. Then one day I didn't.'
I know that feeling, of letting go, of just waking up one day and not needing answers, that blissful indifference. No anger, no resentment. Just...indifference. It's a much calmer, more peaceful place to be. And the money and time spent on trying to know what doesn't matter? You invest that in other places, places with higher yields and honest return. You step away from the damage and concerns of others, back into your own life.
But what happens when the shape of your own life is being dictated by the needs of others? How do we balance out all of the facets of ourselves to create and maintain peace and balance? How do you remind yourself of the beauty in the choices and compromises you make when the drudgery takes over, when being contained in human skin is just too painful for the shedding and transition? How many times do we face transitions in a moment, in a life?
At St Pancras, the station is crowded with impatient people, which I find mildly entertaining because I have chosen to travel by train to practice my patience, to put myself in a position where I am not rushing or panicked, although I spent most of Wednesday night slowly working up to a massive panic attack that found me unable to do anything but bleat quietly to myself by Thursday. I am misplacing strange things right and left at the moment: sweaters, a skirt, keys that aren't mine to misplace. This is how I know I must take a step back. I have been frivolous recently and it worries me. I am hesitant and it stifles.
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