I Re-create You in My Heart

 A mind is something a young woman from Kansas learns to keep private.
~ Gregory Maguire, from Out of Oz

 Dear Dad,

Tonight I was coming out of a bookstore and into the sulfurous yellow light of the parking lot, not sure I was at the right car until I looked into the front seat and saw the cup holder you bought for me the year I came out there to sit with you through chemo. We went everywhere in my car, a challenge for you who loved the control of being behind the wheel, and among your complaints about my Honda was this one: "You don't have enough cup holders in this car." I have plenty of cup holders most of the time because I rarely have someone else in the car with me, and how many cup holders does one woman need. But I didn't say this.

We went into Walmart and you settled into one of those battery-operated carts, which I had thought you would hate but you actually enjoyed, zipping around (zipping being a relative term for a battery-operated shopping cart), waving your cane at people to get out of the way. I had to run to keep up with you, and I finally flagged, losing sight of you as I traveled at my own pace, looking down each aisle for a glimpse of your waving cane. When I found you, you were berating a blue-vested young man barely old enough to shave: "Where didja move those cup holders that were here last week!"

The young man led us to an aisle of sale items, and, mollified, you picked out a two-cup holder that slides between the two front seats. When you paid for it, I didn't mention that I don't drink out of cups small enough to fit into that holder, but then, your complaint wasn't about my car not having enough cup holders, was it. It was about saying I love you in the only way you had ever figured out how to do.

So tonight in that yellowed parking lot, I unlocked the door, settled into the driver's seat, and put my cell phone into one of the cup holes where it sat upright and showed me the time if I glanced down. I've used that cup holder for many other things since you gave it to me that summer, but mostly it's there to remind me what it means to love someone unconditionally. No, I don't grant you that ability, you who seemed to make it your end-of-life's work to alienate anyone who ever cared for you, and you did a good job of it, but isn't it an odd thing that most of us found our way back to love after you were gone.

You've been gone now for a year and a half, and I miss you - the man you were before you got sick. I also understand more than you ever knew about alienation and how it's really about defending oneself, which has allowed me to let you back into my heart. Being with you during those last two years was like standing in the Fun House at Playland at the Beach. Remember Laughing Sal? Remember the House of Mirrors, where you could stand and see yourself reflected so many times it was dizzying? I saw so many versions of myself in you, and I wept for you and I wept for me and heard Laughing Sal competing with the seagulls and the tinkley music from the carousel. I was a kid whose father could do no wrong and a grown-up woman who was becoming the worst of her father. Well, that was the story I told myself.

We loved you in spite of your efforts to make us go away. Well, most of us do. And really, I can only speak for myself. It would surprise you to know that your death brought your kids closer than we had been before, and we were already close. Coming on two years after your death, what I have left is photos and good memories and wisps of bad memories (so I don't romanticize the man I referred to as Mr. Cranky Pants). And I have the cup holder you thrust at me as we left Walmart that day.

"There. Now you have enough cup holders." And you raised yourself out of the shopping cart and strolled toward the car, not using your cane.

 

 

Comments

[Robin Song]

Isn't that the condition of parent/child relationships - loving them one minute and wanting to evaporate them in the next (no, that's not MY dad!)?

I miss my parents too and am wistful about the things I did not talk about with them. I do hope there is another place when I die where I can have a good long conversation with them and say and ask all the things our somewhat stilted relationships would not allow.

Thank you for your insightful and beautifully crafted words.
love you much,
rs