the crazy stops here…every fifteen minutes

With incredible guilt-ridden relief, I left that horrid black velvet dress in the back of my closet, packed my bags, and kept my plans to see my parents this weekend. A few of my friends have buried their mothers in the past few months, and I have inadvertently found myself unable to attend any of the services. Perhaps the universe sees fit to deliver me from facing that hell just now, because I simply am not ready.

Daddy took me to the park Sunday afternoon for a walk along the bay. Every step I mindfully delay to match his pace is a tiny death. His excitement in discovering that most of the ice fishing takes place within reasonable walking distance from the parking lot amounts to so many tears shed later, in the dark, on top of the sea created from his concern that he might not be strong enough to pull himself from the water if the ice gave way beneath him.

The night his mother died, I held my father while he cried. Just he and I, sitting in the dark, the smell of liquor heavy in the air. He looked at me with indescribable anguish, whispered “I’m an orphan again” and crumpled into a quiet and dignified weeping.

At sixteen, I had the sense to be heartbroken for him and honored that he allowed himself a moment of unfettered grief in my presence. I did not have the sense to be absolutely petrified at the hard reality: this man that still seemed part machine would age, himself.

That fear would be borne some fifteen years later, when my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, when my Uncle and I clung to each other and wept for his mother, when young and tragic death forced itself upon my family like a stain.

Those experiences created a manic rage, a choking desire, words creeping up in my throat, begging for air, for all the volume I can muster- warnings from the rooftops about the fleeting nature of life, about the enduring power of love, about what is important and what is not, and why oh why do we waste so much time on meaningless things when it all goes by so quickly?!

This is precisely why my father no longer grows a winter beard; his whiskers are nearly all white now, and I pleaded with him not to make me stare down his mortality. He lost another of his best friends on Christmas Eve, and I finally acquiesced this weekend, because I can no longer pretend that I won’t walk the Earth without him someday.

I thought long and hard today about why that’s so goddamned scary. I grew up with the constant reminder that he was preparing me to survive without him. I love my mother dearly; I cherish my time with her and worry for her health, I can sense the heaviness of losing her, but there is no cold, hard fear, no tearful three in the mornings, no nightmares, no soul-quaking hollowness.

What am I so afraid of? What am I losing that I cannot live without?

Like most good answers, especially at three in the morning, it’s sickeningly, stunningly clear.

My father sees, understands and appreciates me on a level no one else does because I let him. I make myself vulnerable, I throw open the doors of my heart and let him in to tinker around and sweep up, to rearrange things on the shelves and leave me a list of things to watch for.

It isn’t because he’s never let me down, or hurt me deeply, or temporarily turned me away. Even when our trust was thin and brittle, even when time and maturity called me to set my own boundaries, I kept faith in his love. It hasn’t always been easy, and it hasn’t always seemed wise, but it has always, always been worth it.

I’m petrified that my ability to love with such reckless abandon will die with him.

Now I just need to figure out what to do about that.

I’ve always struggled with uncertainty of any magnitude; my mind seems to ruminate over pending outcomes with all the fervor of a needle stuck in a vinyl groove, playing the exact same refrain until the record wears out or the needle breaks.

Impatience, a need for control, general insecurity- I’ve suffered all these faults, and surely will again- but uncertainty provokes something within me when none of those issues is at play.

Even when a situation can only end two ways, either could be considered advantageous, and there is a known time frame for resolution, I’m still a wreck.

Faith would contend that everything happens for a reason, taking comfort in the “rightness” of either outcome. Logic would dictate focusing elsewhere until there is enough information to form a response.

I am not a man of faith, nor a man of logic. I am a woman with a healthy dose of skepticism for the all too common practice of relying too heavily on either.

My intuition is my north star; I close my eyes, ask myself what the answer is and listen very carefully and quietly for the feeling to roll over me.

The glaring weakness of this strategy is that pesky habit one has of favoring their preference; we tend to confirm our own desires. An emotional stake in the matter at hand clouds my intuition, and acute awareness of the possibility that my compass is miscalibrated leaves me dizzy with doubt.

I paid a hope tax to balance out the entry.

The things I wanted most I refused to believe in, my own little fucked up emotional insurance policy against disappointment and shame. My intuition written off to reconcile my desire and fear.

Which isn’t altogether a flawed formula; it simply attempts to account for the failings of human nature and reduce the risk that my trademark intensity brings to the use of deep knowing. Admirable goals, all.

It’s awfully exhausting though, all that hoping-not-hoping, knowing-not-knowing, wanting-not-wanting wears a girl out and thins her focus. It’s unproductive, particularly when I’m right more often than I’m wrong.

There isn’t a disappointment I cannot bear; all of my worst nightmares came true, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Things I wanted too badly to believe in happened effortlessly, and things that seemed safely logical evaporated like summer rain on hot pavement. My emotions, thankfully, do not influence the workings of the universe.

So. A girl can hope, right?

Right.