17th December, 2018 Monday
Well, it is the Season. And it is building here. We have rimmed our rooms with dripping lights.
Dream Kite brought my father last night. He burst in to my room to wake me up. It was him and it wasn’t him. He was rounder and much more full of bounding Joy than the man I knew this lifetime. He he was very excited about waking me. We were to have some kind of mission. What, I cannot tell you but it was a real joy for him. I was so surprised to see him like that. He was not a spontaneously bounding fellow. By the time I was born he was in his late 30s with four daughters and a son yet to be born and an ambition drive that burned him out by the time he was 76 when he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor.
Oh my, he loved us. Whatever else might have been going on in his life outside the family, and he spent a lot of time going back and forth from the office or on business trips, or on the golf course, his heart energy was palpable. Emotionally remote, work driven, provider driven, he had found a rocket ride after WW2 in the legal end of an oil corporation which eventually landed him in the General Counsel position which he was so deft at keeping his bosses out of the line of legal fire, he was granted a seat on his corporations Board of Directors.
As his daughter, I had no idea what all that meant. I was raised in the burbs during a time my Mama was in varying stages of maternal overwhelm with the pack of Five trailing across a span of 11 years so that some of us were toddling and poddy training while others were starting menstruating and wretcheding ( I know its not word but it grabbed the tenor of maternal experience of adolescent daughters) their Mother.
My Mother felt it was her job to keep their children’s life dramas away from their Papa, she was the buffer, the concept being if she did this he wouldn’t stress about us on top of the global stress he carried.
Did it work? They had parsed their tasks, his was to keep the money coming and hers was to keep the children alive, fed and smiling if at all possible.
I grew up in what was a WASP enclave of Rye, New York. A beach club and a yacht club and a private Day School and suckered into the Debut Party thing. I was so many other people’s puppet. Pull my strings and I would dance for you. When it came time to direct my own dance, I had no friggin idea what I wanted or needed.
I felt hollow inside. What was I? Who was I? My college years were hit and miss. An Ivy League opportunity so many thousands would have given everything they had for, felt in the first year and a half like I was living some other person’s idea, not mine.
Another college of note for Art because it was the good choice for a floundering child and my Father had made money so his kids could walk through education he had had to work his way for.
And I ended up walkin away from all that expectation about product from the fruit my parents had planted and said ok, I will marry the boy/man who was my first crush and one of my two debut debut escorts whose older brother had loved my oldest sister, oh yes, that made sense.
We married and he gave me two beautiful children who gave my life and breath and my karmic road definition.
But it was not pretty for either one of us. Downright ugly at the end. We were destined to forge and then break. Part of me broke in that break.
I want to say I am sorry and I think I have in the past as we parted 20 years ago.
He was the Husband that knew my Father while he breathed. And he loved him.
I gotta stop this now. Ya, the veil between here and there and backward and forward is faerie thin this time of year. All our pasts and all our presents and all our futures are resonating through eachother right now.
I have a Deerhound Family Member whose Birthday is today. I have such gratitude and admiration for the Soulful Gravitas she carries. She is Friggin GORGEOUS!!!!
Tea With Me 