We Are Laughing

We are laughing he and I
On the phone
As I put milk back in the refrigerator
And he tells me how they would accept our “scrappy” crayon drawings as birthday gifts, hang them with magnets on the ice box, and later when we weren’t around sneak them into the trash.

That’s what we do, I laughed
And lied
Thinking of the large file box we have filled with the drawings Grace and Frances have made.
I am selective, I admit, and I do throw things out, but only the things that hold no value to the kids or to us
Everything else is gold

But he is my father and he is old now and I wouldn’t dream of contradicting him
Not now
Not then
I never really have except for the days, so long ago now, when I brought home boyfriends I knew he would disapprove of and with whom that was the main attraction in the first place.
He has trouble walking now

He is calling to tell me he hasn’t been out for days because the sidewalks are slippery with ice
And to ask me what I want for my birthday.
My birthday? I am turning 46
I don’t want anything but a ticket home to see him
But I don’t ask for that
I don’t really want him to buy me plane tickets anymore
I used to, and I used to feel he owed me that much and would feel this tiny victory when he would
But not anymore.

I miss him. And the distance we have grown so used to still hurts
Enough to wish things were different in moments when I am faced with some glaring truth about life and how finite it is
Some moment in a hospital when the only person I really want by my side is him
And the ones when I imagine flying across the country because he needs me
But when the weather is good and life rolling along in its paces I know that it was not really a choice that led me here but some invisible force pulling me to my husband, my children, my career in art and whatever else I call it

Still, tears fall when I get off the phone with him
Our birthdays are coming up and he is 40 years less eight days older than I
so we hit milestones together. Usually the call goes something like:
So, are you ready to be thirty?
If you are ready to be seventy!
Or,
How does it feel to be turning forty-five?
Like I’m halfway to fifty.
Better than halfway to ninety!
But forty-five IS halfway to ninety! And we both laugh even harder

But this is not one of those and we don’t even mention our coming ages. We don’t talk about a lot of things anymore. The past is no longer excavated. I could still ask him about my mother and I even thought about it tonight. I thought about asking him if she had a temper when we were little because I have had to tame the one that my children sometimes ignite. I guess I am thinking he might tell me she had a terrible temper and then I can be relieved for two reasons. First because I don’t remember it so that might mean my kids won’t remember mine. And second because that would place it somewhere in my heritage and otherwise I have no idea where this pressed down anger that wants to explode in odd moments is coming from.
But I don’t ask.
I know the answer. He will say he doesn’t remember her losing her temper and I will be left to decide whether she really didn’t or whether he, like I, just blocked it out.

There was a line connecting so many things that happened today and I started to see it as I was heading into the bedroom to tell Dave about something flowering in Grace that I witnessed at the park this afternoon. I saw the line clearly connecting that story and the one that unfolded minutes ago as I put her to bed and she told me she missed my father and in the same breath that she loved a bright star in the sky. Between the painting of the Milky Way I stood in front of today that was so bold it was as if the guy had nothing stopping him from trying to paint what he felt in his heart, and the laughter I shared with my father over throwing drawings in the trash. The thread was about shifting perspectives and how I am seen by my parents, and by my children.

A week ago, for Christmas I received a round little keepsake box from my mother-in-law (who loves to keep things) and on it, it said: “To the world you are one person, but to one person you are the world.”