My Father

the boxing ring

I wish I could say my dad and I had a great relationship - or even a good one. But that’s not the truth. My dad and I had a relationship that was the equivalent of a never ending boxing match as I came into my own. We exchanged blows and unpleasantries - and there were no winners.

We like to think of life as a fixable thing I think - as if we can get the happy ending if we get the job, or if we can get the girl and settle down, then that will fix everything. And it rarely does. Life is more complicated than that. Love is more complicated than that. Our ability to relate to each other is more complicated than that. Some things aren’t meant to be fixed - they are meant to just be.

My dad was not a perfect man, as none of us are. He was a little boy once that grew up in circumstances beyond his control, and maybe he did the best he could. If you knew my dad, you knew that he was stubborn beyond measure, KNEW he was right about everything and was deeply passionate about everything he knew he was right about. The problem here, is he raised a daughter that was exactly the same but with opposing views on just about everything and we went toe to toe about just that - everything.

When I turned about 12 or 13, my dad did something that I had never experienced before - he made me feel seen. For about 4-5 glorious years, I got to experience what it felt like to be truly understood for the first time in my life. For those 4-5 years, he called me his best friend. I chased that feeling for years. He had such a way about him, that when you were in his light, he made it feel like the warmest place in the world. Outside of that light was the loneliest place I’ve ever been.

But as life gets big and complicated, so did I - and that complicated things for us. But the beauty of life, and the irony, is in its truth. In it’s complications, in the privilege of existing as we are, saying what we feel, and feeling every raw bit of pain, anger and love. The truth of life is so much more beautiful than the idealistic picture we wish we could manipulate it into.

For years, my dad and I kept returning to that boxing ring - and maybe it was a form of insanity to expect a different result each time we went toe to toe. Or maybe it was the only way I could express to him that in spite of all of the complications in the way, I would never not enter the ring.

The thing about life is, the story of it changes right at the end. What was once frustration, softens, and all the things we wished for and thought could happen in the future, well — they disappear and the story ends.

I was looking at old photos the other day of him and I - of all these different versions of us over the years, truly different people in all of them. Those versions, the ones before the complications and bitterness of life settled in, exist too.

I wish for a lot. I wish I’d grown up faster and understood sooner. I wish someone could have explained it all to me. I wish someone had looked out for me - I wish someone had taken care of him. I wish none of this had happened. Wishes like these are made in the presence of hope. Hope that he knew that all I wanted was for us all to be good again. I hope that he knew that when I fought with him, I was trying to fight for us. Hope fills in the gaps of what we know, and what we’ll never get to know.

you’ll never know the end

In the middle of my story

one sunday afternoon

your eyes closed in finality

too late but far too soon

All the hurt that I still carry

has nowhere else to go

All the hope that I now bury

that you’d welcome me back home

You finally set me free

loose ends tethered to my feet

let go their lasting hold on me

All the secrets locked up in your attic

all the stories post traumatic

I’m finally setting free

I can finally go home again and –

the weight of being you

was buried with you too

In the middle of my story

now you’ll never know the end

we were meant to fix this one day

now we’ll never talk again

he’ll take care of me, dad

he held me as I shook

neither of us said a word

but his arms were tender and unrelenting

not breaking away

constant

firm

gentle

I have never felt these things so absolutely and all at once

He held me as years of torment arrived in my body

convulsing

piercing

not a word was needed

only the hum of the ceiling fan