Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Some days, “goodness” is defined more simply. A break in the weather.  Errands completed with relative ease. My son has a good day at school and responds by my 4th nagging request to get off the computer. My husband returns from his 12-hour day energized and fatigued, rather than exhausted and depleted. I manage to put a decent meal on the table, get to work, and, really, if I’m honest, which I only sometimes wish to be, my hair looked good.

I got the call my Dad was in the ICU and not expected to live as I was editing an open mic essay about how selfish I’ve been over the years as a daughter, how little I know about my parents, and, given their ages, how little time I have to make it right. I was nervous, not sure how the piece would be received – in it I come off like the self-involved callous person that inhabits most of us at times of stress, but the audience would need to be mature enough and open enough to recognize themselves in it, not just the crappy person I can be.  Ah, my choice: stay home and get hourly phone updates or go to the open mic. If he died that night, he’d die without me, as there is no way to travel from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest at the end of the day. And it was one of their recent sub-zero freeze days, a sustained arctic blast that shut down major cities, closed schools and businesses, shooed people off the streets and into their homes in a forced hibernation rare in a part of the world that prides itself on its hardiness, life as usual continuing undaunted 365 days a year.

I was to remain here; my Dad was to remain in the ICU. I figured I’d better keep editing, better participate fully in my life, as this is the life that will remain whether I have a Father to talk to about it or not. Whether I receive my Dad’s love on the phone or in person – emanating from the body he inhabits that has survived blasts of inattention, overeating, heart disease, and 365 days a year neglect and indifference that have resulted now in the forced shut down and hibernation of his most precious internal organs – or whether I receive it only as memory, as an expansive feeling that lives in the moments where my heart cracks open rather than it’s more typical closed state, the feeling that all is right in the world where a daughter can do no wrong in her Father’s eyes, where he is willing to hold his daughter to the impossibility that she is more good than bad, more loving than spiteful, more decent than petty, more beautiful than plain, more kind than angry.

I went to the open mic, took in the words and music around me, choosing at the last minute to bow to superstition and not put out something to the universe about how little time I have to get to know my parents while my Father was dying. There are fates, and there are Fates. I was unwilling to tempt any of them. I read, instead, a piece about what a terrible wife I can be.

I made it to the Midwest. My Father stayed alive long enough for me to get there, then, like the unexpected break in the arctic freeze, he came back to life. Is still alive. He was granted a reprieve, of sorts – more time on this planet despite the fact that none of his failing physical systems can be repaired. He can be maintained. He has more time to do – whatever he might do with it while living in a rehab facility and receiving dialysis three times a week. I have more time to do – whatever I might do with this push of self-awareness to be more of a serving daughter, rather than a self-serving one.

And my Mother. Yes, my Mother. My Mother who also survived this brush with death, but not well. Her internal life has been transformed by the arctic blast of her terror, her confusion, her anger. The grinding halt of a lifetime of controlling and taking charge and commanding the universe to do her beckoning by sheer force of her relentless will has collapsed her internal landscape just as effectively as disease has entered and destroyed my Father’s heart, lungs and kidneys. I am my Mother’s daughter, not just my Father’s. I have received the broad stroke of my Father’s inaccurate over-estimation of the goodness in life, including me. I have received the broad stroke of my Mother’s inaccurate over-estimation of the danger and dissatisfaction in life, including me.

My days in the ICU were good days. I breathed in and out. Held my Father’s hand and rubbed lotion on the maroon and blackened parchment of his arms. Listened to my Mother express her fears and angers and judgments. Forgave my Father for how he couldn’t find any other way to be in this world and so was, and may always be, an overly loving but broken man who never called me or anyone else out for the damage we have inflicted on him, and instead just kept taking more. Forgave my Mother for closing me and everyone else out in her need to protect herself from a kind of suffering she has never believed would cease. I breathed in the overwhelming love and support from my friends who tolerate a more accurate sense of my strengths and weaknesses, those who love me without requiring me to be flawless, those who have let me love them even when I’ve been misguided enough to demand their flawlessness.

I’m back in my usual life now. Sorting through, the way I do, the meaning of things. The take-away lessons. The way I can be a better daughter, friend, wife, mother when I touch, ever so briefly, the expansiveness of forgiveness. The mandate, perhaps, to serve others who love me, not wait for them to serve me. I’m at the car dealership waiting to learn what additional services my little sedan needs, how much a free oil change will cost me. I breathe in the smell of tire rubber and mediocre coffee and the sound of the waiting area TV that is a poor mismatch with the showroom music station. I breathe out into the bright glare of a glorious winter sun radiating off the sheen of pristine showroom cars.

I have something to give today. It will be another good day.