Something tells me that this would not be an identity he'd be embracing too whole-heartedly. The man living into his mod story in this picture, the one who wanted to imagine himself in full body, full thrust experiences, the one who took the little girls out to the walk on the train tracks in their easter dresses and constantly wove the story of easter-eggs-so-well -hidden-we-didn't-find- them-until-the-next year, the one who brought poetry to the kids who hated school... this man is not the one who'd be buying a tilly hat and fussing about discounts.
I often wonder what Dad would have made of my life, in the end, how I'm living the life full that I know he wanted. I think about the deep immersion into experience that textured him -- like the time he was lost in the caves in Belgium with M on his shoulders and the lights started going off... his fear translated into a deeply thrilled retelling that I overheard more than once over dinner parties. Sometimes deep misfires -- like his need to put himself against the wall in the gas chamber at the concentration camp in France we visited, him trying to imagine with his body and full senses what it would have been like to be herded into that room.
In many ways, Tony wasn't remotely governed by convention -- he veered wherever he felt he could live fully, pushed the bounds of "taste" and hesitance, ordered the 10 scoops of ice cream in the amusement park in Copenhagen just because they offered it (and found himself juggling balls of it in his hand), had the passionate affair that resulted in his leaving my mom, who didn't really know how to play or live in vivid relief without him. Looked deeply at poets and people living in their art, wanted to live inside Leonard Cohen's music or characters on stage.
But there was also deep convention, the tight immersion in his family, especially near the end, the immersion that irritated me when I had no time alone with him. When he got sick, the living fully was infused with a kind of sentimental portent, a fear wrapped in a deep yearning for love and more. He'd kiss my arm fiercely if I gave blood, clutch my little sisters and P to him, try to find his way through my prickles and fears and glum uncertainties of my early 20s and connect with me as an adult.
The Raymond Carver poem about endings resonates here:
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
I hope he felt that. I think he did, though I know I didn't let him feel that enough.
I know I want to live fully too, I want to feel myself beloved here on my earth. I'm quailing a bit this morning about what living fully means for me. My long conversation with F last night reinforced that connection, the sense of rare intense closeness that embodies living fully, to me... the transcendent moments. But, no room in this space for embracing it completely... so what IS living fully? Letting that go and living strong and autonomously? Quietly cupping my hand around that possible heat and trying to keep it aglow? Letting bursts of it be part of my life, followed by the empty spaces? Which of these let me live fully vivid, experiencing it all -- and to feel beloved on the earth?
My dad had that, jumped into heat and vividness... and also carved a life where he felt beloved. There were a lot of ashy moments along the way, though. The time in his tiny crappy bachelor apartment with the pull out couch after my mother drew her lines and made him leave, even though P was still in Europe (the time that my uncle claimed all he did was lie around and smoke pot -- but how much to trust that crazy uncle who outed me at my grandfather's funeral?). Losing us out of his immediate life, my conflicting way of never letting him feel truly loved. All of his fear as his illness got bigger, his bargaining, his hallucination and nightmares, no real peace with me.
The ashy moments are part of the texture of the vivid, I think. We live safe or we live leaping. My dad lived leaping.
2 comments:
That Carver poem is a favorite of mine, so simple, so fundamental for so many of us. And a new favorite song of mine adds another layer for me. The Innocence Mission's "While Mack was Swimming" has a lovely refrain going through it - "No one knows how they are loved." The song refers both to how we don't imagine what is out there for us and how we hold back, as you did with your father.
I suppose I interpret a lot in the world, I suppose we all do. I try to interpret myself as being loved wherever I go -- swimming, work, shopping -- even though I am mostly unknown in all these places. But I think I make it so, as well.
What a beautiful, poetic tribute.
I'll choose leaping over safe any day. I think I made that decision about ten years ago (my longest friends would smile here, if they were reading this, for they know all too well :-) The joy is greater, the pain as well. But between safety and the thick of life as it's meant (according to my own gospel) to be lived? The latter, without hesitation.
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