Another passing storm

“Love it away” she says. Look at that dark cloud and love it away. I glance up from my work. It’s early yet but the sky has gone to night. Storms roll through the city, lightning like a monster on the loose. Water pours through the glass and steel walls like they are made of chicken wire. It hits like a wall out of nowhere in what was such a sunny day.

We were doing so well. How dare you cancel time with me to be with HER? Her night is Wednesday! This was supposed to be my time! Once the vapors gather, clouds thicken quickly. Why is it you keep trying to get me to state my opinions just so you can bash them about with your personal take on things? You say you’re trying to convert me into a non-liberal? Hey! Did I ever sit there and try to change YOUR mind on anything? Did I ever say that anything about you was unacceptable to me? By the way – I’m a little sick of having a partner who’s not interested in morning sex. So fuck you. There are a lot of people who’d be plenty happy to spend an evening with me. Think I’ll go out to dinner with one of them now! Hear the thunder, here comes the lighting. ZAP. You’re almost gone, “sweet heart”.

I can’t compete with that 3-year-old daughter. There is a joy he gets in playing with the tot in whose features he sees his own that spending time with me will never render. She brings a joy to his life that I don’t. And it’s a joy that something tells me I have never brought to anyone’s life.

“That’s not true.” she says, again.

The question just under my rage is just this - “Who is going to love me best?” As soon as I verbalize it I know how selfish it sounds. Black sheets of fearsome rain pour through the best defenses of maturity. I’m drenched in knowing I won’t get enough of what I want. Self-pity is making party favors in the kitchen. But there it is, the craving to be on the top of the heap and the suspicion that I belong on the bottom.

I go hunting for answers back in the source, my I-Ching, my family photo album. I don’t know when this one was taken, but I must have been just shy of 3 years old judging by the toys I’m holding. That big vinyl easy chair where Dad always sat and watched television (hence it became known as the “daddy chair”) doesn’t yet look as cracked and depleted of stuffing as I remember it. That crazy chair would leak bits of foam such that it had to be swept under regularly. But in this photo, it’s new.

I remember that chair, suddenly. I remember piling in there next to my dad, squeezing into the space between him and the armrest. He’d remark that I was getting bigger as it got tougher for me to fit in. (I wasn’t the only one growing bigger, thanks to mom’s cooking, however.) I don’t remember when the point came that I stopped getting into that chair. It doesn’t matter for this memory, though. For that time, in that shot, I was wedged in good. Having to have all of my dolls with me at all times, the chair is a pile of me, dolls, and dad. The smile on his face is just so happy. He must have been out mowing the lawn or downstairs working on those cars judging from the work clothes he’s wearing. His hair is still dark and from the shape of his face I can tell he still has his teeth. He’s still relatively thin in his face and I can see the vestige of that handsome young guy mom married still there. And there I am. Holding 3 near-naked, beaten up plastic baby dolls and my Dressy Bessie, face dirty, hair in a “palm tree”, squished in under his arm, just a baby, still oblivious. I’m in that stage of violent play and steamrolling my way through growth. The satisfaction of that moment, the payoff in the shot, is all on Dad’s face.

I’ve seen the wedding photos, I’ve seen the valentines and anniversary photos. This smile is not in those pictures. It’s here. It’s mine. It’s like daddy’s nudging me through the ether, “Tootsie, I loved you best.”

He must have missed it after I no longer fit in the chair. I didn’t. It never even occurred to me that I was in the business of growing up. The toy car I fashioned out of a cardboard box had no rear-view mirror. It never occurred to me that I meant anything to anyone. It never has.

What do we get into these relationships expecting? What long lost piece of me is supposed to come flying out of him? Am I expecting him to be “Mr. Right” or “the one”? yick! If I don’t hold those sorts of expectations over this then I won’t have to start resenting him for failures of perfection that I out-picture into the future! I get along much better with people when they don’t have to be my savior. Did I mistake him for being the source of love in my life?

Lets get one thing clear, thunder cloud, I am my own source of sunshine. I am my own source of love. You can rumble and zap and dampen my day, but you can’t take that away from me.

He has to spend time with the 3-year-old. He has to fill photo albums and go on camping trips and keep her close because she will forget. She will turn into a teen who thinks her parents didn’t love her right because that love didn’t show up in just the way she wanted it to (even though she won’t be able to spell that out, precisely, when asked). He has to sacrifice the time now because it’s his job to remember, to be her mirror, to be a road home through the angry stages of growing up.

I manage my way to the subway through the underground tunnels. From the train I watch the lightning tear away at the night sky with deep, violet gashes. Its rage is passing off to the East. Before I head upstairs I check the mail and I’m surprised to find a card from mom.

I get cards from mom all the time. The poem in them is usually nice and she signs it “love mom XXOO” at the end. And I keep them. This one? She’s filled one whole side with a note. I’ve never seen this much of her handwriting in one place and I’m amazed just at the quantity of it.

“Thinking about you and your milestone achievement and how proud I am of your determination. You have proven to yourself and me that you have what it takes to do whatever you want. I hope you do something fun for your anniversary!”

oh yeah, that’s right. None of us is here to be “loved best”.