and then there are things i'm never really sure how to talk about. like how the man who wouldn't talk to me for months, when this baby was still just cells and parts and not person, is the same man who every morning when i get up to get ready rolls over in bed and puts his arm out and snuggles with his grandson until i'm ready to get us both ready for the day. and everyone tells you no one can not love a baby, which is totally untrue, but he loves this kid more than just about anything, i think. and i don't know what it is. proximity, for sure. maybe the memory of a name. i don't know. i know enough not to think about it for too long, or to try not to, because i'm still not sure where i fit in the love so very apparent there. we are working on it, surely. but i know that he still looks at me and sees less than what was there before, instead of the so much more that there is.
and i was thinking, the other day, about loss, because as much as i've gained in the past few months there is a real sense of the other, literal and otherwise. and how even when it's not us doing the losing that we have such a pathological need to make it personal. i'm not sure if that's because it's the only way we can identify to share pain that's not ours or if it's because we're inherently selfish and can't deal with things that aren't ours. it probably doesn't matter, but it can get really annoying. when the pain is personal. which is maybe why there's a difference between sympathy and empathy. and i've definitely lost whatever thread of a point i started out with.
except for this: a memory, so strong it's a waking dream. a five-year old me, walking down the street from the daycare with my hand in my dad's. and his stride was so big and he was so tall and we talked about the wind in the willows and toadie and going on an adventure, bilbo, and dinners of hamburger helper beef stroganoff and macaroni and cheese and listening to star wars on bbc radio. and piggyback rides on that brother's back and sneaking smokes behind the garage and the music he used to play and how it changed the way i looked at everything. how safe everything was and always would be.
except for the part where it isn't, because it can't be. which begs the question, why, when we supposedly forget so much of the bad, does the good that remains hurt so much?
