The Unfamiliar House

Walking out of that strange house that held so much familiarity with my sleeping son nestled so comfortingly on my shoulder I felt finally and completely like an adult. Although you attended me and were ready to assist at my slightest request, the realization that I didn’t need your help swelled up in me and led my walk down the path to the driveway. The hardship of raising a small human, so dependent, is mine and my chosen one’s – not yours. You can observe and commiserate and help but in the end it’s my task and the upbringing that I am shaping is to be my glory or defeat.

I saw the ice cream spade in the sink, the tool that has dished out a hundred deserts after being made warm with hot water and expertly proportioned a heaping bowl of creamy sweetness. Deserts which were shared after delicious meals prepared by you with the big frying pan and chopped up on the wooden block cutting board and served casually but elegantly. Really, it was only the furniture that had changed. But it was still there, in the lower level, and it rushed up to meet me when I was down there putting my tired son to bed. The leather armchairs, the garage sale acquired speakers, that strange print from an old magazine. It was all still there, the trappings from the time when I was young and stupid and it was me and you in some sort of intimate and special place where I had not just a father but a Dad and felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

But it really doesn’t matter – because she wasn’t there. Advice from others tells me to let it go, ride it out, see what happens, see what the next time brings. But there is a place deep inside of me that knows, knows why she wasn’t there. Knows she didn’t want to see me in her house, knows she didn’t want to see my son, knows she didn’t want to share your friends with me as the fact that I might speak was a guaranteed certainty. No, she reasoned, it is best just to stay away, let them have their time, stay out of it. Maybe not a bad strategy, maybe the best strategy, but potent nonetheless. All the pain of the past years, of feeling pushed and manipulated and undercut comes back – comes flooding back – and I’m back to my original question. Why? Why does it have to be this hard? Why can’t I have a Dad? Why doesn’t my Dad love me enough?

I’m trapped, again. The familiarity of the night is there and wrapped around me like a warm blanket and I know, that if I just push a little harder and continue to be the bigger the person, the person that doesn’t play games (except those games meant to spare others’ feelings) that maybe some semblance of it can all come back. Maybe it will be enough and you can be there for my son and teach him the things that I love you for. But maybe it’s all too late and in becoming an adult I finally realized that cycles are hard to break, that the hurt WILL come again, given enough time, that the inevitability of the hurt is there and waiting and ready to suck me in. And then I’m just tired and ready to drive back to Denver.