DELICATE SHARPNESS 11/15/11

It was 4 years ago today that my Dad died, at home in Mecklenburg, facing the window that he had sat in front of for as long as I can remember.  I sat on his lap as a child, in front of this window, as he read to me.  I couldn’t tell you what we read, but I remember the thrill of being that close to him, of feeling the strength and security of his arms around me, the comfort of nuzzling my face into his plaid, button down shirt that smelled of clover and hay.  I savored those moments for all they were worth, for my Dad was not an affectionately demonstrative man.
I remember kneeling in front of him, at his desk by that window, my head in his lap.  Pliers in hand, he made little fanfare of yanking out whichever baby tooth happened to be dangling from my gums at the time.
This was his spot; his desk, his chair by the window. It was where you could find him after a long day in the fields, baling hay or cultivating this or that, his clothes dusty, his work boots left on the mat in the laundry room.  I loved to slip into those boots and clomp around house, but only when he wasn’t looking.  They were soft and oily, the color of freshly roasted coffee beans.
It was at this window that the hospital bed was set up 4 years ago.  It was so strange to see a bed there instead of his desk and chair as they were what had always been there. Just the simple act of moving that desk and that chair from that spot made everything else seem skewed and off balance, a gesture that truly indicated that nothing would ever be as it was before. Everything would forever be changed; nothing could ever put things back in their proper place regardless of how many attempts were made to rearrange things and circumstances.
I remember the snowstorm that evening as I drove pell-mell from Ithaca back to our Mecklenburg home with my oldest sister in my father’s new van.  We had left the house about an hour earlier to pick up my daughter from daycare and I was just getting her out of the car seat when I got the call. A few flurries dusted my eyelashes and I was startled by their delicate sharpness.  By the time we got to Meck the snow was falling in sheets and I couldn’t see regardless of whether I used my high or low beams. It was as if we were driving into a tunnel of snow and I was hypnotized by the rhythmic slapping of the windshield wipers. We felt as if Dad were making it snow and it seemed right and beautiful although we couldn’t have told you why.
A few weeks later I was alone in my car, driving back downtown from the mall.  Looking out over the hills and land that my Dad had loved so (he said that although he had travelled the world there was no place as beautiful as right here) I began to sob, feeling the grief that engulfed me so completely then, and now tends to ebb and flow. I felt so lost, so confused, so angry, so everything.  My relationship with my Dad had been complicated; a source of mystery and conflict for both of us, I think.  And only recently have I been able to know that on the other side of that intense conflict lay the presence of love; a deep and soothing balm of love that had always been there.  Suddenly a car merged in front of me, it’s license plate simply said “Asa.”   Dad was letting me know that he was okay, that I was okay, that we were okay.   My Dad.  Asa.