The Original

Laila when you remembered my dad for me today it hit me hard.  Very hard.  I cannot tell you how many father's days passed inside of my politics and stance against the Hallmark commercialization of my love for my father.

He never complained.  Never waited for a card or a call on this day.  And he loved me still.

In my head I believed it was his solidarity with me against the machine that has slowly reduced us to contrived products.  His politics is my politics as you know but I feel much less certain this cold day of hindsight.

I think he knew more.  Always.  And I now know that he loved more intensely and with greater introspection than I could see.

If time was kinder with 20/20 I would do it different and just tell him that I loved him over and above my resistance to commidify our bond.

I would be bigger than just a posture because I am learning that life and love is more than just a politics.

So I am uncertain today but also certain that my stance in his time with me just glossed over him and his feelings about this day and other days when my heart was absent.

I don't know my beautiful sista because I never asked him. 

Now two years on and some more I would do it very differently.  I would still resist but I would do so with my heart in his hand.

Just days ago Erica in South Carolina sent me a picture of her dad sitting in the car on his way home from a doctor's appointment.

I stared at the brother and could see my father through Erica's eyes.  In that time that my dad struggled before he died Erica walked for me.

Her heart became mine across the miles as I sat silently fuming at powers and a course greater than me and my clenched memory.

Erica called on me to be bigger than my hurt and pain.  She asked me to honor my love for him and accept that life is a course of painful realizations that cannot be avoided.

I know what she is going through as she struggles now to live the words she wrote for me in compassion and love.

I pray she will dance with her father many more times so he may remember what her mother felt all those years ago before her final calling.

I hope that you will also dance with your father if even over the phone.  He is a wonderful man who reached for me when the lights made my eyes dark.  I will never forget his kind heart.

I guess inside of all this emotion it is perhaps most appropriate that I remember my father with my mother today.  Her heart must be more broken than mine.

But were it not for you and your love that bends around plastic stances and porous politics I would not be wishing with all my heart that I could just hold my father and tell him that I love him more than anything in this world and beyond.

Thank you for caring so much to remind me to remember the man who called me his copy.

Onward!