Post Thanksgiving Babble

November 23, 2012 - 10:12am -- fraser

Once I had a roommate whose idea of getting ready for the holidays was to watch all three movies in the Godfather Trilogy.  There was not enough pot in the world to lighten the mood he ended up in, though he tested the possibility thoroughly.  For my part that year, I found the original Star Wars Trilogy on USA (lighter fare that I came out for when my roommate "retired" to his room).  Watching Star Wars became a tradition for me, personally, and for whatever reason it was just something that I did by myself.  I'm sure it had a lot to do with the mythologizing of a father/son relationship.  I've watched it with my son over the thirteen years of his life, and he loves the movies, all six of them. For all of that, I hadn't watched any of them with my daughter.  Last night, she and I put in The Empire Strikes Back, the movie in which Luke Skywalker first gets trained as a Jedi by Yoda and the movie in which Darth Vader tells Luke he is his father.  My daughter sat cuddled up with me watching every part with her eyes wide open, asking really good questions about the parts that were confusing.  It was significant.

It has been a year ago, yesterday, that my dad died.  As confusing and complicated as my relationship was to him, I had a good deal of clarity about the fact that all I really wanted to do yesterday (Thanksgiving!) was watch the Cowboys and Redskins football game and, since my daughter had asked, watch The Empire Strikes Back.  I hate it when people ask me if I thought about my dad yesterday.  I don't know why I hate that, but I do.  I didn't like it when someone at the table tried to toast Rufus (my dad's name was Rufus)--don't know why it bugged me, but it did.  I think it's the public display of me that gets me.  I don't mind writing about what goes on in my head or heart, but I don't like to give real time analysis of it.  I surely don't like the whole room wondering if I'm "ok"--if I need that attention, then my feelings are just shallow anyway.  I'm not sure why we have to have them so strongly but I'm pretty sure it's connected to how we know the world and our experiences in it.  The truth is that I did think about my dad yesterday, and I did think about the fact that the last of my father's aunts and uncles died on Wednesday.  I was not haunted by him, though, my daughter saw to that.

I am so good at domesticating my feelings, but when they are strong enough the best thing is to give them the freedom to be what they are lest I end up stuck behind a mask, breathing filtered oxygen and speaking with a menacing voice.  I still don't know what I think about writing a blog based on what's bubbling to the surface.  Is it narcissistic to write creative non-fiction about myself?  Am I just working through my own issues? I'm hesitant to share so much of myself because I don't want to get attention for my own stuff, yet, it seems to me that if I want folks to trust me, then I have to trust them.  What's sad is how cynical we are of such things, me included.  We just assume that everybody wants something from us; why else would someone share such deeply personal information?  Darth Vader clearly wanted Luke to join him when he shared the deeply personal fact that he was his father--he exploited Luke' s circumstances because he had already given in to the impulse to use anything and everything for leverage and power.  

Despite how cynical I am about human nature, I still believe that it's possible to be overwhelmed with emotion, sincere emotion, without manipulating people and without looking for anything for it.  That was the beauty of my daughter cuddling up next to me on Thanksgiving, the anniversary of my dad dying, to watch a movie--all she wanted was just to be.  In those moments, I felt something overwhelming that I needed to feel, but it didn't need anybody else's attention in order to have a deep purpose. Everyone is not out to make a show of emotion; some just want to create safe place to share them and have them shared.  It's a sign of how far removed we are each other and ourselves that we don't trust our own emotions or the emotions of those around us.  I just want to make safe spaces because what I crave is a safe space.  My daughter, quite innocently, made me aware of one thing I really want in my life.