4.

there is a peace in forgetting. my father is living proof of that. a man who dragged a lifetime's worth of weight behind him can finally spend his final years in some peace. if he happens to get worked up about something, he'll just forget it later, unable to return back to it as he did for decades, hackles raised and teeth bared worrying at something till blood is drawn.

of course there is also danger in forgetting. like today, when he didn't remember to wait for the train staff to assist him in getting off at his stop. his senile shuffle and unreliable balance, more unfortunate relics of his brain tumor, conspired against him on the steps to the platform and he fell to the ground breaking his hip.

we are past the beginning of the end for him. i've felt that for a while now. and while i know he'll make it through surgery tomorrow, and will carry on shuffling about the world as soon as he is able, i wonder a bit, how much longer he'll have. i feel like a traitor to admit it, but i've carried around a feeling since college that he wouldn't make it to my wedding, though now, the keener grief is the even likelier possibility that he won't ever meet my children.

i can't really change the future as much as i'd like to, so instead i'm taking a page from his book and am doing my best at forgetting. forgetting all the weight i've carried between us these years, forgetting all the things i wish'd i'd done or said or asked – forgetting all those insidious, paralyzing regrets. instead i'm calling him whenever i can just to say hi. ask him what movie he's watching. tell him, again, that i am still in seattle. making sure i say i love you even though it's not the smoothest phrase between us. i am spanning the distance of oceans and continents one small gesture at a time.

there is peace in forgetting. and however much longer my father has amidst the chaos of a body slowly betraying itself, i am grateful he has finally found some peace at all.

3.

2.

for the most part i have seen change come through my life like the turning of the tides – slow and steady rhythms taking me in new directions with a constant churn. ebb. flow. in. out. as predictable and even as breathing in sleep. 

but there have been a few crucial moments i can plot on a map. in a fraction of a second, in the span of a passing word – a look, a touch – and my whole life suddenly lifts up and away from its course, pivots abruptly and goes confidently in a new direction pulling me along in its wake.

last month i was given one of those moments. 

it came as a complete surprise, but then again, they always do. this one in the gift of a simple goodbye hug. in what initially began as a run-of-the-mill-goodnight, i was quietly relieved of over a decade's worth of negative self-talk. as the flesh behind my hips gently gave way beneath a gentle, confident hand, in its place, a grace i had yet to find on my own suddenly filled the void. for this one borrowed moment i was able to experience my body as another saw and felt it, and i could return to myself with the certainty that the soft yield of my skin behind my hips was just as it should be.

1.

i have spent the past few years regretting the negligence of a space i no longer fit. the lines have stretched out, the colors have faded, and it pains me to say a well-loved red dress sits outside my garage, waiting to be taken to goodwill.

on second thought, i'm glad the most recent load hasn't yet been donated. there are some things too precious to let go of. i have a house of my own now, with two attics, and i'm sure there is some out of the way corner i can give over to certain key relics of my past. i am, after all, a preservationist at heart.

for now, i'm claiming this corner for future moments to be pinned up in words, in the hopes they are hurtling toward me, eager to be on display, helping me put an end to the strange silence of the past several years.