How I’d love love love to dance with my father again.

 

A friend called me today and asked how I was doing.  I lied.  You do that sometimes to spare the people around you from having to carry what you are, even if it is fucking heavy.  He didn’t know what today was until I mentioned it.  He asked me how I was doing again.  I lied.  Then he asked me how long its been. I told him three years.  As I write this, I realize its been since 2007.  I didn’t mean to lie that time, but it turns out that I did.

It took becoming a parent to let go.  Anyone that knows my history knows that letting go is not simple for me, I hold on until I bleed, then I hold on a little more.  It took carrying my boy in my womb, and holding him to my breast to feed him, and walking the floor with him all night when he had colic, and watching him take his first steps to understand – it was time to let go.

I remember the first time that Clyde missed me.  I remember the look on his face when he looked up and I was there and the pure joy that clothed his body and his reaching out those chubby arms for me. I picked him up and held him tight and I told him something that I still say to this day:

‘Your momma loves you more than any mommy, has ever loved any baby, in the history of the world”

I don’t let a day go by without telling Clyde that I love him.  I still hug him, even though he’s almost too big for it.  I’ve made it a priority to make sure that he knows how his mother loves him, because I know what it feels to have to live without love.

I don’t recall if I told the story of the day my father left here.  I know that I’ve told it, and I know it is in the Vizionz book but I can’t recall if it is here.  That was one of the more challenging days of my life, and fuck it all I was barely out of diapers.

I used to wait for daddy to come home and I would run into his arms and shower him with kisses.  In our urban apartment a pool was out of the question so he would put on his swim trunks and mom would put my bathing suit and swim cap on and the shower became our own pool where he would keep me safe from the fish and the sharks.

It took decades for me to understand how his departure affected my mother as well.  Imperfect as she is (like all of us) she loved him, and she wanted forever.  It took becoming a woman and having my heart-broken for the first time to be able to see her divorce through her eyes.

When I was pregnant with Clyde, he came around a lot more.  It was  promising, I thought.  He was not there as my dad, but maybe he would be a good grandfather.

Then 2007 came.

I was finally able to close that door, bolt it, and throw away the key.  I did it for my own mental health but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have moments, like today, his birthday.

It’s never simple, but this year it feel especially hard.  Last year I was able to lean on The Man when these feelings came, and like the good Daddy he is, he made his little girl feel safe, and loved, and cherished.  It didn’t hurt less that my father was not here, but Daddy make it bearable.

That is not available to me today because of what’s happening with him, and that made it even worse actually.  Today I didn’t have either one of my daddys and I wondered if I would have the strength to go on if something happens in surgery.  I mean, I know the answer, mommy trumps daddy.

It’s just that daddys are so special to little girls that no little girl should have to let go of two of them.

This is what I looked like then: 

That type of innocence is gone now.  My forehead is still huge though so there’s that.  I kind of grew into my ears though.

There’s still a lot of little girl left in me though, and I want to dance with Daddy.  I just need him healthy enough to dance again.