Lies

It’s the stories we tell ourselves, as much as anything, that define who we are. My story involves a lot of pain and very few happy endings. I’ve just realized that I’m going to lie to my daughter. Lie and lie and lie again, for the whole of my life. She will not grow up inside my story. Her’s will be one in which all things are possible and defeat will not ever be permanent.

My father’s story involved the curative powers of alcohol, and in a way it was a cure. It killed him. I edited the alcohol out of my tale but he bequeathed me the pain that made him drink. I would give Emlyn anything and everything that I have, but she inherits none of that. This is my new story and I will repeat it in the night before sleep, in the light of each new morning, beside fires in the wilderness and sitting at the kitchen table. That which I say three times might not be true, but that which I say now and always, will be.

A Fear-Full Man

Claire and Em are back at the house, hopefully napping soundly. I feel a pull from them that's hard to explain. How is it that you can spend half a lifetime trying to separate yourself from the world, to make yourself safe? Then you find yourself sitting in a food-court, separated from those you love by less than a kilometer, less than an hour, and you're all but weeping because they aren't near enough.

How does this happen, this unasked-for connection to the world? Did I carelessly leave the key where it could be found, or has time and age undercut all my carefully plumbed and trued defenses? And if so, what else is out there waiting to tiptoe in through that heart shaped hole?

It's getting full in here, I'll have to make some room.