![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I’ve been stuck inside, today, with the rain converging from all directions and pouring down like we haven't seen for months, and the sun shining in spite of it all. I need to do yard work, but I'm not really sorry to have to put it off; instead of doing yard work in the rain, I’ve been cleaning out my desk, which is beautifully tidy now, like someone else’s desk, and I'm also listening to A Game of Thrones, which I haven’t been able to find any information saying that the fifth book is coming out this autumn, but I’ve been assured that it is, and ever the optimist, I am readying myself for that moment by rereading. Or relistening, whatever.
And I’m also thinking about a conversation I had this weekend with my father, at dinner Friday in a cheesy faux-Mexican restaurant. You wouldn’t think a place like that, the requisite salsa and chips on the table, fake graffiti on the walls, you wouldn’t think that sort of place would be the sort of place where epiphanies occur, would you? But apparently it is that sort of place, because my father talked about his relationship with one of his brothers, the one he despises without apology or sugar-coating, and for the first time in forty years I understood. As much as you can understand, when it’s not you and not your story.
I guess there’s always space in any relationship, no matter how close, no matter how long-standing, to slip into something surprising, something that changes everything, something that makes perfect sense although it’s never something you’d have guessed for yourself. Something that clicks other things into place, and suddenly everything made soft and comfortable for years of wear is sharper, fresh again. Suddenly you’re thinking over past episodes in your own life, past fights and misunderstandings, and thinking, ohhh, so that’s why.
There’s always space for it to happen. But it’s always shocking when it does, and so I’m spending today cleaning out my desk, and listening to winter coming and troops forming, and thinking of my father, familiar and strange to me today.
And I’m also thinking about a conversation I had this weekend with my father, at dinner Friday in a cheesy faux-Mexican restaurant. You wouldn’t think a place like that, the requisite salsa and chips on the table, fake graffiti on the walls, you wouldn’t think that sort of place would be the sort of place where epiphanies occur, would you? But apparently it is that sort of place, because my father talked about his relationship with one of his brothers, the one he despises without apology or sugar-coating, and for the first time in forty years I understood. As much as you can understand, when it’s not you and not your story.
I guess there’s always space in any relationship, no matter how close, no matter how long-standing, to slip into something surprising, something that changes everything, something that makes perfect sense although it’s never something you’d have guessed for yourself. Something that clicks other things into place, and suddenly everything made soft and comfortable for years of wear is sharper, fresh again. Suddenly you’re thinking over past episodes in your own life, past fights and misunderstandings, and thinking, ohhh, so that’s why.
There’s always space for it to happen. But it’s always shocking when it does, and so I’m spending today cleaning out my desk, and listening to winter coming and troops forming, and thinking of my father, familiar and strange to me today.
