Reading harold_maude's journal

I finally saw it. It had been out for awhile, and I missed the hoopla surrounding it, and like many other things that hold secrets, I waited until the noise had quited and stilled, and there it was, waiting for me.
In the hallow of it's eyes, the soul and the very nature of the thing, lay something that had eleuded me all my life.
The best of my father.
Who he was, the man hidden behind the multitudes of masks he donned daily to keep things as they should be, according to the gospel of my father.
In his eyes, his children should mirror his brothers and sisters while their parents were the law givers, no questions asked.
That was all I knew of my father. Up until the day he died, I never knew who he was.
I'm not sure he knew himself. All he ever seemed to know is that something went wrong somewhere and he had failed.
His children were at odds with each other.
When his death was close, we gave him the illusion that we were a mirror, even in a small way of his own brothers and sisters by putting away the years of pain and grievances that each of us held when it came time for us to have the last Christmas with him that we ever would.

It was the only Christmas I ever remember that a fight of some kind didn't break out. It was peaceful, quiet, gentleness came and settled in on us, and maybe because we all knew that this was the last Christmas we would have him with us, that we collectivly chose to be finally at peace with each other, even if for only a few short weeks.
We all seemed to know that after he was in the ground we would all go our seperate ways and lives, and mostly likely meet up again for our mother's death, thoes of us still remaining.

As I started to say and then said something along with it, important to all of this, this thing had been waiting for me.
A story about a man who spent his life talking about his life, telling his son from a very early age the things he wanted his son to know. Who he was inside.
The son not realizing that his father loved him enough to give him the only thing that would last, was angry at his father because he believed his father had done nothing but tell lies.
But he hadn't. Many of the things his father told him were true at least in part, and the other half was how his father saw the world and his place in it.
It was magical and wonderful and full of extroidnariness.
Even the most mudane thing became this adventure.
Life was the adventrue, and that's what he gave his son.
It wasn't a house or money, or anything like that, it was the best part of himself, that's what he gave his son.
He finally understood the day his father died, and found that there was burried treasure right there all the time, but he was too busy looking for something that was ordinary, and so I think maybe he finally got a chance to live quite happily ever after...

I understood what it was trying to tell me. That it doesn't matter if you paint the sky blue or green, or if your house is a shack or a mansion, if you give your children the best of who you are, it may very well be that a shack is a mansion filled with glorious treasures and things that are slightly not so beautiful to everyone else, but thoes things are the most precious things that a father can give of himself to his children.

See a mother is forced into the act of giving everything she is to her child simply due to the fact that the child spends nine months inside her body and then a good portion of it after they get outside with her there.
I know that things are different now, mothers shuffel their children at a very early age off to daycares, and sitters and grandmas, and so in a way they have many mothers, who if they are smart or not so smart, give some of the best of who they are to that child.
So the mother has to make the choice to give her child, this person who knows her in a way even her husband will never know her, the best part of who she is.
But the father, the choice has to be his from the beginning.
Everything he gives to the child either will give him or her roots so they can have wings or it will cause them to starve to death for wanting, no needing that one thing that can help them find their way.

See fathers are suppose to help guide their children in a certian way, mothers are suppose to help guide their children in another, each of the two halves blending and creating a new road of life and adventure that other people have walked on and will walk on, for a time perhaps, but it's the road you live your whole life on, even when everyone you ever knew is gone from your immeadate sight.

It's the road where you learn what oranges taste like to your mouth, and what that first kiss feels like, and what it's like when you suceed. And fail.
Life is full of both, and when parents give their children the best of who they are, it's like giving them a back pack full of things they can pull out when they feel weak or scared, and use to realize this isn't the end, or how it's suppose to end, but it's there to make you strong, and find your way through dark and dangerous places....

The father who saw me grow up, walked me down the isle and witnessed the lives of my children, never gave me any part of himself to help see me through life.
That breaks my heart now. It used to make me angry but it doesn't any more, it just breaks my heart.
I know I missed some really wonderful things.
I will never know thoes things.

The first father I ever really had I met about 3 years ago, after a long night of being lost on a road.
He worked in a diner, small place, but he knew we were comming and he knew that we wouldn't have much time.
He said he was waiting for the person I was with, and I was just the bonus.
In that short amount of time, he gave me the very best of who he was, his own sons didn't want the treasure he offered them, so I became his daughter and recieved their inheritance.
The very best of who he was.
I made him a quilt that he was burried in.
I miss him, and sometimes I wish I could talk to him about stuff.
I talk to that part of him that he gave me, and pretty much can see when he is disapointed, but even so, I know he's still there, wanting the very best for me, and loving me like the father I had growing up should have.

And I find myself crying, talking to the wind, and hoping somewhere he hears me....

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Apr 30, 2005.