February 19, 2008

Full moon risen above the east. I saw it rise over the parking lot of Zaxby’s in Swanannoa, where I had never been before, where I will never be again. I was driving toward Concord, NC, to do a lecture at the library, but I realized I couldn’t. I turned around and drove home. I was dragging sadness behind me like a blanket, and soon the whole world would be tangled in it. I didn’t realize what the sadness was about. I was missing my cast; I knew that was part of it. But then I remembered a phone message from Linda this morning, where she outlined the places where dad’s cancer had spread. I think I was thinking of that. He and I both are the sort who would be able to believe that all this cancer talk is foolishness, that it’s just a smear on the film. But I suppose it’s not. I thought of the ancient photo of him now in my kitchen, the one he professed no further interest in. A tiny boy in a white shirt and a silly hat. I prayed that it might be easy for him. I observed how his life had been so hard, sometimes cruelly and pointlessly so, sometimes because of me, and how it would be nice now if the ending of it went easy. I was crying so hard I had to pull over, while the moon rose over the parking lot in Swanannoa, where I never was before, where i will never be again.

Stopped at Walgreen’s, and Riley was exiting hiding his face and pretending not to see me, in shame at missing class today. I have to pretend to care. I have to pretend that seeing him wasn’t the joy it was at that moment, my face wrenched and ugly from weeping. It’s all so stupid. We’re so ill-equipped in the face of everything.

I googled my father. There was nothing. That was sad, too, though I don’t know what I was expecting.

I googled Maple Glen, where he was happy as a boy. It’s a tiny neighborhood near Centerville, north of the River, a tiny road dropping down from Centerville Road and dead-ending in the Monongahela. I vowed to go there, maybe with his ashes, when it comes to that.