April 16, 2023

End of day, the sky outside gray and dull yellow. Towhees chirping. Finished the revision of Some God in the Waters. Waiting for yesterday’s paint to dry so I can go back into today’s work. Finished the New Yorker crossword in forty minutes. Having opted out of church, almost forgot it is a Sunday. 

I remember my father remarking that he enjoyed old age because it was full of happy memories. Mine is not, so far. This is not a complaint; I’m not haunted by bad memories, very often, but they do seem usually to be of moments of emotional or empathetic failure, when I could have done a good thing but did not, when I could have done a far better thing than I did. My apologia for each of these is How could I have known? I could not have. In that sense I’m blameless, if melancholy. Then why do they return to me with such insistence? Am I to learn something now when the moment of crisis is fifty years in the past? I think of finding my mother weeping. I could have knelt on the floor where she was and embraced her, tried to bring comfort. Instead, I walked away confused. Neither of my parents ever embraced me, ever consoled or comforted me in any overt or passionate way, so the gesture was not then in my vocabulary. Why confront me with it now? Is there some alchemy that can reach back and change what was? Even if I extend deliberate effort to find a moment of love or triumph, a spirit within me asks “Is that how they saw it?” Perhaps I felt loved and included and necessary when the people around me were rolling their eyes and waiting for me to go away. I whirl in a cloud where my perceptions and certainty never collide. I have no wall to back up against, no firm sureness to set my compass by. I thought A loved me, that I had B’s respect. Maybe I misread everything. I have learned to live with this, but it must make a difference in my character, perhaps one that only others can see. The memories I can turn to are of being alone in the wilderness. There no misconception, no error that was not fatal, is possible.