I was 9 or 10 the last time I called him Dad.  Much like not having the foreknowledge of the last time you’ll make love to a soon-to-be ex lover, or the last time to say I love you to one that dies unexpectedly, the words came and went without fanfare. What really should be shouted down from the heavens to the world below about THIS being the last time for something significant, that this time should be duly noted, fades into the folds of the everyday and passes as easily as the weather on a particular day. The last time of anything should be given respect. But seldom is. Until later.

Today is later. Today the death certificates came. I’m the “informant”. “Daughter” it says. On the death certificate of my father.  The fact I’m old enough to be in some official capacity on someone’s death certificate is something of an alarm. One of those rites of passage. Of the aging process. Something that only happens to those of us blessed enough to have outlived a loved one I guess.

My biological father, a man whose memory has been firmly, neatly, summarily slammed the door on, died on August 13.  Did I think he’d never die? Did I think I wouldn’t know? Or that I wouldn’t care? I can’t say now what I thought before August 13, but whatever it was, was wrong on all counts.

Making ice cream with my father

“Father” is to be distinguished from a Daddy. Well you already know that. They are often one and the same. But maybe just as often, to give a nod to all those who’ve raised children not of their own blood line, not. Thankfully I still have a Daddy. He came into my life simultaneously with the cessation of my father hearing my 9 or 10 year old voice call him “Dad.”  My Daddy is the first love of my life.  All the respect, admiration, love that I can muster is his. And he knows it.  He mourns with me, expected my confusion upon this event, and prays for my grief to be relieved.

I’m shocked by the emotional fallout. Unanticipated, unplanned, unprepared. Pretty much everything falling in the “un” category.  With the exception of distraught, stunned, brought to my knees, and as my mother puts it “the gut wrenching emotions that you could have only experienced at his death and not a moment before”.

As my father became an old, withered man, I became a vibrant, full grown woman. And I failed to realize that. My memories of him, set in the unchanging past, did not progress true to life.  Reality failed me. The tables turned my friends at a point I neglected to observe. The caregiver/parent became the needy and the needy/child became the caregiver. It is the cycle of life.  A cycle of life I regretfully missed.

There are times we recognize we really messed up. We missed the mark. Times of mistake and regret and longing that can never be reconciled between those of flesh and blood. I find myself against one of those. In the end, my father and I are both guilty of the same thing – abandonment;  the degree and timing of which is now suddenly and irrevocably irrelevant.

There’s a price to pay for turning the other cheek and never bothering to swivel back to check the direction from which you turned.

The tears will dry over time.  But I’ll be left with this for the rest of my days: while I may have had no need for a Daddy for the last 40 years of my life, I now sadly know there was always room in my life for one more person.

Summer has made a call to Oklahoma. The yard yawning and stretching and turning shiny and sparkley in all its green rainbow glory has created a need to dig in the dirt. I’ve been taking a break and didn’t tell anyone. Several of you noticed anyway. And for that I extend to you a virtual hug. Nope, I’ve not stopped the blog.

With my free time I will continue plundering flower beds for a bit longer. Then I return to the keyboard with clean fingernails, whiter and shinier against the bit of tan on skin.

Rolling down some back-road cloaked in the bliss of anonymity, one arm in contact with the wheel at the point that encourages my wrist to flop carefree at the end of it, head bobbling to a slow rhythmic beat that doesn’t match my rousing vocal accompaniment to Life is a Highway that’s cranked up so loud it’s oozing from the Yukon like displaced mortar, I come across this.

THIS is temptation.  THIS signifies a certain head toss to the grinding pressure of today’s world, a ballsy show of throwing caution to the wind.  If you look at it with just the right tilt of your head, you’ll get the same glint in your eyes.  Selling everything I own would enable the purchase of a few acres in any number of states, on which I could move or build a small house, delivering my bobbling head into town once a week for provisions in THIS.

I don’t succumb. Others in my life would highly disapprove and I highly value these others.  I photograph the Ford and pull back onto the road with a slow-mo melodrama moving frame by frame through my brain. It conveniently loops from the part that shows me walking up to the house, knocking on the door, engaging the owner in negotiations, taking the keys from them and driving away into the sunset in that truck.  My melodramas never include the pragmatic part about what I’d do with all my crap in the Yukon, the Yukon, the exchange of titles, discussing what oil the Ford uses, insurance, etc.

Not many of us ever throw this degree of caution to the wind. But who among us hasn’t entertained the thought of running away from home, even if it’s for a mere few harmless days?  It’s a bit risque and for the first time in my long history of SRTs I see it for that. You’re out there by the droves sending me emails  about the longing to get out there. I fully understand the longing. Few things in our lives are as liberating, empowering, and rejuvenating as a solo road trip.

So I ask all of you with latent and repressed open road wanderlust sitting at home fantasizing about the cloak of anonymity, arm draped over the wheel, or resting lightly on handle bars, aren’t you late, for nowhere in particular?

It happens when I’m not looking. And usually takes a goosing from the first thunderstorm of the season to deliver me from my refrigerated stupor. This year in the absence of early tornado warnings, I ratcheted to an upright and cheerfully alert position from crumpled truculence all by myself. I’m quite proud. And very happy to report Spring is here.

One month ago this:

Downtown Tulsa March 2010 Snow

Today this:

This is what Okies look forward to in the coming weeks. Notice the smiles on their faces.

Thank you Trevor & Beth for this photo. I discoverd it on your memory stick. That's right, the one I still have.

For those wanting the rest of the camping series, keep checking back. For now, go camping. Or fishing.

We’re still clutched in winter’s half-light. Despite the execution upon our clocks of the thing called Daylight Saving Time, the seduction of air struck by sun hasn’t made it round.  It’s March 20 and snowing.  Like the shuffle of one nondescript town after another on a forced trip across Kansas*, the sight is unwelcome as family showing up unannounced.

Only yesterday was I prepared to write how the initial blush of spring’s color had begun altering the silver whisper of winter.  Those dogwood blooms, the forsythia bush’s siren of bright yellow, the “tulip” trees’ delicate drooping pendulums were enough to float cliché to the top of my vocabulary.  My fingers were suspended over the keys that would have delivered “amber light” to this post.

Instead, this email showed up in my inbox (fortunately the anti-critter software called it out as Spam):

“My name is rebecca, i am loving young girl,i will also like to know you better, i want you to send an email to me so that i can send you my picture for you to know whom i am.Here is my email address (rebeky3001@live.fr)I am waiting for your mail . Remember the distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life.
Yours Love
rebecca”

Dear Rebecca, you obviously do not know we’re still in the vise grip doldrums of half-light.  Bug off.

* To SRT readers in Kansas, you know I love road trips in Kansas, believe Kansas should be the proving ground for all those desirous of calling themselves travelers, but I had to make my visual point and Kansas offered the best example. At the hands of a writer, everyone occasionally suffers.  Notice I made no explanation or caveat to my family.