Jinx

On evenings when he has late meetings, my father often calls me as he drives home. We talk about politics, literature, crazy people we've encountered, our family, my mom (hi mom!) until he pulls up the gravel hill, past the cows, and into the garage.

Tonight I told him about the thing that has been gnawing on me for days and how I can't see the way past it. He listened and told me he understood, compared it to some times in his own life, quoted a good poet. He doesn't really have an answer, you see, because we are built the same way -- mirror images, or maybe more like those stacking Russian dolls -- and any answer lies in a complete reprogramming of the way that we are both hardwired to respond. More and more our conversations go like this: my problems, his parables, no answer. It has taken me awhile to adjust, to realize that the point of these exchanges is not an answer. This has been the crux of growing up for me - the bittersweet exchange of hard, clear answers for a more reciprocal understanding. I understand. I don't know.

I really wanted an answer tonight, though. Something to make it all clear up and go my way. But I let that go somewhere toward the end of the conversation and just listened to his story instead and realized suddenly how much more important it is to have someone say I understand instead of Now, this is what you need to do.

You have to remember this conversation forever, I thought as I hung up, you have to remember to talk to your daughter this way some day. I don't know how I'll remember the particular things my father said tonight, though; how I will hold them distinct in my heart and mind from a life time's worth of conversations about how to be gracious in a difficult world. Who needs answers when you have examples?



(And here's a poem I wrote about my father ten years ago, when we were fighting because I wanted to drop AP Calculus and AP Physics C.)

I Removed Atticus from the LIST today

Don't worry.
The others are still there
and someday
(probably soon)
he'll rejoin F. Scott and
George Washington
among those honorable
and insightful men
laid out on the list which defines
you

for

me.

But Calculus isn't camelias
and I am neither Jem
nor Scout
(It doesn't work both ways;
it is an unfair game,
I acknowledge)
nor am I able to integrate
Physics C into a novel that
you've always told me to read
a word game
a lesson on the Magyars
(your people).

See how truly I am your daughter.
Even now, my anger cannot last
as your genes in me dictate.

Consider Atticus reinstated.