I’m approaching the most powerful month of my life in the 30-odd days from now till Halloween. Coming up on 5 years ago, when I prepared to board the plane outta LAX, shrieking glee with a healthy dash of disbelief, as I drove the massive Yukon with Florida plates to the rental car facility after traversing 3 states with 4 dependents. I’d been met with doubt and skepticism though I understood what the task before me, us had been, and I could fathom and taste what my competencies were, where I had experience and aptitude, and how much of a leap I’d need to make for the new bits and unfamiliar parts. A year ago, I felt daunted without collapsing into disbelief. The silver lining, splendor of the Fall onslaught was possible by not collapsing because my dignity and humanity were being questioned unlike I’d ever known. I’d faced microaggressions in 4th grade, name calling in college, ire throughout early adulthood, but nothing like the stark shit at 46. And yet, beacuse of the ugliness and the distasteful bitterness of institutional savagery infiltrating my home and life, I had months of the viscerally experiencing, as Steve said yesterday, how:
You forge relationships when you go through battles together.
11 months back, I put a suit on for the first time in 4 years after Troy told me that I had to wear a suit not an aloha shirt to court. It had been so long since I’d worn a suit that I didn’t have a conventional white button down—the only white button down in my closet was sleeveless. The sleeves were cut deliberately, shoddily. I don’t remember doing it, but don’t really know who else would have cut both sleeves off of a boring, white, button down and put it back on a hanger on the curtain rod in the closet. As I tied a Windsor knot, with Erika and Farai on videocall, listening, watching, exuding empathy by being there as I looped belt, tied shoelaces, parted my hair. I haven’t worn one day since then; the last time I’d put a suit on may have been pre-pandemic, for my grandmother’s funeral in Spring 2019. And I won’t do so again, not for a wedding, blessing, memorial, or court date as there are too many other colors, patterns, textures, and cuts of clothing that I’ll wear instead, and my days are numbered. I’ll keep wearing the salmon pants some days, and on other days, I’ll put on a coral-hued collared shirt, like those that are Dad’s preferred casual attire. Though, I don’t know if/when he’d put on a suit again, maybe for a wedding or a memorial. Or if he ever will. (Maybe, I’ll check that.)
Yesterday, as I drove up I-5, I remembered how I’d imagined running off to San Diego, to retreat and hide from the misery surrounding me last October. But, I stayed: I stayed put, I stayed steady, I stayed tender and in a vulnerable state so I could be more receptive to the love and care that so many showed me. I couldn’t have forecasted, nor known, who would appear and be my practice partners standing at all my sides: right side, left shoulder, behind me, hovering above in a metaphysical loving-protection sort of way, not controlling, limiting or debilitating, standing before me, standing in front of me to defend or defy depending on what sort of weather front was approaching. The people who cared with metaphorical adornments of helmet, shield, footwear suited to the climate and topography of that day or person: sandals some moments, snow boots on others. It’s like they offered me a belt, in fact, many belts, not just to keep loose pants up and on my hips but other belts to fashion like a tourniquet, a leash, or simply a big loop of sturdy material.
That ordeal gave me weeks of learning that all softening begins in home communities. In fact, all vulnerabilities are community just as all politics are local.
Back then, I didn’t know how long that awful yet auspicious autumn would last, I wondered in the most private depths of my imagination if that purgatory, borne of shades of misunderstanding escalated by calling in systemic forces, might be for a year or indefinitely, but I wouldn’t say that aloud — I didn’t want to curse, jinx, nor pollute others’ imaginations of what could go wrong, and for how long. And, if you’d told me that it would have been 80 days and 100 days, I don’t know how I would have held that sentence: in my hands, as a ~~~ block, ironclad collar clasped around my neck, on my shoulders. That was an instance when it was beneficial to not know the duration, just to be in the faith practice that there was a valley over hills, horizon past the waves that I might arrive in and had to step and paddle once and then again, infinitely for days, weeks, and months. It was the faith-in-movement, these faith acts, that propelled me out, over, and through.
Instead, I felt resolute. I was making amends, 16 years later, for Mom’s near-sins and plentiful blind spots. And the sensations kept pouring in, and I felt resplendent as they washed over my skin, hair, follicles. In millions of nerve ending, I felt the care, the invitations, the sudden pivots and pauses that dignified me, reminding me of my humanity.
Bring your attention into the flesh of your body, the organs, the blood vessels, fat, and other tissues encapsulated in all this skin. Focusing more attention on the warmth inside, less conscious awareness on the air outside epidermis. I can feel the pulse in my neck, the turgidity of blood at the base of my thumbs, flowing over the skeletal bridgeways across each wrist. And feel the solidity of the two trunks of legs, thighs that merge into pelvis. I can feel the skin of each toe touching up on skin of the next and adjacent. The omnipresent lid that toenails provide each toe top from anything thrust down by the magnanimous forces of gravity.
So, I’m resolved to make it rain, plan events, write poetry, read poems, memorize lyrics for the next karaoke, and memorize collective declarations while brining in mischief, bringing play that lives in the shadow of all of our mortality. And ask, then ask for more, after we receive enough for the current containers of glassware and Tupperware before swapping that out for the next gourd, larger than the canteens of yesteryears borne of messages in the bottles that washed along shores, unbroken by the plastic birthing new microorganism life in the far stretches of pasifika.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 