about that...yeah.

**this photo was taken in some random bar in san franciso, easter sunday 2008. this is patio grafitti, not bathroom grafitti, for all you sticklers**

The line between want and need is not a line most of us are fond of walking. Or living, for that matter. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, what each of us really needs to make it in the world is a fairly short list. I-pods and cell phones and disposable incomes have become things that we need, just plain need to get through our day to day. I’m consistently amazed at the amount of “first world” conversations I have with people I know and love…conversations about needing to cut fat out of our diets, or to spend more time on the treadmill, or losing five dollars on a stupid sports bet, or spending fifteen hundred dollars on a lost weekend in Las Vegas. They are conversations that the great majority of people in the world wouldn’t even begin to understand. Isn’t it ironic that the things we convince ourselves we want the most are the things that allude us?

Sometimes the things we want are the very things we most don’t need. Case in point: if I had driven off to Louisiana in the middle of a summer night when I was 19 to get married, my life would likely be a ruin of epic proportions, right along with his. And that’s not because I don’t want to get married. I do. And it’s not that I didn’t want to get married to him, because at the time, I did want to. It’s hard for me to comprehend what that might have meant. The ripples that stone would have scattered over the pool I could see at my feet, down the river that I was just beginning to glimpse, and all the way down to the ocean that was beyond my reckoning, they might have been more than anyone could have imagined. And they might have been more than anyone could have bourne. The long and short of the story is that I didn’t do what I wanted to do, right at that minute, and like Mr. Frost says, that has made a great deal of difference.

My friend Patrick says that the hallmark of adulthood is to delay gratification. I’m not totally sure I agree with him on that point. But I do agree that delaying gratification is sometimes a good thing. Surely, it was a good idea not to run to Louisiana in the middle of the night in the middle of finals week. But, I also have to ask myself the questions about the other gratifications I deny myself, sometimes to my detriment. I mean, you can be cautious to the point of serious phobias.

After my dad died, for about the first six months or so, I would catch myself being happy, and kind of feel guilty about it. I mean, my dad died. My dad. Died. And he died five days before I graduated high school. He spent my whole entire freaking senior year in high school dying. Dying. And every day I went to school and tried just to get to the end of the day. I remember being terrified of hearing my name on the loud speaker, of him dying while I was at school. Up until that point in my life, I hadn’t really minded every knowing every thing about my little boring life. After he got sick, and people started flooding us with attention, and pressing us for details, I realized how much I craved privacy. I didn’t want my weakest moments, our weakest moments, exploited like some live-version of an after-school special. It felt like rape, to be perfectly frank. All these people, my age and older, all my father’s collegues, people from our church, marching into our lives, demanding the intimacy that only terminal illness in a small town can bring. This was our family. This was our experience. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t a scholarship, or a wedding, or a birth. This was a death. And it was a longtime coming.

I got to a point in that year of spending a lot of time in my room, or in my car. God knows how many miles I drove in loops around Brady…from my house to the park, up memory lane, west to the San Angelo highway, a quick right at the John Deer dealership, down the road past Nicky’s house, past the house on White Street that Mamaw and Papaw Sellman lived in when Momma was born, across the low water bridge, around the square, up to Sonic for a coke, and out the lake road, all the way to the lake, which used to feel like such a long way to drive, crying and praying and chain smoking the whole way, sort of caring and not caring if anyone saw me. What were they going to do? Go home and tell my parents that I was out driving the speed limit, crying and smoking? Right…even I was allowed an indiscretion in seeking my solitude, I suppose.

I’m sure my family wondered what I was doing, although I did have a lot of extra-curricular activities that made for good alibis. As for the staying in my room…as long as I made at least one appearance every hour or so, I pretty much was left alone. I can’t tell you what I thought about in my room. I know I thought about my family, about my dad being sick, tried to come to terms with what it was going to mean not to have him in all the places I expected him to be. Even with all that headwork done ahead of time, I was still so surprised when he died. Shocked, even. I mean, really, he had been dying for a long time. We all knew it was time. I said all of that. I meant all of that. But still, in the back of that little girl mind, I still expected a miracle.

I can clearly remember a handful of days out of that whole year. Very few of them are memorable in a good way. All of which is to say, once that fog of pain and anger finally started to lift, I felt like some part of me had been taken away, some part that I would never get back. Some of that I think was a faith that was not my own. Some of that was coming into my own, becoming the adult he’d always dreamt I would be. Some of that was realizing that I had to tuck my chin into my chest, steer a shoulder into the wind, and just keep walking. When you have been in that set of footprints, coming to the realization that you can feel something new and good can kind of mess your head up.

Going to college three months after my dad died was one of the greatest decisions of my life. I had to summon up a lot of courage to do it. That sounds strange, because I was only going to be two hours from home. I was living with my best friend, in an on-campus dorm. I had already been to orientation, bought my books, signed up for my classes, everything was ready. I was afraid to go to college without my dad. All four years in high school, we had whittled and worked our way down to an acceptable number of colleges to apply to. We never made a big deal about it. This was between the two of us…like our bets on the NCAA tournament every March, or the NBA finals in June. After my Waterloo in chemistry, Daddy and I set our sights on Law, instead of Medicine. And we started looking at more in-state schools, too. We would sometimes talk about going to law school together, since by the time I got ready to go, he would be about ready to retire.

After he died, I didn’t know what I wanted to be anymore. I changed majors five times in the three years I was in college. I finally settled on a BA in History, with a minor in Political Science. A homage to Daddy, for sure, but I also got out of having to take college algebra or statistics. Mom never said anything, but I think she knew that I was really at loose ends, but wanted me to have the space to come to some kind of resolution on my own. And the truth is, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. How to do explain to anyone that you don’t want to do what you thought you wanted to do, because the one person who was going to stand beside you in the show wasn’t there anymore? So, I went to college. Even though what I really wanted to do was crawl in a hole, and die right along with him. Seriously. But I knew that he would have hated that. And the last thing I wanted to do was to let him down. Law school, I could leave behind. But I had to get out and make a life, and this was at least a step in a new direction. And part of me really wanted to go.

I don’t write or talk much about my father. It’s not because I don’t love him, or miss him. I just don’t want people to feel sorry for me. And it’s a private kind of pain for me. I don’t really even talk about it to my family. I don’t want to talk about a lot of it. There were things I saw and heard that I would pay obscene amounts of money to unsee and unhear, things no one should ever have to see or hear, no matter how old they are, no matter how brave or smart they are. Some things like that cannot be explained. They can never be forgotten, no matter how hard you try. I will always have seen what I saw. I will always have heard what I heard. I will always have the memories of doing things for my father that no child should ever have to do for a parent. I do a good job of putting those things in a room in my head that is reserved just for the kind of things you’d rather not remember. That room may be a little fuller than I would like for it to be, but such is life. I try to keep that room tidy and sterile. Things in that room threaten to come crawling out like a line of cockroaches marching across a white rug at those moments when you most need to keep your composure, you have to do your best to nudge and smile, and get the fuck out of Dodge before you lose your nuts, and maybe your lunch.

Time doesn’t make it feel better…it makes it feel less frequent. But the pain still comes on like a charley horse in your heart…untreatable until it’s full-length on you. And you just do what you have to do to get through it. And no body is allowed to judge what measures you take. Maybe not even God.

Happiness can be like that, too. I love to see people in the throes of happiness. They are oblivious to the fact that anyone in the world is sad at that moment. I’ve always kind of admired the guys who propose to their girlfriends in restaurants, or at ballgames, or on billboards. There’s something admirable about that kind of devil-may-care happiness. I remember seeing my brother’s face after my nephew was born. He was literally the happiest person in the world. This child was his Willy Wonka golden ticket. This was his best thing, ever. He was punch-drunk in love with his child, his wife, his family, and with the whole world. The whole thing was sweet enough to give you a cavity. He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. He was utterly absorbed into the being of happy. Utterly consumed.

My friend Celeste asked me to be in her wedding when we were 23. Even at that relatively tender age, I was an old pro at being a wedding attendant. So I do what you always do when one of your best friends asks to you be in her wedding…I said yes, and asked when she needed my dress size, and where I needed to look for shoes. I have to say, Celeste is one of the easiest brides I’ve ever attended. She was just so excited about getting married and seeing all her friends, she forgot to be totally awful. Normally, even if I know the person or people, I treat all engaged couples with a shot or two of suspicion.

And jealousy. There….I said it.

Not so with this couple. Tim and Celeste were for real. They were butt-crazy in love with each other. It made me giddy to be with them. Being with them was like getting a B-12 shot. They were so sweet, and I wanted to be grossed out and think they were being goofy and stupid. I just couldn’t. Seven years on, they are still butt-crazy in love. I still want to be grossed out. They are so happy, and so grown-up, but still so goofy and sweet about it. I look at them, and I want what they have.

About two minutes before we walked down the aisle, with the bride behind us, and about 30 seconds after one of the worst bouron hang-overs in history slammed it’s way into my central nervous system, Celeste looks up at me, with big happy puppy dog tears in her eyes, and says, “Rachel, I just hope one day you can feel like this, too.” And then, I started crying. And I cried all the way through the service, off and on all the way through the reception, and then all 126 miles back to my house in Austin. Cried all the way. Cried like my guts were going to bust loose and spatter on the windshield. But I wasn’t sad. I was happy. So, so, so happy. Happy for Celeste, happy at the bittersweetness of weddings of childhood friends, happy at the prospect of being happy like Celeste, just happy. She put my eyes out with her happiness, and she still does, sometimes. It was so nice to cry my eyes out over something good, and sweet, and true, and beautiful.

mil besos,

rmg