Tap Root and TLC

14th February 2012 Tuesday

I forgot it was Valentine’s day till I noticed the date writing this blog last night - so not too late to make a card for my husband. I found a photo he took of me in a hammock on a holiday in Turkey - smiling, relaxed - and stuck it on front of a blank card. I remembered that a few moments after he took that photo I realised I was being bitten to bits by red ants living in the woven rope of the hammock. I thought how the camera only captures one side of the story but makes it look like all of it.

This morning I search for my father in the hundreds of photos - black and white, faded or kodak colour - in shoe boxes and albums and fat padded envelopes which hold the story of his life in pictures. But I can’t find him there - even though I smile back at him - in the ones where he’s laughing. I don’t know where he is now. When I remember him it’s not in one place or one time - it’s more a feeling of him which resides in the whole of me - like a cell memory, like a tap root in the earth. Dug up now - exposed to the light.

All afternoon and tonight I am showered with TLC - tea and hugs and phone calls and emails - dear friends reminding me I’m not alone - that the place to start a journey is where you happen to be - not from outside the post office two miles down the road - even if the view is better from there.

So when my husband says tuna when he means tenor I can just take the next breath and laugh instead of crying - a tiny step along the road of this is how it is now.