For the 23rd of March (part 2 of 2)

So, own personal daddy of mine, here we are again.  I cannot believe I saw your brown eyes look at me for the very last time a whole four years ago on the next evening I see.  My dreams last night were strange, and while in the apartment I once knew, with them and the baby, and other babies, this version had a little Boy with strawberry hair like hers, and a little girl with dark hair like his, but then you were....in some form, like a skinny intruder of some kind, walking through the place, I hated the fact that you rarely if ever speak in my dreams....you are simply there, in the familiar places, but without words and I have to assign them onto you, and I just refuse to.  You might know that the world you live in now is not for talking, and that there are better ways......still, rose oil is burning and our mother said you talked people's ears off, and that's the way you liked it.  I did too.  In this dream past, you walked out of the window and started to balance on the outside fire escape, but then this horrible REAL feeling of you fainting, falling back onto the railing and through it and down down down, and then my mother was there and the dark pitted feeling went away, and we thought (or I said) something about you saying the most marvellous declarations about life and going out there with a bang and it was OK.  You had died, and just came to life again like a misshapen zombie, to remind us of what we all were, and still had in some parts of us.  But then, we looked out, and you popped up - alive, again, courting the air and with us, but further from the presence you gave us a moment of, and in another screen, channel and plane.  You also had a baby in your coat - the realization that he was there all along co-existed with the fact that he should have died too, but didn't.  He was alive, and smiling and off you went.  Always off - I guess now that your body doesn't ache like it did, you had better places to be than reassuring us of your safety.  You always told me to be safe was one of the most important things.

I'm now younger, more cocksure and with less smarts, and as usual, I'm getting out of the train at Poughkeepsie, the end of the line.  Up north, where you found mountains that reminded you of the homeland, and where you kept on building despite doctor's orders.  There you were, every time, sitting in the white car, as I know it now, my old man's car that I drive around the neighborhood.  Big, oversized baseball cap on, one of many, our mom kept some from you which had your smell, of the many we used to buy you for all the times you'd be working - some random corporation names we got for free from our place of employ, some things like CIA or FBI......it seemed funny, yet right for you to wear those....some place of authority you belonged, in the dirt and the nail beds.  Big, on your small head, which I inherited - we had little heads, unlike the pumpkin craniums which my mother and brother shared, which we did still love ever as much.  I'd climb those station stairs, with my oversized duffle bag for the weekend, cold in winter or rain, a short walk, or the time in late summer I turned 30 and had a boy on each arm, knowing full well which one you'd like the best...the one that told stories like you, even though he was barely out of his teens.  I'd see you there, parked perpendicular to the parked cars, always out of the way but where I could see you, and then our carride would commence.

I can't count on my hands, toes or thoughts how many carrides we shared - in station wagons, pathfinders, the Subaru which was a stick shift, which you always said you'd teach me but I never learned.  Through the woods, and the lone two lane highway, route 9 or similar, to whatever home we were in at the time, but none so pure as the last one, in Catskill, on Paradise Lake Road.  How perfect an ending place for us as this here family, only I wish it was still in my hands, beneath my feet.  I wish those porches where I found morning sun with my coffee, those back porches I looked through hanging laundry at green, endless, and rain and where we entertained the ones I called my own for that short breadth of time. 

That carride wherein the dead trees of winter on either side of us framed the journey we took together numerous times, or the bright sun of summer in the car where the A/C didn't work very well.  I would usually recline, nap if I had been out late the night before, or listen to some quiet tapes I still hoarded in the vehicle, which you didn't mind listening to, if I included some old country, or your favourite song which I play for your every single year - "Highwayman"......something always punches me in the gut when Johnny, who as an older man reminded me of you, except that you never got an old man's girth - your work ethic and European frugal necessity about food (not wine however, which you and I could dispatch together without reason and with no bad feelings whatsoever...it was like a hangover from your shared jug was impossible to achieve) prevented you from too much girth or sinew, when Johnny sang "Or I may simply be a single drop of rain....but I will remain...and I'll be back again and again and again..."  Always, and never will you be away from us.  You were the friend who knew me best, and I'm afraid it's sometimes terrible to not have you around anymore.  We fought as well, occasionally, being so alike. 

Still, I talk to you.  Even if you prefer silence in my dreams, I'm talking to you.  Our carride is happening on many nights, when I am falling asleep, or wake up troubled for a few moments, I'm back there.  In that car with you, driving me home from the train station.  We talk, you emphasize my mistakes and yours, and yet at the same time how you cannot change what has occurred, you can simply learn from those mistakes and start with the next breath, all of these actions a blueprint in your dreamer architect's head, the lines and swinging doors always possible.  How you were the most gregarious and social and talkative chap around (you would never use the word chap), but Americans didn't like that, and sometimes made you retreat, and feel mean, and I now understand, as I did just a little then.  The stories you told the boys who should have been men that I brought home in those last years, when I learned to be bold, about spending Christmas Day more than once on the streets in Zagreb, when you left home and your father who didn't appreciate your black sheep's qualities like your beautiful mother did.  How you didn't even know it was Christmas, and you didn't tell this story to be boastful of your resolve, but to simply share the idea that hard times make the good times you learn to say yes to better, how each day means something unique and powerful to you, no matter if any old weekday, or Christmas Day itself, whether a million people care for you or just one.  How you could count your true friends on the fingers of one hand, and nature taught you everything you trusted and the real you was something to be lived through and not hidden, shamed or shoved to the side.  That living your life in honesty and aliveness as yourself didn't have to hurt or demean anyone and that it was not only your right as a human being, and a man in your case, but your duty, how you wanted to help me me build or restore a home when I was convinced I was moving to England or Ireland to live in an old stone house with some fellow I had to run off to, who I didn't know yet.  Even then, you said you wanted to help, even if you'd be over 80 - you knew your fire burned twice and more for all of us, and you loved the fire itself.  Bringing light to your earth, all aglow. 

You wished and earnestly were convinced that you really should be able to live at least to 150, possibly on the way to two lifetimes...you just needed more time, and resources and sunsets to light your plans by.  Well, I can tell you I have failed not too often, I have not tried in many things like I should, but every single morning I find a few more inches of gaul, or courage with safety built in, of myself even when I know you probably wouldn't have understood or approved.  You knew the important equations between us and in which we both found life and that's all that I keep with me.  Soon I'll be standing in the Roman palace again, where you carried me home from the opera in the breezy summer night, me asleep and safe under the stars of your home.  Soon, I'll stand in the center of your village, where the famous sculptor whose family you knew resided, and I'll climb that same knotty tree I did as a five year old, reinventing and making alchemy out of your old superstitions, which you didn't put too much stock in.  You preferred a destiny with all possibilities. 

Our carride takes me down every road and every possibility each time  I start again.  Being a humanist as you so loved to call your European mind, which knew trees, granite streets and wooden frames of every house that mattered in the solar system of tarot cards we people call our well to do fashioned lives, you and I ride together many a night, you talking and me listening, and vice versa, napping, looking and dreaming at the tops of trees, and the oncoming stars of the night sky in paradise, as we let the world know who we are, and see who comes out to greet us when we turn off the highway and find our way home.  Happy anniversary from the start of your trip with no words necessary on the universe divide, my own personal daddy.  I'm still me, don't you know, mostly thanks to you.


M. Lucia