In the writer’s club meeting they put up a prompt from Frost’s Ghost House. “I dwell in a lonely house I know that vanished many a summer ago.” It was supposed to trigger a creative response, but instead it brought me back to this place of nostalgia and it collided there with another statement I found myself reading only this morning. I cannot remember the exact words, but it chronicled how a son feels about their father along the road of ages. To a young child, pop is super hero. By 20 pop doesn’t really matter except tangentially and pop is waiting by the phone for a text that says ‘how are you doing?” I’ve done that. I do that. I live with the strange hope that the kids will reach out and care just a bit about my life now that it isn’t entirely dedicated to improving and promoting their own.
They don’t.
In that I suppose I dwell in the memory of that lost house; that grounding in which so much of my life stood upon. I need to move on and wait for them to come back around in their time. The universe is tilting me towards that in it’s own fashion. I have more and more chances to spend time and get away with the wife, yet still return to enjoy moments with and or about the kids. This is ideal. More ideal is that the wife and I have even more time to just be and not worry about all the trappings of a world and a situation that is totally based around kids.
I think, in my strange and disconnected (and somewhat physically downgraded) state I am sloughing off a bit of the skin of these things at my own pace. I am slowly letting that house remain in memory and not holding on so much as I used to. There are daily issues that make that all the more difficult, but those can be managed… also in time.
Some Thoughts:
- Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Spain’s PM offers condolences after reported death of 87-year-old whose eviction sparked protests” Man, things are going very dark and dystopian very very quickly.