One of the few good memories I have of my father is how he would sing me songs at bedtime. Barbara Allen, Poncho and Lefty, Frog went a-courtin. Goodnight My Someone/Seventy-six Trombones from The Music Man snuck up on me the other day with a flood of feelings. Those were the times he let go, the demon inside let him go for a while, singing outloud. Vulnerable moments for him, moments of relief for me.
It’s hard to sit with good memories of someone you’ve let go from your life. (It seemed active but what I actually did was passive. I stopped reaching out, he stopped being there.) As a child it’s impossible to see how fragile your parents are, to understand their separate suffering. To pry open that understanding without their consent, like breaking open an oyster, which is an act of violence. To cleanse yourself of that violence as well as you can, which is never-ending work. To sustain hope that you might never cause somebody else the same pain or sadness. To hold the secret knowledge that you were born under a bad star.
Thinking about the vulnerability of writing, if there is vulnerability in it, what that is.