girlonahalfshill

Forty is tapping me on the shoulder. My father liked to quip, “It’s a gift,” every time someone asked him how he figured things out or showed up at the right moment, or sometimes when he made an embarrassing mistake. This comment was occasionally accompanied by a bow – feigning a stately posture, he would mime the doffing of a hat.

My father passed away in February. In many ways, he mostly left in October, when his mind left our shared reality for darker ruminations. To a lesser degree, he had been fading from view for the last three years or so, since the chemotherapy took hold and his heart began to fail and congest.
My father surely would have looked upon me gravely for this upcoming venture. Though he abandoned the Midwest after graduating from Purdue, he believed strongly that there was an approved path for respectable adults to follow. I have yet to follow it with any regularity, but I know what it is supposed to be and I know when I’ve strayed from it. My mother is ill. Not just ill. Struggling with cancer herself – pancreatic. My father would have wanted me by her side, as I was with him. And I have found more moments to be there – for his sake, and hers, and mine, than I thought I would, but my future is beckoning and it isn’t here.

We have been planning this summer’s road trip for five years now, ever since I withdrew from UC Berkeley in my second semester as a transfer student. To shirk the shackles of Bay Area expenses for the duration of the summer before I returned to college and travel cross-country with my sons. And it begins. Tomorrow.

It wasn’t “supposed” to be like this. My father was “supposed” to be healthy and well and sitting at the ready to proofread papers. My partner/husband was “supposed” to be coming with the boys and I. More recently, my boss and dear, dear friend, Mark Lesley, was “supposed” to be here to hug me tight, kiss me on the cheek and wish me the very best of luck, but I attended his memorial service the weekend before last. My mother always seemed destined to outlast us all with her tenacity, but even her stamina seems in doubt. And still, perhaps the sourest hope in all of life’s sorrows is our damn resilience. We recover – life goes on! So it does.

And so, we are going. My sons and I. And we are lucky to be laden with the love, hopes and affection of friends. We are leaving California tomorrow and I am entirely unsure whether we will ever reside here again. I have loved so much of this incredible state and so many of the beautiful people who I know here, but this new chapter is leading us somewhere new and I am about to learn many, many things – not only in the classroom, but along the way. Dad always said it was a good day if you learned something. Well, Dad, I think there are good days ahead then.