I Am This Woman

Thanks, Jette, Chip and esteemed panel. This entry is a Holidailies “Best of…”

I miss my dad. I miss him more than I miss my mom. I’m not sure why. It’s not because I favored one over the other. I’m sure I do but it might be more about that gender identification thing. I *am* my mother in many ways, some really cringingly bad ways. I see her looking at me in the mirror, so she is with me most of the time. I do miss our phone calls the most.

But my dad - it’s very odd. What I miss about him is not so much his personality, the memories, the jokes… what I miss is the very oldness of him. He lived long enough to begin having dementia. It’s understandable, and it alters my feelings and memories of him NOT ONE WHIT. It added something to him, I think. He often had that Old Man Mona Lisa smile. I saw that face on a tv show tonight - some movie with a very very old man dancing with his daughter in the nursing home he lived in.

I recognized the look. The relaxed lips caught in a pleasant line, the uncomplicated brow, the slightly glassy but sweet eyes that sometimes look at you in polite vacancy through the ever-thickening lenses, rather than having that inner light of recognition. I could watch my dad go in and out of recognition of his surroundings. Sometimes he was there, in his tv room, watching the news; and sometimes, he was sitting in some generic house waiting for a ride home. (more…)