Father Time

Yesterday I sat in womb-like movie theater next to my dad, who I don't get to see as often as I'd like to, for two whole hours. I went to the theater to escape, but I found it impossible to get lost in the story. Because all I could think about was how I wanted to crawl onto his lap and wrap his arms around me and hide for a little while in the safety of his embrace. I smelled the way his dad skin smells--the clean and strong smell I've smelled for thirty nine years. It's the skin that I came from; it's my skin, too.

Since I'm too old now to crawl onto his lap, I breathed him in for that two hours and hoped the movie would never end so I could stay close to him like that for as long as possible.

His dad smell flooded my head and my heart, carrying me away from the fantastical apes on the screen. Instead I saw in my mind's eye the time my first real boyfriend broke up with me and my dad held me in his big arms and cried, too. I remembered that when I left for college, he hugged me so tightly for the longest time and refused to let go. I thought back to the escapist hours we spent tearful and shoulder-to-shoulder in dark movie theaters after my mother died.

And then I remembered that now I'm somebody's mother. And that my dad loves a woman who is not my mother. Somewhere along the line, the map I'd been following changed. I grew up; she died; and he found a new direction because he had to.

I miss the days before everything changed, when he and I were automatic. But yesterday's two hours-- side-by-side with just him--felt like the warmest blanket on a cool, heavenly night.

Image via Observando