Wounds

1.15.05

After my father died I walked the land he loved so much, one phrase lodged in my brain: “Only the rocks live forever”.
Time after time, as if to call him back to me, I haunted the places we had bonded as father and daughter through time: the barn, pastures and even the fenceline. Walking, I loved that land too, with a fierceness born of hard labor and pride of ownership. We put up the fence ourselves, over much of the 10+ acres, and I’d ride the perimeter… ostensibly checking for breaks or flaws that needed tending, but it was in truth simply to be close to him. For just as his life had changed, mine had as well… and I could sense another, larger change coming.

Not exactly prescient, I could tell if something were going to change or go wrong. My first experience was one moring when I got in the car to drive into town…. and was filled with a sense of dread. It sat on my chest like a heavy hand. I went anyway, of course, and had a flat on the freeway. I listened to it after that, and may have avoided much trouble. Of course, not everyone ‘believes’ so if I’m out with someone else I have the feeling it’s harder to control my own destiny. After experiencing it a few times Dingad is a believer.
After whatever bad thing is supposed to happen actually happens the feeling goes away instantly. I can’t control it at all.
I don’t know if it’s my Guardian Angel tapping my shoulder or just a natural thing that I know a lot of women do… I thank God for the ability one moment and curse my luck the next.

Dad’s nickname for me from the very start was “Doll”. I must have seemed as much to the large man who tried to hold me so gently with his great work-stained hands. After his funeral my mother, in her misery, made the mistake of calling me by this name now made sacred by virtue of the fact that I’d never hear him speak it again… and in my equal distress I rounded on her like a hound of hell and said something to the effect of “only my father calls me that”.
I regret it to this day, but there are so many things that once let loose can never be recalled. The hurt has been done; best stitch up the wound and hope it heals with little scarring.

I sense another change coming, possibly another wound on a much grander scale, but so far the warning sign of heaviness has not come. Nor do I want it to.

I don’t know why all this tumbled from my brain in this manner, but this is how it came out. Sounds disjointed but must be connected somehow… Or not.