a turning point

i haven't written much/anything on the veterans and artist collaboration project that has just passed it's sixth week. things have really begun moving and each week of lab work has never ceased to surprise me. i need to get on the ball with some writings on the topic of memory, war, and my experience as a sister to a veteran, but in the meantime, a lot has already begun moving for me just in the writing and movement pieces we've been doing each week.

today, we took turns telling a story to one of the other participants.
the story we were asked to share was of a turning point:
a moment when everything in your life changed, for good or bad.

my choice was pretty easy. as tomorrow looms over me and the reality of seeing my dad again after so long slowly suggests a variety of outcomes, i can't help but look back on the last time we saw each other.

i gave her a quickly sketched version of events during those three weeks in austria: the imploding dynamics, the regressed behavior each of us {dad, mom, me} displayed, and being trapped in a small apartment with no way out and no space to hide in.

and here i am now, staring down the next chapter of our relationship and unable to make out any of the words. so all i can do is firmly affix the knowledge of our mutual humanity and let everything else {expectations, hurt and healing} be held in the hands of our own grace.

and the amazing thing was to then be a witness my partner's story and how much it mirrored my own: her turning point was a vehicle for growth and she is now also perched at the edge of the next one. waiting. heart open.

the activity we were given was to take on the meaning of their story and how it lives in us as the witness. then in turn, give that meaning it's own life via writing, drawing, oral storytelling, or movement.

in the spirit of the artist's way freewrite {i've recently begun the process of restarting}, i wrote this about her story, and perhaps more accurately, about the kinship i felt in hearing her story.

a bookended but open-ended story. we both told them as we looked back all those years to something that opened us up with much forceful cracking and made us see all this mangled-ness inside. and here we are looking forward to all that is on the brink of happening. a new set of changes and growth that we have so much hope for. and i'm not sure exactly what she's thinking and hoping and praying for, but i hope to find us stronger and i hope to find truth fall more readily from our lips and i hope we find the balance we need in our life. and i hope the past five years, three hundred and fifty something days that have passed since i've last seen my father will have given us both some more grace, if nothing else.

her response to my story was so wonderfulbeautifultendercaring that i have asked her if i can post it here. but, i also feel like i wasn't able to give her the gift she so generously gave me: the gift of being reflected back my story but with the gentleness of a protector, making me somehow deserve the grief i {perhaps} still secretly feel i was too weak to hide. so here, i want to give her story it's own space:

she finally had it all. the big city dreams in the palm of her dainty hand. the young life of friends and frivolity we only think happen in movies. and her all was pretty with a good figure and the surprising zest of orange peel hidden in a fluffy chocolate cake. it was a good all.

but another all came along, swaddled up as a newborn and soul mate but left to her brother's meth coated dreams. and as perfectly wonderful as this all is {and will always be}, she needed it all. allallallallallallallallallallallall. a mother. a father. a good school and pack lunch every day. a laundry doer. a grocery shopper. a bedtime story reader. a moral fiber builder. a constant.

and the battle was silent and fierce, hidden behind the pretty with a good figure because no one could know, least of all the little all. but eventually the one all devoured the other all. and no matter what the love, it was a sad day.

but the ways and waters parted and the mixed blessing of a clean father gave them both a second chance. new city. new start. new growth. and perhaps most importantly a new hope that this time the all will be finite as much as the love will be infinite.

to a new all.




currently listening to: patrick watson - wooden arms - where the wild things are.