This lil' light of mine

We are the wretched.
When I was nine I told my parents I wanted to be an actor. Why is there a deep part of me that wishes I had evolved past that? I mean, besides nutty buddies and science class and recess, I can't remember much else about being nine. There were babies around. Loads of babies. I suppose I was struggling for autonomy and attention. Was, haha.
But my pops drove me across town for drama classes and was a great science fair partner. I guess I was always more interested in the art aspects of the projects more than science, but they're a right little pair science and art. And he encouraged both. As a student he'd done well in science and math, but having started a family he worked on the railroad (yes, all the livelong day) instead of going to college. Whether it be an excavated dinosaur skeleton (made of excavated chicken bones of course), or a glitter volcano, or a cardboard box spaceship, he was always happy to help.
I'm feelin pretty happy.
I'm 2 glasses of sangria in, and I sit on a precipice.
A ledge I've walked a few times.
As I picked up said sangria at my local South Knoxville Kroger, I witnessed a familiar scene. A young girl in blue lipstick was walking in my direction, "Dad, what are you doing?" I turned to see behind me a fifty year old scruffy white guy was squatting on the wall outside the grocery, clearly inebriated. He mumbled something.
We are the wretched.
I saw in the young girl's face...that embarrassment, that shame, that resigned sigh I have felt all too many times. Not to say my dad would ever be squatting drunk against a public building at 10:30pm on a Thurs. I had to word that sentence slowly, and I still don't know if it's quite true. Not when I was the sensitive age of the girl anyway.
My dad prefers art to science, too (but Bud heavy to sangria). S'probably why we were such a good team. He'll take stories over science. Limited experience over universal truth.
I miss feeling like we're on the same team. I mean, it's been a while, but...
Sorry if this blog is even more scattered than usual...I've got my puppy this week (he's been leavin' town with Jake as we transition back to Louisville, but this week I begged to be bathed in attention...it's a bit much when I have a show every night, but we had Sun-Tues off so Jake somewhat reluctantly left him). And now he's a little stir crazy because we didn't get a walk in on this muddy, rainy day. He beckons me every other paragraph with his metronome-like, paint-tip tail and demands a piece of carrot.
Mythology is what he clings to most. My pops, not the pup. Mythology is one of my favorite art forms too. Theatre is mythology. His fav is the story of the fallen man (clearly because of a woman) so bad, somebody holy had to give their life to redeem 'em. He was that bad. He did the bad stuff. He sinned. The original wretched. But the savior came and redeemed us all so now we can reconcile our badness. Our natural badness. And the sincere remorse we have for it, oh yeah and then the promise to try and never do it again.
Remorse.
Comes from the Latin for "I bite back," or "to bite again."
What's latin for "hair of the dog"? Cause I got a feelin this sangria might bite me back tomorrow. Not that I could ever partake in that hangover cure. My hangovers are a bit...extra. I'm a delicate flower. Snowflake. One might wonder why I come back again and again to this fierce medicine so abusive to my body. I can't say. I teeter on the precipice.
The moon is full.
The pup's asleep. I finally got him to settle down. Where was I?
Promise.
Latin for...well, for promise.
Promise is as old as language.
I promise I might have a point.
A former roommate used to have this book, They Have a Word for It, A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases.
Untranslatable.
I love how language weaves us all together, but necessarily accentuates our differences. Love letters n language barriers n all that lies between.
I've come to believe the barriers between my dad's team and mine are sometimes just an accent or dialect. A football field...large enough to retreat to opposing ends, but still in the same game. But some days they feel like a battleground. Sometimes it feels like we're up against...a well-armed militia. I pray for grace. In that first drama class final recital I remember singing "Amazing Grace." I'm sure my dad came in support. Sometimes the remorse I have for the impatience and anger I have towards him makes my heart heavy as lead.
We are the wretched.
If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ~Lincoln
My dad is a poet. A dreamer. And sometimes he's a drunk.
But I could choose different language to tell you that. I could say he's Dionysian. He does love to dance and sing. I remember being embarrassed at his gusto for hymns in church, and his antics on the dance floor are indomitable. He's pretty laissez faire...and he'll laissez les bon temps rouler.
We've got a lot in common.
His mother always calls him her diamond in the rough. Because he shines to anyone who can see past the stained, sooty coal-like exterior. But sometimes I fear the pressure that's necessary for coal to be turned into a diamond might crush him. He's often in physical pain. And he struggles. And he's addicted to (comforted by?) Fox News and right wing media. He doesn't loudly sing those hymns anymore. And part of me feels guilty for having ever been embarrassed at the beauty of it.
Actually I just had a memory from about age 9. I went to an all white Catholic school and was taking all the ritual steps of a good young parishoner. I liked it. I believed. All the white dresses and parties and ceremony wonderfully theatrical, and I reveled in it. AMEN. But it was the general consensus that singing hymns softly was "cooler" than really belting them out. This precedent was advocated by the middle school kids with whom we participated in Wednesday morning mass. One week they even went so far as to sing out only on the word "come" in all the hymns. Sister Mary Jane was surely disappointed in the restrictions on corporal punishment that morning. That's when I learned the word "innuendo."
But the memory that just surfaced was one such Wednesday mass when our priest had invited a black gospel choir leader (or perhaps a Baptist preacher?) to lead us all in some gospel songs. We sang "This little light of mine," and the heartfelt, repetitive "Amen." His beautiful, booming voice and pearly white smile encouraged us between the phrases, "Sing it over!" It may have been the first time I actually felt the Holy Spirit in church. I remember shedding the prim, cautious self-conscious mores of quietude and boredom in church and truly praising joy for the first time.
I think something in my dad never quite jived with those mores either. Once we made it through the 8th grade in parochial schools, he gave up pretending to be Catholic. But he still believed. He clung to that redemption. Perhaps because he is no stranger to remorse.
We are the wretched.
My father attempts and succeeds at righteousness on many levels. He is generous beyond his means. He is open and kind hearted and the life of any party. He feels the burden of the system that does not support him. A system that has often not allowed him to make ends meet and turns around and calls him privileged. I think we had a meaningful exchange recently where I was able to point up his privilege being not in monetary wealth or lack of work ethic, but in the way the world views him. The way a cop might not bother to pull him over or search his car (even though he might regularly be driving with a BAC above the legal limit with illegal drugs on his person).
I know my own privilege lies in his presence in my life. And that privilege is enormous beyond measure. If we had darker skin I might be receiving birthday letters from prison instead of phone calls from him and my mom singing to my voicemail. I might miss finding him snoring on the couch (Fox News blaring) anytime I arrive home to their house after 8pm. I might never have been driven across town for drama lessons, and I might never have sung "Amazing Grace" in recital, and I would most certainly be a completely different person.
Having this puppy makes me wonder how I might be a different parent.
Can't say (one of my pop's most used responses, rhyming can't with ain't). He did all the important stuff really well. I can only hope.
My mom sees two equally hard-headed, passionate people and laughs at how often we can't see our similarities. And though he never fully supported Trump's candidacy, he voted for him. It makes me angry and sick and sad. But there's hope for us yet. With grace, I suppose.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of light from that shiny diamond in the rough, but other times I just see a wretch.
Like me.