Things My Father Taught Me

Airplane seats are about as wide as elementary school desk chairs,
And they’re just about as difficult to get out of
Mrs. Ayres, a pale, feisty woman with bags beneath her eyes and wings pinned to her lapel calls from the front of the classroom
“In the case of an emergency, oxygen safety masks will fall from the above compartment
Replicating the much more disastrous fall of the plane as it plummets from 30, 000 feet,
Please place the cup over your mouth and breathe normally”
Southwest seems to think its funny to scare the shit out of its passengers
Each and every time they fly
It builds confidence when it fails to come true
It steadies nerves.
People laugh
I guess its working.
I have been numbed I suppose to any sort of fear of flying
When you live this far from anything you might possibly call home, you begin to forget that certain death is only a malfunction away
I lean the seat back and pull the tray table down

Just last month I was flying to San Antonio,
It had been six months since my last visit
It will be six months until I return again
Makes you question definitions of home when two weeks a year is all you spend

It has also been six months since I have seen my parents,
Six months between visits,
Between hugs, embraces, recalling safety unconditional
Eyes familiar beyond recognition as belonging to anyone but myself
Six months since a good week of free meals, free rides, free board, free cash
Six months is not long enough to recall the distance that space drives between people

The wind rattles the plane gently
A nudge to remind us it is only air,
To our eyes, nothingness, on which our lives are resting

And yet space cannot compare with what it is I know of family
There are hugs built into our fingertips when we recall that someone taught us to write letters and numbers
And shoulder rubs in backpacks weighed down with possibility forged from a parent’s unfailing support
The lift of the wind in my hair recalls the pride of a father’s mussing it up as he heard me praised by my teachers
Whispered by that same wind, “good job, sonny boy”
There are family vacations in the rustling of trees
And safety of person in the warmth of a bed
There is no loneliness in the reach of a father’s love across a country’s divide

And yet, sitting here upon a plane, I realize that there are moments in memory it seems false to recall without you
Mind turned upside down, reflecting pool of what it was I learned from you
To drive stick shift, to “do” a lay up, to hold the board steady
Who am I kidding, these things I would not let you teach
There was always resistance in my frustration, your frustration my resistance
Mind twisted round backwards in an attempt to squirm out of my discomfort in not being able to figure it out for myself.
I sat at the back of physics doodling because I wanted to teach myself.

But yours was a calm bottled from canyons and aspen frocked trails that rained gently as we huddled beneath ponchos
And yours was forgiveness not for wrongs done, but for forgetting to trust…
I couldn’t win in the game of giving with you.
And perhaps there I left you for a moment, forgot to look back and remember
That there is nothing of me that does not hope to speak your name in footnote,
There is nothing in me that does not seek to mirror/
Reflected against the black of the night sky,
My face gazes both into and out of the porthole windows of the plane
Eyes darkened searching my own face for traces of you

Constrained by your obligations, Colorado summers, Texas Christmas
My aesthetic took form from the contours of your devotion
I practice ritual with solemnity in solitude
Perform my humility in silence before the sacred
And yet still refuse to remove my hat when entering the Alamo.

Jeans are the sign of my honesty in worship/

Communion plates are signs of my gratitude
And in them I recall your name and offer forth my own
My hands stretched forward to receive
Running copper wires of veins, tinting red
That recall with simple pleasure
A scrap of glinting metal,
A blue green rock
Reminder of what it is God leaves around the edges for us to discover

In you, I am adventurer

My eyes exact dimensions from each room I enter, like Indiana Jones
My mind running mazes to construct a floorplan
There is logic to the mapping of my story
And it is not my own
Colorblindness does not a deaf palate make

In you I am craftsman

Hands, still fully fingered playing on wooden instruments
Creating music of saw songs, of shavings, of twice measured precision

In you, I am thrill seeker
I am dream weaver
I am counselor, protector
In you, I bite with sarcasm because it’s not worth it to live unthinking

50 years do not belie the age of your impact upon the act of living itself
Remembrances of things done right and wrong reverberate through time like seismic shudders
Shaking a soul forgotten unto itself
A soul with rulers in its eyes and jollity in its cheeks
I know truly, truly I say to you
I could not be otherwise
I could not be otherwise
I could not be.

And planes destined unfamiliar places are always headed home
Because I carry you with me
In seat back pockets you play through my music
In book crammed backpacks you guide my eye to truth
You smile in humility, in grin beneath grins
And know that
I could not be without you
I could not be without you
I could not be

And eyes meet eyes in darkened skies backed by city lights
Seeking brilliance in skin and hoping, hoping helplessly that behind light I might but reflect you