12
year 12, letter 8, 1:01 am
13 March 2021
I’ve started this letter at least 3 times in my head already.
I remember you loved beautiful music. I was thinking about this today, as I listened to Carpenter’s Yesterday Once More. Her voice is beautiful. It’s deep and solid, rich. You liked songs like that. Voices like Jane Carpenter and Jim Reeves. Those voices are beautiful ones, huh. Beyond subjectivity. Or maybe it’s because I’m your daughter, so our sense of beauty is somehow so deep that it feels like unshakeable truth.
Do you think our sense of beauty was somewhat truer when we had less music? We have more varied wonder, music for all perspectives and tastes and occasions these days. But back when the occasion was the music, and not something else, was it more itself? I’m thinking about instrumental classics, and how I always fall asleep at orchestral performances. Opera, even. It was about the sound, the sound. Like how they built churches, like how they sculpted and painted God, and people saw that and knew God must exist. Maybe we have too many gods now. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But there’s something that seems unalienable, indisputable about beauty. I don’t know.
In some ways it feels like the last year didn’t happen at all. There was, and is, still a virus in the air. I think in some ways I grew up to be a heartbreaker. This last year I had my first romantic relationship where we both called it that. It ended before the year was up, and now I feel like a fool for being in the relationship that long. He wasn’t a bad guy, and I think he liked me and wanted me to like him, and I was so …stunned? excited? bewildered? pleasantly surprised? that someone actually liked me that much, so I let it happen for too long without wondering if I actually liked him, too. I didn’t. But I still feel foolish. I think I broke his heart when I ended it, but maybe that’s presumptuous of me. I just want a friendship that lasts, and that’s something he didn’t have in him after I told him I didn’t feel any romance towards him, and that’s okay. He wanted to try again, but I don’t think he even knew what he wanted to try, so I was firm. I think what’s most surprising about this time in my life to me is that it wasn’t memorable at all. Maybe that’s cold. But the memories don’t bring any pain, or even bittersweetness. This is how I know I made the right decision. I know when I hear Danny Boy, I can’t help but tear up because I think about you, because there is some real feeling there. I don’t feel any of that towards this relationship, and that makes me feel like a monster. I guess I can commend myself for realizing, at least.
I say heartbreaker, because in an ill-guided attempt to not be lonely, I started talking with someone on a dating app, and we got along well playing video games together. He reminded me of all the things I enjoyed in high school, all the excitement I had for shounen manga, the enjoyment I got from playing video games with friends. Listening to him and his group of friends banter felt right and good, something I haven’t had these last couple years. I don’t know if I have that kind of romance in me right now. I want to be true and honest and I want to be a good friend. I think I can lust and play that game, but when it comes to romantic love, I just don’t know if I have it in me. I want so badly to be a friend. I don’t think it’s fair to anybody to be in limbo while I am figuring that out. I feel badly about not giving the romance more of a chance to develop, but it felt wrong to do that if my heart isn’t there right now. I keep saying “right now”, because I tell myself maybe life is a matter of timing. Maybe this isn’t true, maybe my heart will never be there, but I think it’s easier to talk about the present than about my eternity.
I started working this year, but I don’t really want to tell you about that. I need to start looking for a new job. At my current work, my coworkers are amiable and are kind to me, but it’s too distant, and this is very clearly not a line of work for me. I think that’s all I have to say about that.
I think about you, Dad. I still miss the same things. I miss the way your stubble brushed my face when you kissed my cheek goodnight. I miss the expanse of your back when I went to you and Mom’s bed on weekend mornings. I miss pinching your nose so you’d wake up. I miss your bruised teeth. I miss the bald spot on the back of your head. In a lot of ways you are a ghost to me. I see you standing at the elementary school. I remember your blue Camry, but I hardly remember what you looked like as you drove it. But I can remember what it felt like to be in the car with you as we cruised through the neighborhood by the school. I remember what you looked like pulling my softball bag out of the trunk. I don’t have much memory of your voice. When I reach for those memories, I hear it through the static of recordings. I don’t remember what it sounded like in person. Time is like an ocean tide on the beach in this way, I think. My memories are sand, washed in, washed out, broken down. That’s the imagery that comes to mind.
I thought about this today, too, how memory is practiced. I was walking with Mom. I didn’t know how to bring you up. I didn’t know if I wanted to. Memory is practiced. I don’t know who to practice your memory with, so I just practice it on my own. I suppose the photographs, the recordings, they help, but I wonder if sometimes the pictures become the memories. I try to remember different things, so the memories don’t become the memories. Does that make sense? Some of the images don’t change. It’s always painfully blue skies with wisps of clouds over the softball fields at Niguel Hills. It’s always you in your hat, cracking sunflower seeds. I don’t know if this is recent, but recently it’s you sitting on the floor of your closet, half-heartedly packing a bag after a fight with Mom. That scared me, when you started getting more resigned in your fights with mom.
It’s you in your sunglasses in your soccer referee uniform. Sabo loves your flags. I don’t know where they are right now. It’s you dribbling circles around me with the soccer ball, and when you got too showy, the ball would get away, and this troubled you, because you had fuller command before your stroke. Still. It was impressive to me, though I knew it hurt you when you lost control during these displays.
Do goodbyes matter? I don’t know. There never was a goodbye to say, was there? When i got the phone call in Sunday school, it was over.
It’s terrifying to me that I have become a person without you. That I can become a person for whom life went on. I suppose this is a good thing. I think a lot of the past twelve (12!!!) years I wished I was someone for whom life couldn’t go on. But it did, I went on. Maybe too much of me wishes I didn’t. I imagine your life, now. It’s strange that I can do this, now, and how I could be totally and completely wrong, and you couldn’t correct me. The absence of you is big because it is unknown. But there’s always unknown, though our actions in life make a space around us that feels rigid.
I don’t imagine what you’d think of me now. I have no idea.
I’ve been saying I don’t know what love is, if I have love, but when I tried to type that I don’t know what love is towards you, I knew that was wrong. If I could give you peace. If I had a chance to spend any amount of time at all with you, I would just want to tell you that I am okay, and mean it, and hold myself to that statement, which is a promise, forever. I would tell you that my life went on, and hope that it brought you peace. That’s what love is, I think. Not that life goes on, or that I am okay, but the desire to tell you something that I will spend my life holding myself to. Promise doesn’t feel like the right word, because promises are broken, life falters around them. Resolve, maybe. Love is a resolve. That feels right to me.
I think about the hill where you are buried often. I imagine the warm breeze that blows there, the hardy grass. The sky is always blue there, to me. It’s the place I imagine most in California. Being there gave me a sort of peace, like air filling my lungs. I love you, Dad.