I Wish You Apricots

As I drink my coffee this morning

Stirring in the fake sweetness and dairy-free lightener-I realize it’s Father’s Day.

What does that mean when you’re gone? When maybe you didn’t exist at all to begin with?

Perhaps we all are both the person we want to be and the person people need us to be hand by hand with the person we really are?

Perhaps that’s just the kind of question that would make your face pinched and disappointed as my words had so many times before?

Perhaps that’s something you learn when you’re an adult? How much better would it have been to learn it as a child, to keep your questions to yourself.

But. The unanswered questions don’t fly away with time. What if the person you need, doesn’t know who he is at all? When the person you need is as lost to himself as he is to you?

If that’s a teacher well that’s sad, but manageable.

If that’s a friend, it’s not a tragedy as children we make many friends some stay and some go, but some part of them are always with you.

But if it’s a father, it leaves you neat slot in the puzzle of your life that is forever missing a piece. Unfilled. Empty.

What I did not know as a child is what I suspect as an adult. He knew. Now that he is gone he can’t confirm, but he knew the charade. He knew the emptiness- he also missed a piece that would have made him who he could have been.

And the ache, for him, was made worse when he looked at me.

‘You look like your mother’ they told me, ‘you’re the spitting image of Patty’, ‘You have your mother‘s eyes’.

And those blue eyes would seek his brown eyes constantly for approval and love.

Let me belong, dad; see me. Do you love me? He couldn’t hear the ask. The language was unknown. The man wasn’t there.

Then once a year, the language becomes tangible upon throne of the day: cards, and offerings carefully wrapped in brown paper and butcher twine from the box under the sink. Place at the head of the table with that first black coffee.

Breath held as the cards were glanced and set aside never to reappear. The package is prodded with a finger for a moment before opening.

It was the age of cigarettes as a gift for your parents, the age of slippers. (Well slippers eventually stopped because they made too handy of a slapper for a rogue child, cigarettes were so much safer for us to give. Belts were out of the question.)

Sometimes the package had the heavy heft in the palm of his hand, like a baby bottom or a good round melon or perhaps a football; sometimes that package had the sweet promise of treats meant for him, and he alone. A grown-up fruit out of our budget any other time of year .

Dried apricots were the thing of Christmas baskets and Thanksgiving trays, neatly portioned to fit on the end of a toothpick. Pieces of special delight and care.

Doled out sunburst sweet, teeth sticking, tacky fingers, bits of gold captured from who knew where? what far Shores? Perfected, picked, process, purchased for him and him alone. Our love and hopes of pleasing him in his palm.

Sometimes those packages would have a crinkle and a crackle of promise as he held them in his hands. What did he hear?

Did he hear our yearning? Did he hear our inhaled breath held in anticipation, waiting for those eyes to crinkle, waiting for the smile he gave others?

Would they be enough? Apricots like children can be very different from each other.

Some are soft, sweet, complient-perfuming the air, lovely to savor, making you close your eyes in rapture as the stored sun sweetness overwhelms. You could tell it would be a good one, just by touching it plump, soft, giving.

Others are more difficult to enjoy, those apricots out of the package are slightly off. Color just wrong- looking like the sun glanced then look away, wrinkles more pronounced. Slice it and goodness was elusive, no sweetness oozed out. Hard chewy. Hard to love; you didn’t like those as much.

Opening the gift, even apricots, he thanked and set aside and that was OK. Apricots were meant for him. It was dad’s.

There was no sharing, just sly stealing on our part, slipping a hand in a bag left unattended-no time to choose no time to look just grasp and run.

Five children sharing stolen favor do you cram them in your mouth crunching down with your teeth through the yielding for that longed for and momentary sweetness?

Do you hide it away in a piece of plastic wrap pulling it out when you need to see it but putting it back for when it’s needed to remind you of him?

To remind you of the day that once a year, you wrapped your yearning in brown paper?

Hope and love and a pliable slice of concentrated sweetness, seeking favor, sending the message the only way that you knew how: two dollars worth of precious golden Sun.

Child that was, child that never happened, tormented father, conflicted man.

Neither of you were who the other needed. Never who you wanted. Neither of you really existed. Both of you echo in my heart today.

I wish you apricots