I write this entry every year, about my father. I do it on his birthday. He's never seen any of them, and I doubt he ever will. I could share them, but he's not sentimental like that, and I'm a little too shy about them to show him them. I shouldn't be, but then again, my father and I have an unusual relationship. It's how I come to write these blog posts about him- fill in the blanks in our relationship, if only just a little. Some would even argue we don't have a relationship at all.
And yet.
He's influenced a lot more of my life than I realise. Though I guess I do realise since I'm writing it all down. My love of the stars comes from him. My grammatical sense comes from him. My belief and commitment to self-expression comes from him. There are stories behind all of these, things from growing up that have stuck with me, nestled under my skin and stayed there.
He showed me the moon through a telescope, and planets, and stars. And once, when I was little, he drove all of us North so we could all see Aurora Borealis. When I was in Hilo, and Ipo and I drove up Mauna Kea and broke cloud cover and saw the stars- all of Orion and the Big/Little Dippers too low on the horizon to be seen, and Mars at its brightest, I cried on the way back down because I missed my father so terribly much. Astronomy translates to 'law of the stars' which is not only the title of a blog, it's also my screen name. It's not only a tribute to something I've fallen deeply in love with- even if I fail at the maths involved to do it properly- but also a tribute to the person who made that love possible. I fell in love with space because of him. I've even stolen his book Lost Moon, about Apollo 13, and that movie still makes me cry. I joke about man never landing on the moon (thank you, Mr. Spriggs and Earth Science class debates. Appreciate that one), but really I find it fascinating and beautiful. The flight, journey, and experiences of Apollo 8 make my heart sing. I wish I could have been alive for that. I wish we could go back and instill in the next generation a love of the stars. I wish I understood the mathematics behind astronomy, because I know he does, and I would love to have something more in the stars to share with my father than just the stars themselves.
One time, I was printing something off in his office, and he took it upon himself, before printing, to point out to me that the shortened form of "until" is 'til and not till. So I changed it, and I've used 'til to this day. And I judge you for poor grammar. Their/there, your/you're, its/it's, 'til/till, than/then etc. Sometimes I judge less harshly than other times. Sometimes I mess up myself. But I do judge. I judge myself too, if that helps. And anyone who knows me well enough, knows that I love the comma. I love it to death. I am comma happy and proud. I once had a beta who went through and corrected every little comma "error". I never had her beta for me again. Because, really, it's a damn comma. It's not like, I'm using it, badly, or, anything [ow, that hurt to type. I'm sorry for your eyes]. I just toss it in where I take a breath, or pause my train of thought. I don't get marked down on papers for it, that's all I'm saying. But I remember being so attached to my father, so desperately wanting him to like what I'd written, so shy about it, that when he corrected the grammar instead of commenting on anything else about it, an intense desire to never mess up grammatically like that again was born. And I do mess up. But at least now I hope if my father ever reads things that I write, he'll have more to say about what's actually written. Not all influences are happy influences, but at least this influence isn't terrible. I don't think it's terrible. I think it's more about how tiny moments shape us, most of the time when we're not even paying attention. And it's why I have a love of father/daughter relationships in my writing, when I actually write. Because little moments matter.
Sometimes those moments are tiny, and unrecorded, and it's only after a series of them that you realise they're there at all. My father is the quiet sort of man. He doesn't speak very much about things; he generally tends to let my mother be the voice about things. But I like to think that despite my hair changing colour, and the crazy protests I organise, my atheism, and all the massive ways in which I've managed to screw up, he's proud of the fact that he has a daughter who isn't afraid of herself (okay: secret time. I'm terrified of myself. Don't tell him I said that). Because I change my hair colour in some strange defiance of what I'm 'supposed' to be. Because I pick the things that matter and go after them with a ferocity that cannot be tamed. Because I believe what I believe and refuse to back down. Sure, he makes jokes about my hair, and tells me not to let it be so short; and he never really says anything about what I get involved with, except sometimes to ask clarifying questions; and true, we've never spoken about the fact that I decided to stop going to church and am very openly an atheist, but there's also that quietness about him, that way he speaks without uttering a word. Then again, it's the silence that gets to me, the words not spoken, the fact that I can't decipher his jumbled strand of 26 characters that somehow spell out 'I love you'. I don't know for certain, but I like to think he's proud. If only because entertaining the adverse makes my heart break up into tiny pieces that can't be properly glued back together.
We have an unusual relationship, based off interpretations of silences and blown up images of the moon. We're an interesting dichotomy- I'm an exceptionally open person with my emotions- especially love. I tend to give it all away the first chance I get. On the other end, my father holds those pieces close to himself, guards them, and will only break them free under the rarest of circumstances. I've seen my father cry twice, and one time made it into a (very) short piece of non-fiction, about the night my grandfather- his father- died. The other time was at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, when we were walking the footprint. I don't know if he was crying then, I wasn't brave enough to turn around, but his voice was thick with emotion. I have to sift carefully through his alphabet for the ways he says 'I love you'. Sometimes I find it easily. Sometimes I can't find it. But I know it's there.
I write this entry every year, about my father. I do it on his birthday. He's never seen any of them, and I doubt he ever will. But I'll write them, every year, as a testament and a tribute to him.
He is my father, and I know he loves me.
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