Space Between Limbs

Love as a language and a song.

There’s a dog barking. I swear he’s barking every single minute adding up to every single hour in the day. The dog is in the distance, wailing a muffled tune that goes a little something like:

                                    Waoow
                                          Waoow-woo-woo-woo
                                    Waoow
                                          Woo-woo-woo
                                    Waoow - woof 
                                              Woo-woo-woo
                                          Waooooow!
                                    Wao-woo-woo-woo

And the acorns are falling. They roll down shingled roofs and thwop against flexed siding and pop up from the rough concrete. Acorn bullets succumb to the fate of crushed litter beneath tires and feet. They pile and ping and bounce and crack, as if one specific day (September 17th) the trees sighed and stretched into that hard to reach spot. Space between limbs. How do they know when it is time to let go?

And don’t get me started on the language of birds. Between three trees, a triangle call:

                                    hmmerrrp
                                    hmmERRRRpp
                                    hmmerp

                                          layered over the symphony of crickets.

And the humans, too. They shuffle their children toward the street and the school bus tires squeal at the crest of a hill. Exhaust fumes and the hiss of the door and the parents waving and waving. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of my favorite crooning pup between the slats of a fence. He lets out all his excitement and noises in the deep backyard, swivels around maybe in hope his human companion will chase after him or possibly lay in the grass. But she just sighs and begs and bargains.

And don’t get me started on this particular language of love. A one so tender and exhausting, two beings knowing each other so well, simply figuring out how to do all this living together.

And so there’s the dog’s wailing tune and the drill of acorns and the breeze through the trees. The crickets, the birds, the children, the tires and suddenly you are right here with me listening to a September morning song.

“Love is like this, too. What my happily committed pal is saying, I think, is that one must become content with shedding a version of oneself that one might only vaguely remember but not be able to touch again.” —There’s Always Another Year by Hanif Abdurraqib

There is a dad who is no longer my dad. He is the one in the middle, the one around for the beginning and who wasn’t around much longer after the end. In the simplest of thoughts, one day he was my stepdad and another day, he was not. I don’t think of my once-dad too often until I do, and then it comes in waves. There’s the wave of relief at fourteen hearing about the divorce. There’s the wave of love at twenty-eight sending out an elopement announcement. There’s the wave of compassion at fifteen forgiving and crying in that restaurant booth. In this sea of feelings, my once-dad exiting from my main storyline was the best thing that could happen for me.

And I feel the weight of saying this as I consider the flux of feelings from his daughters and his son. A trail of people that do not have it that easy. My half sister and her half siblings carrying the full weight of Dad. For me, it was the cleanest breakup I will ever experience. The letting go of this once-dad gave room for me to carry my own weight of Dad, the first, the man I love in biology and cannot walk away from. The letting go of this once-dad made room for me to open my heart to my stepdad, the bookend to fatherhood, the man I love in language and cannot imagine ever letting go.

And so there’s this space between limbs, just like the trees and the acorns and the waves in the sea and I am no longer questioning how do they know when it is time to let go.

My once-dad and me and all the waves.

And don’t get me started on taking what I want. I take the music, the gifts, the cities, and the stories. I drop the rules, the expectations, the structure, and the limits. Treasures from my once-dad I credit to him and him alone. There’s the twist and shout contest and the first trip to Arizona. There’s the hidden language of gift giving when you actually see a person deeply. In childhood the first few times my once-dad gave me a gift was a disappointment — before him, I had only learned that you simply say what toy you wish for and usually someone will make that wish real. I once wrote a short story about a time where I asked for a barbie and my once-dad came back with a beautiful book. The way I now give gifts and write letters is a language of love that comes from him.

And we could warp and twist these moments, view them through a lens of selfishness and dictating and not listening, but in all that we never understand about a situation, about my once-dad with his relationships and restless ways, I actually think because I am not his that I actually saw him. I saw him in the simple way young children can really see and perceive people, before children learn how to fret and connect and take on other people’s shit. You see, children learn from an early age how to sing all the languages of love. Like the birds, the crickets, the dog’s wail, the shuffle of feet, the acorns and the trees. I believe my once-dad and I saw each other in our differences, in this place that didn’t really fit. He was in all the drama and context and hate from the family, but I was just outside it, looking at him.

And so you can see my once-dad in my own language of love. I remember the books and the origami papers. The bright kites and the framed believe speech. There’s disney on ice and rollercoasters and drum solos. There’s the time we went to see the Village in theaters and my once-dad’s patience in explaining to me as the credits roll about the main character being blind. I imagine my Dad wouldn’t have been that patient, can see how he would shake his head in disbelief and crack up over my foolish misunderstanding. There’s the time my once-dad gave me a second chance, renting the village on dvd so I could soak the story in with my new knowledge. Here I am remembering when I don’t think of my once-dad too often until I do, and then it comes in waves. There’s the wave of happiness in the releasing of each other. There’s the wave of understanding in witnessing a person who feels they are misunderstood. My once-dad was always running and my question for him today is have you finally figured out how to stand still?

Me with a gift and I so badly want this to be me with all my books from him.

There’s this view from my porch. I know this view. I know these trees, this fence, and this house. It’s my song. The humans change but so far, I’ve remained the constant. I forget, and possibly intend on the forgetting, of how the last time I spent this much time outside on my porch was in 2020 and 2021. Pandemic. Shut down. It sounded a little something like: pain, fear, panic. A time when you could only count on the sunshine and the walks and the tears and the waves.

And I felt different then and I was different then and I looked different too. How that time held endings and recollections and insurrection and just too much. There was me and the porch, this view. I watched the grass grow and the sun bleach the plants and the ants take over blocks of concrete.

And don’t get me started on this small consideration: my front yard is a backyard of sorts.

And as an example, our neighbors once held a party for their toddler’s birthday here. Without asking, without considering, someone’s parents used our front yard as their backyard. My husband and I awoke to tents covering our neglected plot of grass, our sidewalk, our porch too. This party went right to our front door. There’s the catering tables and platters, a pair of machine operated horse rides, the kind that would be stationed outside a piggly wiggly grocery store. There’s a mass of people gathered in celebration in their backyard that is our front yard. There’s the music and the bobbling toddlers and the floating balloons and the avoided gazes in the pursuit of love. My husband and I left our house, elbowed our way through the throng on our front lawn and slowly made our way to the street. We spent the evening out in the city and we talked and laughed and wondered about how someone felt this was okay to do. We pored over what we could have and would have and maybe should have said, all to come back around to the agreement that a birthday is just one day. Something temporary.

And so there’s the rumble of a party and the cries of a child and the coins in the machine and the curious gazes and suddenly you are here with my husband and me, misunderstanding the lyrics in this tune.

My front yard is a backyard of sorts.

There’s a triangle that repeats, a pattern my family knows well. It is the song of threes and it goes a little something like:

                                          Arkansas
                                    Oklahoma
                                          Texas
                                              (always Texas)

I think about stories of how my once-dad and my mother met and how I’m always swept up in nostalgia and the great gift of being an adult who can finally see their parents and their fathers as being humans before being yours. It’s an old song, familiar to you, but I wish I could see them as teens just like I wish I could drive in orange back to my childhood. It hits me that the first time I met my once-dad was the closest I would ever be to fulfilling that wish. Babies with a baby and thank god I was always such a good girl. Imagine if it had been any other way?

And I see my once-dad’s sister and niece and different children online and I think about what the family story is. The story is not mine to hold or know, but I still wonder. In writing my own book where I am the creator, where I am doing extra work to see and to know everyone’s story (even if the reader will never see or know because they are not meant to really know) (but I will know) I see my ego and the power of it all. All my life I think I just want to know and I’ve found a way to do all that knowing right here with you.

And so when my friends send me paragraphs of words and voice notes of details and videos through social apps of their bright faces, when they explain and give me all the details that maybe someone else in their life would try to rush, tell them to get to the point, I am healed and simultaneously seen in this witnessing of my hunger. What you say and how you are living, how you feel and what you need, the unburdening and the sigh, those moments where you just need to tell a story, need to share the drama, need to work out a comedy bit. What I’m saying is that when you choose to feed me this, when you start out by saying something like “I think you would like this,” or “I thought of you when,” I feel the language of love. The words dance through my heart and lungs and teeth and space between limbs. There’s this temporary moment of existing together across time zones and horizons where friends sing a song of understanding.

And here is my husband. He gives my toe a gentle squeeze when he walks past the couch. That obnoxious big toe that I annoyingly remember every family member ragging on. I remember how early I learned to turn this beacon into my own joke, beating everyone to the punchline. I still find myself searching old photographs for a glimpse of who gave this goofy appendage to me.

And there’s that summer when my husband and I decided to watch every season of Jersey Shore. The Sam and Ronnie scene about hurt feelings over a big toe and how we both died of laughter. It sounded so funny, so simple, so stupidly real.

And here is my husband again. He walks past my blanketed feet and gives my toe a gentle squeeze. I feel his language of love.

And so there’s the laughter, the embrace, the waves, the front porch. There’s the space between limbs and the first and the once and the last and suddenly you are right here with me listening to a song about my life.