Understanding

Last night was a good evening overall – we had a pretty good meeting, even though there were only 5 of us attending. I managed to work out some of the tech-kinks on the bike club web site (the calendar works now, like it should!) I came home with evening to spare, and moved on to some “busy work”:

One of my coworkers is Phyllis Scott. Her husband is Bill Scott, and Bill was one of my dad’s best friends. (After his funeral, Bill came by and asked for just one thing of my dads [we would have given him anything and as much of as he wanted] – my dad’s campfire griddle. Dad, Bill, and another buddy had spent many hours hunkered over that grill around the fire. We were honored that he should have it).

Anyway, the Scott’s are planning a vineyard, and they asked if any of my dad’s grapes survived. Some had, and they were curious as to what varieties they were – both because they’d like to come get clippings, but also because they want to know what actually grows in this part of the country.

I had helped Dad…well, no… I did all of it. *g* I designed on the computer for Dad a plot of his property with all of the plantings listed, and labeled with a code explaining their planting date, variety, etc. Well, the plots are still on my computer, but I can’t find the key to the varieties of grapes. I’ve pulled boxes from storage at both the farm and our locker, plus the records I have at home, and last night spent some time sorting through some of them, looking for the key.

Well, that made me kinda sad.

I found — I remember when Dad was fighting a property tax change, he started picking my brain for “case logic”, and I sat down and wrote out an outline of attack, the different points to argue and how, etc. Well, in this one box that I was sorting through, in one folder inside, I found my handwritten notes. I also found, to my surprise, the exact same text, written out in my dad’s hand AND I found the typed case he submitted to the courts, and found it followed my outline very closely.

That made me feel good. Made me feel important. And made me miss my Dad.

He knew what my strengths are, and he capitalized on them. It is highly flattering to have him (smart as he was) use my ideas almost verbatim. Especially on something so important. Especially when I had no actual court experience.

But there was more.

I looked through the papers, looked at the things he was doing in the courts, looked at post-it-notes and reminder lists he had written about chores or traveling…. and I realized just how alike we were. That my Dad believed in getting involved in the local legal process, stood up for what was right, …that he kept the same sort of inane little lists! *smile* I found a post-it-note stuck seemingly at random to some legal stuff. The note read: “Buy rubber stamp soon”.

It cracked me up.

I got to thinking about the other similarities. How I live out of boxes. How I live alone. How I long for company, but not necessarily for marriage. And how I’m willing to be alone rather than compromise the quality of my friendship.

I used to define myself as an introvert, and my dad as an extrovert. He recharged by being around people, and I would recharge by being by myself. He was agreeable to that, and he displayed the Inventor personality traits (ENTP) – like starting physical projects but never finishing them, having a practical genius about him, things like that.

But now, I sat on my floor with a stack of papers on my lap and I stared at my refrigerator and I thought: Most people would now identify me as an Extrovert. Perhaps my Dad was also a highly socialized introvert. And as I made that bridge, I was struck by so many other things – the price my dad paid to follow his dreams of having his own fruit farm, but to live in seclusion, removed from the people and places he enjoyed. How alone he must have been. How he poured himself into his work as a comfort. That hauling four 5-gallon buckets of water at a time out to 150 fruit trees must have seemed better to him than the alternative of sitting inside, alone.

I understand now. And it hurts. Because that pain is my own, too. That no matter how much I want to, I can’t be everything to everyone, and I can’t fix every problem, and I can’t make life wonderful for everyone, including myself. All I can do is try, and sometimes that effort is expensive, and sometimes the failures are even more so. So I carry around a programming book instead of water buckets, and I plant code on servers, hoping to see things grow and take comfort in that.

Because there is no comfort in the silence. In the emptiness. In the singleness, the aloneness. The “only”ness.

I miss my friends, my family. I miss you. I long to cup your face in my hands. But there was nothing more for me to do but to feel sad, then roll over and close my eyes, and seek the company of my dreams. How many nights must my dad have done the same?