In the words of the Cure, 'Play for Today.' I am unsure if this makes me think of music or the fields of tulips, so fat with Easter spirit that I wanted back.
We piled into a car and drove to the Cotswalds, the land I thought England was, shallow valleys heavy with laughing Sheepdogs, disappointing fudge, rainwashed brick, the gray of dusk or dawn the everyday, every moment, every sidewalk and sideways, every sight of ours. I wonder if the sigh inside was the flutter of Anna's parmigiana melting inside, or the memories of plaid pants suddenly more meek than morose; if it was the deep muddiness of it all that melted all my edges, the sweet of jam and cream encrusted on my tongue. Or if I simply, subtly allowed myself to see without seeking, without looking for recollections or reminders, without sight of him.
And what I saw instead: country pubs with fat scones; a functioning flour mill; ducks in restaurants, unwarily waddling; abandoned schoolhouses; perfect chapels with the faintest of forest gauze; homemade ice cream stands and purple sprouting from a Cotswald town; pale blue eyes and endless rows of antiques; wine houses; a penguin home; palaces and pristine gardens; gaudy old women descending B&B steps; the elderly whiskers of portly husbands; tottering babes in broken sandals, awkwardly embracing the rain.
It is funny how, just like not thinking allows you to recognize, not pushing allows me to recall. I closed my eyes on the car ride home and he was there, certainly beside me (not in a ghostly way, but in the way that all memories sidle up and suck you in, allowing life to carry on both forwards and backwards, the Coney Island Whip a ripened core of life). I could see him smiling on the Wisconsin road, my eyes opening and closing, the pink of middle America sunsets ascertaining small, if bloody, births. I could see him with the cinnamon bread in his lap, country blues unbearable and inescapable on the radio, the scent of rental cars and curls of smoke that he promised would, could never wield themselves inside of his veins...could only feign the threat of poison I so thoroughly studied and sternly advised against.
And most of the time, I was smiling, sucking in the small romantic beauties that make this right. Only the smell of leather reminded me of his tawny coat; and this return, this moment of relaxation in which I find myself now, all the small memories I want to keep alive, reminds me that I have lost my confidante. That only my father would comprehend how the kiss of a shaggy sheepdog made me swoon, how the taste of rain chartered me back to our Nova Scotia cabin and the sooty sand that made me love blue. That I look, inside of my friends, my family, my notebook, myself but there is no relief, no release, no remedy for this severe silence I have stumbled upon.