Part Two answering the question about our right to pursue happiness. What happens when your commitment to this pursuit hurts you yet benefits someone else?
„Dear Auntie SAM: Hello Auntie! I just had a thought, sort of an idea for one of your articles in your new blog. It is generally about downshifting and a human’s right not to be successful all the time but to focus more on something what makes him really happy. In any case, all the best, and see you some day! ??
After the island, my dad kept a job for awhile laying railroad ties in the blistering bedamned Ohio sun. But he was never good at managing money; or, maybe he was great. Either way, rather than pay a stylist, he asked me to cut his hair.
That’s how I found the tumor behind his ear.
It looked like the Mad Hatter’s cake: lop-sided tiers too twisted to eat. I told him maybe he should see a doctor. At his next haircut, I said it again – without the maybe.
After his surgeries, he left us to become a beach bum in Hawaii. To see the ocean was his dream.
His calls & letters were rife with fantastic tales & empty promises. One week he was a security guard for Tom Selleck. Another, he learned to surf. He had pet iguanas. And midnight BBQs. And included in his letters fabulous photos of sunsets, sunrises, storms at sea. Always promising to send for us next month, next summer, whenever his ship came in … he never did.
At his funeral, & ever since, some people offer solace: „He recovers from skin cancer then runs off to Hawaii?!? What a stupid, selfish thing to do! Maybe if he had stayed with you three girls, he would have lived!“
In purgatory, some say: all sins arise from love. From those „shoulds“ that cage your heart. From those „musts“ that cloud your mind. From those „guilt trips“ that curtail your body. From all those things that blind us – bind us – from real love.
Had he stayed – for us – who would we have known? Not the proud Iroquois Chief of a clan of outlandish forest fairies he used to be. Not the human he was when he returned, dying, with his secret joy & inner peace.
The day he died I entered his room seventeen years old & alone. I’d been told that moving him from ICU into a room without life-support equipment was good, but I didn’t believe it.
Neither of us could speak – for different reasons.
In the room, on the only table, lay a pack of cards. I shuffled like a pro then dealt my hand.
Win. Win. Win. Win. WIN. WIN! WIN!!!!
After each solitary game, we sometimes found it within ourselves to grin. Our eyes meeting after every hand, every trick he taught me, every win. His: the cerulean blue of an ancient sea; mine: hazel. The color accepting of the ways in which light greets dark.
When we think about happiness, we often think only of our own. So, what precisely are we meant to do in this complex, complicit society in which we each quest for happiness — sometimes, at each other’s peril?
Darling … love.
XO
AS
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HOMOSEXUALITY & HOMOPHOBIA in FOOTBALL kicks off THURSDAY. Three SHORT FILMS: „Rite“ by MICHAEL PEARCE, „I Love Hooligans“ by JAN-DIRK BOUW, & „Màscara Negra“ by RENE BRASIL. DISCUSSION to follow. 16 years & older, only. KULT KINO ATELIER, 8:30PM, FREE.
SATURDAY experience the DREAMY MAGICLAND of OTTO BöHNE’s STROM. A PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT that MELDS WORLDS IN ALL MY FAVORITE COLORS WITH SOME OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE. On display at (the YUMMY) SCHMALE WURF July 25 – August 17. FREE.