the fog lifts a little bit....

the fog was really thick.
so thick i worried about safely walking.
'i'll just get way off the road' i thought....
cause i gotta be out in this....

winter is my favorite time of year.
one of the reasons is that the skeletons of
the trees against the sky feel so incredibly
profound to me. they speak to me differently
this time of year.

it's like there's this spot inside me that
they touch and make echo. and i can hear things
that i can't hear other times of the year.

and here, against the fog and the gray....
it felt like a world between worlds. one
that held secrets for me.

thoughts of my dad popped up.
i wondered where he was.
was he in a world between worlds? was he
in a whole different world that was far away?

i started thinking about him. and something
cool happened.

there's always been two ways i think of him.
one way is where i think of my dad. my father.
i'm usually sad when i think that way, sometimes
i remember the happy. it always seems to have
some kinda need in there tho.

the other way is as a man. a person. a human.
with his flaws and his fears and his own baggage.

i have had to focus on the person a lot so that
i could find some healing within myself. understand
where he was coming from so that i could know that
he did what he could do from the spot he was in.
it's been a place i could find understanding.

never before have i combined the two ways of looking
at him. i always did one or the other.

until this morning in the fog.

i thought of my dad. and the tears came.
and then i thought of the person. and there was some
sense of detachment.

and then....for some reason....i combined the two
methods.

i thought of my dad. did okay. then got wobbly.
and said to myself 'okay, this is where you slip in
the understanding.' and i did.

and i think there's something kinda big in that.

when i did one or the other....it wasn't balanced.
it was either needy or detached.

but when i combined the two together, it felt like
i was honoring the relationship. he WAS my dad. that's
a big thing. and he WAS a person with his own baggage.
but he was still my dad. and i loved him so much.

and i can do both.
i can need him and understand him and accept him and
feel sad about us. i can do it all.

it doesn't have to be needy or detached.
unfulfilled or understanding.
hurt or forgiving.

it's all of that.
not either or.
it's everything.

and that's okay.
that's as it should be.
that's as it is.

and in the fog this morning, i saw some clearing
inside me.

i think i trip myself up all the time wanting to
have one answer to every situation.

doesn't work that way, does it?

there's not one answer. there's a bunch of different
answers that change with the moments.

they're fluid.
they're misty.
they're downright foggy sometimes.

as i thought of all this, i saw the mist clearing
and the blue sky coming out.

i smiled.

to be open to it all....
that is what i think i might need to be doin'.

opening to it all.