#SOL17: Father's Day

Rob teaching Devon in the Redwood Forest. 

I know more about love now. More about marriage too. It's ironic to have learned so much after Rob's death, but great loss brings clarity. What's important seems to shine more. After the shock and numbness wore off larger spaces formed allowing me a vantage point I had not know prior. I'm like Emily from Our Town who suddenly can see the vastness of life as if it were a movie. The smallest of details takes on weight.

Here is the day we spent in the car traveling from Mississippi to South Dakota, laughing for hours as we listened to David Sedarís reading one book after the next.
Here is an ordinary moment where I read a text from Rob: Just checking in. You got Devon this afternoon?
Here are those sacred weeks after we adopted Dev and love bloomed in ways we each could not have known.
Here is the first start to love: two poets at a poetry festival.
Here is the kitchen in Fort Lee, so tiny and yet we cooked together there more so than in the bigger kitchens we would know.
Here is a Sunday afternoon in fall and Rob is watching his Giants, I am seated near him, reading, and Devon is upstairs.
Here we are at the science fair, overheated in the crowded hallways yet bursting with pride.
Here we are bereft the first weekend Devon went away without us. We missed him so.
Here is the first time we saw a computer Devon built and we wondered how he learned to do so.
Here is when I lost my mom, Rob' father, my dad.
Here we are driving Max home--just 8-weeks-old and Rob would sleep with his hand in the crate all night and a clock ticking next to the best dog in the universe.
Here.
Here.
Here.

Now that I know the ending, looking back is so possible, so necessary, so tragic and so glorious.

Happy Father's Day, Rob. I'd like to think of you in some parallel world--some multiverse--being a dad, a husband, a best friend. Being you and just taking the dog for a walk.

Ordinary love.
Just that.