I look today toward the lake again-it pulls me on
important days. Calls my name-tries to send me messages through the fog and
snow.
So unlike life..is death. I ask him again to watch over
us and take care of us, his daughter, his sons, and his wife, his grandchildren.
To again do in death what he was unable to in life. I feel strong and powerful
and spiritual as I do it. Not at all
hypocrite-but feel it is my absolute right and privilege as a child, a
woman, a mother a daughter to ask for help I need. I deserve it. I am asking
for it. It belongs to me.
But yet today is a different day this Jan 13 than it was last
year on Jan 31. Life has continued-I ask from a different place, a different stance,
a different angle.
Today we are safe. Today we are stable. Today we celebrate
the courage, resilience, the strength, the love in action of a father who is
not mine but who belongs to me in every way possible. Who belongs to my children.
To celebrate the fact that I was able to choose right and had the strength to give
my children what is rightfully theirs.
And to celebrate the fact that I can know what I deserve
even now from my own father and ask for it-even if others think it may be too
late. I know it is not-and it is only what I know that matters.
Tonight we celebrate the anniversary of a date that will mark
our lives forever. So private-so public, so heartbreaking, so beautiful. With so
much power.
Tonight we bring in family reconciled and happy-Chinese
food, homemade millefeuilles that I poured love into. We sit down together as we
should-and pour real wine and sparkling apple cider into wine glasses.And I
look over at the man I love with our wine glasses in hand and give him that
wink from the eye that I knew one day would come. We are there. We have
arrived.
We celebrate from a place of not good or bad or strong or weak. Every day we are vulnerable-everyday is a different day and a new
place. We celebrate from a place…of what is. What we can achieve only together
as a team. We celebrate from a place of true love and of true strength-hoping
together that we can continue to build on the foundation that has maybe only just
begun.
And it is the lake-always the lake that pulls us in. It
will always be the water of the world that calls to us and keeps us safe.It will always be the lake that gives us the hopefulness and courage to continue...building what we know is good and rightfully ours.
The ability to claim it. For it to be ours.
