This is the first holiday season I will have with both my parents dead.
If you read back I'm sure you will find how much I hate the holiday season. I find it depressing, gaudy, fake, and totally plastic. I imagine Xmas being made by merchants as a way to get people out of their homes in the dead of winter to buy crap they don't need. ThanksTAKING is clearly a false celebration, yet I do recognize the idea of harvesting. You must harvest or it dies, cuz this is the dieing time.
Our ancestors knew that the line between the living the dead was thinnest at this time of year because everything in nature is dieing. Getting ready for the dead of Winter before the rebirth of Spring, right?
That is why we have Day of the Dead and All Souls Day, etc., cuz they are right here, near.
I turned on my mini waterfall, lit some sage, a candle, and poured a shot of tequila in front of pictures of my parents. I felt them near.
I have felt my dad more than my mom cuz he just left in March, but I began feeling both of them when I was cleaning some power stones for my new baby V. I was praying over the stones, wiping them down with an oil, over a candle, near some water and sage smoke. They stood by me. They let me know all would be ok with V in time.
I asked Q if she would leave town with me on Thankstaking and she said she wanted to stay home with family. It hurt a little that she didn't just say "yes dad." Its my first holiday season with no parents. I don't want to be around family or families. I don't want to remember, this year at least, what it is to be in a family. I miss my parents, I miss Keta who always made things seem better.
I have seen what a family can do and it is beautiful. Not so much in my immediate family. In my family, we would just stroll in grab a plate maybe sit around together, eat and then split. Sometimes some members would just grab their food and go to another room in our big ass house. But I did get to see how others do it. Some like being around each other and make fun of each other, remembering stories of silly events. They laugh and laugh. Others pray and eat and then dance up a storm, kids and parents, in laws and all mixed up in a dance-a-thon all night. And others get together each bringing plates more amazing than the last, eat at LARGE tables so all can see each other and then play games together, all ages laughing. I felt so alien participating. I am so thankful I got to experience this at least once. I remember as a kid our parties were more fun but something happened over the years and we got boring and silent. I'm sad I remember the silence in my family more than the laughs and games. We never danced together.
I had imagined when V was born in May that all of us Q, V and I would spend Thankstaking together, somewhere. That Q would be holding V feeding her, me taking pics and being silly to make them laugh. Dance with both of them. Tell them the real meaning of Thankstaking and how we need to say "To All My Relations." Q n I singing songs to V I used to sing to Q when she was little and planning trips where us three could go and be. That doesn't seem likely.
Thus I wanted to just get out of the way. I looked at flights to Mexico. San Luis Potosi, somewhere I had never been, where I would be lost. Where I wouldn't have time to think about here. But I always remember the line from Repo Man "No matter where you go, there you are." I can't run.
This weekend Grandma Teddy invited me to her house for Thankstaking. I can't say no. We are both only children and share that bond. It will be her first season without her mom, Keta. She asked me to bring the wine. I know she wants Stella Rosa. Need to get to the San Antonio Winery this week.
I shut down from now til the end of January. I go on cruise control. Let my grading pile up so I can bury myself in papers. I get it done in time for when grades are due, but I put myself in intense (or selective) isolation with a valid excuse, "I'm grading, can't do anything." I ghost myself.
Yeah I am also hitting that age, when some of my homies are getting divorces after long drawn out marriages and they come to me for escape. I got nothing to say. I never got married, but I guess I've had my share of "divorces." One homie who's a few years older dropped it hard and true, "We are worth more dead than alive." Our kids will be not be without, except for us. We both know we need to stick it out for our kids. As little as we may get to see them, they know we are here. They know we are their fathers. They know we are watching and caring and waiting for them to just call our name.
I know my parents are here. I know they are watching, caring, and pushing me to keep on despite the madness. Despite not getting the call(s). Despite anything.
In what seems like another life, reading Casteneda about how children leave a huge hole in our energy field, I never wanted kids. I wanted to be a solid force of energy that could do amazing things playing with Power and the strands of reality. Being a dad, I now see how I am still playing with the strands of reality, but in other ways. In ways that cross life and death, space and time, probably more clear than if I was working solo. Working with my parents on the other side and my daughters on this side there is power and energy, and it needs to be cared and nurtured through thoughts, focus, and love. So I may seem like a ghost these days, but I will be working on other levels of energy for all of us, with all of us.
See you on the other side....
