Kinship with the sun

I just finished making the bed where my Dad has been sleeping for the past 4 months.

I arranged all the decorative pillows and smoothed the sheets.
I found one of his toothpicks on the floor.
There is an odd privacy to the basement once again.
I don't entirely like it.

Pepper just walked into the room where he slept and sleepily said,
"Hmm.....I've never seen this place before.  It used to be different."

Sophie came home last night and asked,

Beckam and Grandpa on the iphone - 2014

"Where is Grandpa?"
"He moved out," I said.
Her face fell and shoulders slumped,
"He did?"

In that small moment I realized, he had been a part of my family again.
We accounted for him in our day.
He had a regular breakfast.  Just as Sophie does.
Grandpa eats bagles/toast with cream cheese and juice.
Sophie eats waffles with one egg cracked in the mix.
We knew that about him.
Grandpa sits on the swing on the back porch for long stretches just soaking in the sun.
He loves to watch the TV show "House."
He will always babysit if you ask him.  But he will not clean up toys or change diapers.  He may possibly make popcorn if you're hungry.

Grandpa was sick for 2 weeks.  It was our job to worry about him when he coughed too much.
We got excited when he was finally feeling better.
Some days the whole morning would pass in the kitchen with he and I, just talking.
The light growing in warmth all around us, and I remembered my origins.
Why I ask so many questions, and awake with a buzzing mind.
He picked Sophie up at school, at gymnastics.

My Dad and Me - 1981

He helped me shovel the driveway.
Before bustling out the door to work or a meeting, we would wish each other good luck.

These are the small stitches by which family are sewn together.
And now, it feels like he's been torn off.
Perhaps a spot that will never be mended.
Is this the ache of growing up?  The reality of having a father who is a maverick, an entrepreneur, a soul with a thirst never quenched.  One who cannot get too comfortable without feeling disloyalty to the great possibility stretched on the horizon.  One who feels a kinship with the sun.

The morning before he left we had an honest talk on the porch swing.
It ended with my head on his shoulder, barely swaying, me crying, and him with an arm around my shoulders.
A moment we stole from the tide of change.
I didn't want it to end.
He told me, "This relationship with you is the closest thing I have to the soft spot in my heart."
"Well we'd better take good care of it then," I said.
And we both knew it was time for him to move on.

Now I cry, because I look at his picture and I imagine him alone.
But he does not want my worry for him.  He wants my belief in his strength.
He wants me to know what he is and to love him for that.
I suppose this is part of my tears...is that I do.
More completely than I ever have, I understand my father.