The Relics and The Trees

I want to sink into reflection a bit, but I don't know if I have the patience. The sun is shining and it's getting to where you don't need a coat to go outside.

Can you imagine?

I'm starting a new notebook today. Part of my ritual is labeling the old notebook with the start date and end date, using an adhesive sticker that comes with the notebook.

Then I tuck the page of labeling stickers into a pocket built into the back cover of the notebook. The only other thing I keep in that pocket is a letter that my stepfather Nick wrote to me in August of 1994, after I'd spent a year in Virginia working as an archaeologist and was about to drive back to Arizona and try my hand at graduate school.

It had been a rocky year, lots of good things, a few accidents, and some genuinely careless behavior, all of which instigated a letter from Nick that I carry with me to this day. I always read it, or parts of it, during this transfer ritual from one notebook to another. I also read it when I miss him.

It reminds me of so much. It's a relic, part of the archaeological record that he was alive. I have his bronzed rugby shoe, his work ID, and the letter. Digital photographs, of course, but those are not real relics.

Here are three:

This June, it will be 22 years since he left, and he comes to mind almost every day, either in the form of recollection, or by way of something he shared with me.

I have been so lucky to have two people who played a fatherly role in my life, gave me fatherly love and guidance, and who stood there like great big oak trees in the yard, trees that will always be there even when all that remains are relics.

I think Nick would be proud of where I am, what I'm doing, what I've become. But I've always been a late bloomer: puberty, dating, considering myself a grown-up, accepting middle age (work in progress), and just the grand scheme of coming into the awareness of my place in the world. I've wandered and explored and collected little tokens, cuneiform tablets, ostraka, rubber stamps, and epidermal scars and deeper ones that make me who I am. I'm still gathering, but I know this for sure: what I am now is what I will be. Just as it took me a few lines to get to this point and maybe gave you, dear reader, a jitter of "where the hell is he going with this?" I have given those who love me no small amount of these jitters. Father, stepmother, sisters, they have all been the recipients of this accidental side effect of how I live.

And I imagine I would have given Nick a fair share of these jitters over the last 22 years, and hopefully instigated a bunch more of his letters where he reminds me who I am. Or sparked more of the strolls through a Virginia autumn, often around the holidays when I'd make it back to the Piedmont. The invitation was never more than a casual "let's go for a walk," but I knew what that invitation meant. I was a little bit apprehensive about what I'd done to raise the advice that was coming (I knew). But I was also grateful for it, even before we stepped outside.

I sit here now all these years later, my eyes clouded by tears, and I just wish I'd gotten more of it, all of it. Why I didn't get more is on me, on account of all the wandering, and that is just how my life works. No matter how much we got, there could have been more.

And goddammit, I've been so lucky for the people that I've had in my life, and still do. The ones who have been there all along, ever since I was aware that there was a yard outside and there was something in the yard called trees. And I'm glad that Nick has shown me, through relics and love and whatever we gather that constitutes the outer layers of our souls, that they will always be with me.

Enjoy your weekend, and love,

Chip