Empathy

"That's empathy," said my mother. "That means you're normal."

Sometimes I have the hardest time relating to other people's emotions. Other times it feels super easy. This weekend my sister was married. I was a groomsman, so that means I was up on the stage when I glanced down to see the groom's father barely able to contain himself as my sister walked down the aisle with our father. He was having a hard time, too.

It seems I caught a glimpse of fatherhood's goal that day - to send your son/daughter off and place them in the trusting hands of someone else. That hits me pretty hard. My sister's father-in-law and our own father appear to have a lot in common. They are both men of faith who have given all that they are to their families. And now these two families are merged together. There's no denying that much has changed (and will change) now that marriage has bound my sister and brother-in-law. That title alone is my example: "brother-in-law." I've gained a brother-in-law and so has the groom. I'm probably being so reflective about all this because he is, in fact, my only "brother" - having grown up with two sisters. This poses so many questions - ones that I won't have any say in, and for that I'm surprisingly content with. One will be holidays. Whose house will Thanksgiving be at? Will my sister be home for Christmas? This all seems to support my idea that growing up has no correlation with one's age - it all is a matter of when you pack up and leave you're parents' house on your own or through marriage. When you're on your own, you (and your spouse, if that's the case) decide where you'll spend Christmas - not your parents. Part of me wonders if loving parents can ever be "okay" with that. They've spent nearly 24 years caring for and disciplining a child, and now they're suppose to give them complete independence. Can my parents honestly be okay with my sister and brother-in-law going out of the country for a week on their honeymoon (sans any "adult supervision")? Will my sister call each night before bed to say she's okay? Can parents honestly and completely "let go" of their child?

I think I've had time to process it all: My sister is officially grown-up now.

Back to empathy.

Relating to the emotions and situations of all the fathers and mothers this weekend was shockingly easy. It hit me hard in the stomach when I got up on that church stage and waited for the rest of the bridal party to enter the sanctuary. Beyond the excited "this is it" feeling everyone was experiencing, I couldn't help but let all those parenthood emotions emitted from the first pew to weigh down on me. I felt my lip quivering; my legs seemed to grow heavy. Along with all that joy, I could sense the pride of parenthood accomplishment. The look on the groom's father's face exclaimed the triumph of raising his son to manhood. It was as if seeing his boy find the love of his life also completed a chapter in his life. These are all things I've considered to be majorly significant in human life - if not sacred. I think it's official: I want to be a father more than anything else.

I'm going to write love stories until I die I've decided

Not really. I'm just saying that because in an hour I'll be off to my favorite class this semester: fiction writing. There was once a time when all I wanted to do was study literature and write, but somewhere along the way "critical theory" reared its head and scared me away. It's been about 2 years since I've written something that didn't have the words research and/or response somehow attached to it.

This is fictional writing. That means it's not necessarily real. Two years ago I probably would have taken this literally - writing about nanomachine-infused soldiers and walking battle tanks, stuff that I've learned to leave to Japanese culture (they got it in the bag). Instead I feel like writing about mundane life. Not in an attempt to draw some lofty, artful meaning to it, but instead to just document real-life emotions I experience and see around me.

That being said, I had homework for today. In about an hour I'll be reading one page of new prose to my fiction class. It's a way of keeping us accountable, I assume. We move our desks into a circle and take turns reading aloud the makings of our original stories. Here's what I got:

Mike could see Kelly in the sunrise – the way the piercing orange defeated the morning’s cold drape. The flatness of the road made for the best sunrises, he thought. He loved the horizon. He loved how the deep blue of morning was bested by the power of light and color at the start of the day. To him that was love itself, and therefore, he thought of Kelly. He could see her left eye hiding behind a veil of dark bangs and a dimple in her cheek. He could see her turning around to greet him as soft shades of violet surfaced. Mike stared into the emerging light and tried to imagine her there – somehow existing in the collage of color and cloud. He wondered if, by some romantic coincidence, she was experiencing the same mundane, however magnificent, natural occurrence as he was, and maybe – just maybe – if she was thinking of him. She’s not, he thought. The sunlight began to reflect off the hood of the car and he turned off the headlights. He had driven through the night and now the day had arrived, marking the thirtieth day since Kelly left him for “some douchebag back home,” as he had come to call him.

There was a romance to the Indiana interstate that Mike had fashioned in his mind. The fields of harvested corn seemingly longed to be replanted – to return to their desired state of blossom. In the late autumn plainness, Mike found beauty and, as he would call it, love. He loved the road and the passing cars. He loved his ’89 Chevy Caprice and the hours he spent last summer replacing the transmission. He loved how its maiden voyage had taken him out of the refuge of his parent’s garage and into the night, all the way to that diner off the twenty-first exit where he first met Kelly. She was sitting alone at a table, writing something in that tattered leather-bound journal of hers, occasionally looking out the window at that illuminated stretch of road.

It all started at that diner – one of those glorious, grease-ridden diners placed directly off the exit ramp. During his late-night drives, the twenty-four-hour diner appeared like a beacon, its muted fluorescent lights appearing in the distance behind a thin line of spruce trees. Mike had stopped there just hours before only to grab a quick cup of burnt coffee as he made his way south. He wished he had seen her there. Just like old times, he thought. They would be sitting in that corner booth by the window – where he first saw her – talking about old TV sitcoms and art history courses she was taking at the community college. Everything would be perfect. But that wasn’t the case – not now.

-B

Demo (I make music?)

Demo (enjoy)



No lyrics yet. I'm just proud of myself for actually recording this tonight. Any suggestions for lyrics would be awesome.