Isn’t it funny how our lives all intersect?

I wrote a song with that as its opening line. And it is funny - in a strange way. The places I have seen, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had; they all come back somehow, later. Maybe a rumour you hear floating around, but you believe it. You know that person. That’s the sort of thing they’d do. You sit down someplace and it flashes you back a few months, or a few years, pleasantly or maybe not so. You remember walking here, talking here, smiling here, crying there, wanting to shout someone’s name there, that grass, these clouds, a frown, laughter.

We cross and keep coming back to the intersections. They’re written in the synapses firing at memories half kept. They’re bitterness or thankfullness. Sometimes both. Rarely neither.

Or maybe it’s more like a sheet of paper with spots whited out, written over. I haven’t been talking about what you think I am yet, so let me start now. I’ve written over feelings and conversations. My first real girlfriend: I barely remember her now, except at awkward times when something reminds me of her. But I don’t mourn the loss. I prefer it that way. Maybe back then I thought I loved her - but I didn’t, not really, not the way a woman or a girl deserves to be loved. It was, more than anything else, a desparate possession that I cried over less for the loss of her than for the loss if it. Shallow, very shallow. Glad in a way to see it die, to relieve the tension, to recollect the reasons and understand them and accept them. Her parents were strange in a way only parents can be. I didn’t dislike them. They didn’t dislike me, or at least they never told me so. They were cold watchers, referees. They disliked me taking cake from the fridge (there’s a moment I can’t think about without laughing) but didn’t mind me kissing their daughter. I always thought that strange. I would give my kitchen to any future son who promised not to kiss my daughter. They were odd, uncomfortable people. She was an odd, uncomfortable friend. If we talked, it wasn’t for long, not about anything in particular. I can analyse it, weigh it, find it wanting in the light of five years more experience. Only five years, then, and already I’m half a deck away from that card. Odd. And we never intersect in person as much as in memory - rarely, now - and I wonder what lack she finds in me, glancing back. Really, I hope she rarely does.

There - I’ve stood at the crossroad and glanced at the one not so much untaken as denied, barely caring that I wasn’t able, perhaps even glad at the denial. I could be married now, but I’m not, thank God for that. I wasn’t ready - am not ready - to stand at an altar and sacrifice my life to another. The words would be pretty words, and I might cry selfishly at the final realization of a dream, but in that way I’m sorely lacking, and admit it. I always will be, much like every one of you reading this. In that, I think, we find the grace of God enough to tear away self for a moment and become more than one, but one more than one and still one. I may stand in that grace someday, but it won’t be the foolish taking I most often commit to.

One more girl, then. We intersect sometimes, rarely. I become myself with her, the brazen taker, the puller, the thief come knocking. Wrong in that, I know, enough to dread another crossing into her realm, where I become me, where I write those crooked words deep into our minds. See? I’m so different, but then again, not so different.

Not a women, now. Family. Crossing, weaving, intercrossing. What must it be like to be a parent? Knowing that this son or this daughter sees you no longer as her future, his future, but as the past? What is it like to watch a child on the cusp of becoming another’s posession? Or to see one step under the doorposts with suitcase and future in hand? Many questions - I have no desire to ever be that father. But then, ironically, I have much practice in letting things go. If you were here right now, you might wonder at a bemused smile working brackets at my mouthcorners. Here, God says, you’ve let this love go and yet not let it go altogether - I’m making something for you. There, God says, that’s they way to do it, slow learner. And maybe I will someday watch that child in another child’s arms and say, “I was young once.” Or maybe I’ll say, “This one is your decision.” That wasn’t the career I wanted for you. That’s not the college I would have you attend. This boy, this man is unlike me in a thousand ways that run against my grain. But then, I’ve laid the foundation already, and the choice is, after all, both ours. Mine to raise you, you to take that foundation and set a house on it. That’s the way of love, I think - something in building cornerstones.

But I’ll let my future children - if indeed they’re prepared beyond the stars - sleep in peace a litte now. Also, that girl that got married a few months back. I should sit back and read something that speaks of a deep father’s love. There you have it - a fragment past and possible future. See, I don’t really know that much yet. But I know that much.

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