Today was very very cold. On cold days like this, the lake turns this very particular color. It's so blue. So pretty.
Today, we were driving home from school and the car was warm and it was so pretty outside and Patty Loveless was singing "Joy to the World" and I felt like the song. I felt joyful. And my thoughts turned to my father, who died five years ago.
There's a Mike Doughty lyric that goes "the only way to beat it is to bat it down." That lyric got me through years of thinking of my father. When I got to feeling like it was just so goddamn motherfucking unfair that he wasn't around to play with my daughter or to boozily quote Houseman with me at Christmas parties, I'd just bat it down. That lyric was a mantra. I bat it down and bat it down and batted it down some more.
But it's been five years now and it occurred to me that maybe it's time to stop batting it down. To recognize that every joyful moment in life (and there are so many) is colored by, is weighted down with loss. So, I cried and cried and cried.
But I was glad to cry and cry and cry. It felt really good to not be batting it down.
Funny that, huh?
