Dad

I lost my dad this week. 

I feel orphaned. 

I'm so grateful for the gifts he gave me: my sense of compassion, the ability to call a spade a spade, my complete confidence in belting out a song (even if I tend to be a little off key), my love of math and science, my sense of fair play, my generosity, my long pretty fingers.

He was the parent that never judged me, or at least not out loud. He was the one I could talk to about books, or politics, or traveling or just about anything. He was kind and generous. He was gentle. He was smart. I never doubted his love for me.  I always knew he was proud if me.  He ended every conversation with I love you very much (in his sweet soft accent) and kisses. Smiling came easy to him. Everyone liked him. I loved him so much and my world is a little smaller without him. 

Mortified

Come to this with me!??!, read the subject line of my friends email. 

Inside, a link to a performance called Mortified and her comment:

YOU READ YOUR CHILDHOOD DIARY ALOUD TO STRANGERS!

I was laughing before the link even opened. I know I have notebooks full of cringe worthy material. I was an intense, expressive child and and a angsty teen that didn't hesitate to record my every "I carried a watermelon" moment. 

In fact, I thought, I have a ton of mortifying material from my adulthood too! 

And then I realized: No, no I don't. 

It's not that I'm any less intense or expressive than I was as a kid. Or that the moments aren't there- I'm a Bridget Jones if ever there was one. 

But at some point along the way I stopped recording them. At some point I assigned them the label of cringeworthy and mortifying and I locked them away to the back of my brain, where all unshared thoughts go to die. 

But are they actually cringeworthy? What's wrong with being sad or scared or lonely or angry or enthusiastic or hopeful? Why did I decide that my genuine emotions are not worthy of being expressed without heavy editing? At what point did perky become my go-to emotional state?  

The thing I love about those notebooks and poems, and the reason they've survived three decades of life's changes, is that they bring me back with the vividness of a digital 3D movie. They are my own personal time capsule.  

And if sometimes I cringe, mostly I love that girl- I love her honesty, her sincerity, her passion, her ability to pour her heart out on a page without thinking that this would embarrass her later. 

And thank goodness for that. Because, as it turns out, I'm not actually embarrassed by any of it at all.