61

Today is the 61st anniversary of my father's birth. He's missed 14 of those birthdays now. The morning has been the usual parade of phone calls and messages between me and his parents, siblings, my uncles and aunts. Almost like condolence calls; I'm sorry your son is dead, I'm sorry your father isn't here to celebrate his birthday. This depressing little ritual we follow every year, straining to keep his memory alive. 

Yet, my father is both alive and dead in the most surprising of ways. He's alive in my eyes and my brother's voice, in unexpected gestures both of us unconsciously mirror. He is alive in my love of books and the written word and in my brother's geniality and sense of humour. These are all things we couldn't have possibly inherited from him, having spent little to no time with him at all. Despite that, we find ourselves to be remarkably similar to him. 

With each passing year though, he is further and further away from us. It takes me a second to remember his voice. We don't speak about him or tell Appa stories as often any more. Rarely do we think, it would be nice if he were here to see this today. I can't always conjure up his image immediately; I have to close my eyes and take a second and even then, the face that I see is from the picture we have hanging up of him in our house. He is no longer a breathing, moving, animate force of life. He has slowly morphed into just the picture on the wall. 

Some days though, like today, I would really just love to be able to talk to him. Nothing fancy, no garish sentimental display. Just talking to him would be nice. 

Deeper Than All the Roses

I had an English teacher in high school. She was...complicated. Something about her own internal life, that I have yet to figure out despite the time and distance away from my experience of her, made her unimaginably manipulative and cruel towards almost all of us. She was also a very good English teacher, breaking down the essence of Dickens, Shakespeare and Nehru and their works. (Conflict is drama. See, I remember)

This widely reviled human being once sat me down to tell me that my whole personality at that time in my life (I was 15 and my father had very recently shuffled off this mortal coil in spectacular fashion) could be summed up by E.E Cummings.

"(I do not know what is it about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

Me, I personally prefer the desperate romanticism of Donne (When thou sigh'st, though sigh'st not the wind) and Barrett Browning (I love thee to the level every day's most quiet need) or the maudlin stoicism of Whitman (O the bleeding drops of red).

She said it and then quickly moved on, yet another in a series of manipulations designed to keep us all paralyzed in uncertainty and fear, so I never quite understood what she meant. 

In particular, she quoted the last line of the little couplet to me: Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. 

In the context, I took it to mean that she thought I asked for too little from the world, that I was hesitant to claim my portion of joy from the universe. 

Older and less inclined to blame all my problems on one thorn in my side (the aforementioned evil educator), I am left to ponder this. I don't think it is that I believe I am less deserving of happiness than any other person around me. I think there are greater complexities at play here. 

I've said this before, I have been the supporting player in the story of other people's lives. My best friend (it seems odd to still call her that given that we've spoken thrice in 2013, but that is what she is to me) lived a life at an 11. Her life was always more painful, dramatic, unhappy and exciting always. Worse things than most people can imagine have happened to her. Handsome, smart men will suddenly and completely fall in love with her. Even though she hardly socializes, when she goes out, people cannot seem to get enough of her. She is thought of fondly by most. And she spent a lot of time being in an on-again-off-again epic love story with our other childhood best friend (history has revealed him to be a Grade A asshole who I will spit on if ever I have the misfortune of running into him again).

So somehow, at absolutely nobody else's urging, I slotted myself into the role of the quirky best friend. The Cristina to her Meredith, not even the main player in my own bloody life. If there is any fault to be had here, it can be laid entirely at my doorstep. But I don't think there is any blame to go around; life turns out like this all the time. Not everyone is happy and well-adjusted. 

My larger point is this: I just don't think that life works in a way where you have a certain amount of happiness allotted to you and you just have to reach out and grab it. 

Rather, it turns out, that happiness is what you make of it. Whether it is being married to Brad Pitt and winning a Nobel Prize, or it is having a child and living the same small town where you grew up, happiness is a skill. You learn how to be happy, how to allow the fall of good fortune to add another hour. 

This is the skill that still eludes me. I do not know yet how to be happy. And I 'm not certain that I will ever actually learn. After all, Life Sucks and Then You Die. That's the motto, the credo, the mantra to get through life that I have always employed. 

So, here's the thing. I look at other people's Facebook pages and their blogs. I see their photo albums and vacation messages and I think, I don't know how to do that, how to be like that. There's something wrong with me, right?