We crossed the intersection, reflecting on how strange and almost unreal that memory seems, the startling way geography - even a landscape as unchanging as the corner of Race and Marietta Avenues - transforms at different moments in a person's life.
Another memory of that intersection later bubbled up into my mind, with startling immediacy: I was home on winter break during my first year at Swarthmore, in the passenger seat of my dad's two door, black-with-red-racing-stripes, not-very-clerical, possibly midlife-crisisical Nissan Pulsar. He was turning right onto Marietta. We were going to visit a family from church, a little girl named Jillian who had cancer. She had been sick for a long time, and would die soon.
My dad had cancer, too. He was recovering from a surgery that removed a large part of one of his lungs, and anticipating chemotherapy. I had come home early from the first semester, after his lung cancer diagnosis. A lot had happened in a little over a month, and now I was readying myself for the return to school, feeling ambivalent, frightened, angry, urgent - without a definitive target for any of those confused feelings to aim for. Mad at what? Alienated from whom? I didn't know.
I wanted to pull something true from that tangle, and offer it to my dad. I wanted to bridge the gap between us, sitting there quietly in the car, holding so much in our respective hearts, soon to pull into Jillian's driveway. But I didn't have the words; I couldn't connect my jumbled feelings and thoughts. Just as we turned onto Marietta, I blurted: Dad. Dad, I am so tired of being adolescent. I'm sick of this. When will all this moodiness be over? I'm so sensitive all the time. I want to be steadier. I thought I would have outgrown all this by now. When will I grow up?
I was seventeen. It was the best I could do. It was honest - I felt frustrated with myself and my wild, unknowable emotions. And it was a familiar mode with him that I easily fell into, seeking assurance and advice. I don't remember his exact reply, but I do remember that he took me seriously; he didn't laugh. He told me I'd be okay. He told me I would grow up, all in good time.
My dad didn't say that being grown up does not deliver you from the mysterious, gripping nature of your own feelings. Nor does it promise a life free from nine year olds and forty-three year olds with terminal illnesses. On the contrary: the tragedies and losses just keep piling up.
I'm nearly finished reading the second of the Neapolitan novels, by Elena Ferrante. I identify, at times too powerfully, with Lenu, the narrator. I suspect many readers connect with her, a character so intimately drawn, so flawed, so aching. She has a brilliant best friend and understands herself in relationship to that friend, always coming in second, always muted and dimmed in comparison, even when their life paths vary dramatically.
Growing up, I was a Lenu, in more than one female friendship - swallowing myself to make room for and then form myself around a more powerful and shining personality. Prettier, smarter, quicker, more charismatic girls. That's one part of the story, anyway. The older Lenu describes her adolescent feelings with shocking honesty, contrasting them with her outward actions and words. The two are often painfully, (recognizably) disparate. She wears a mask, she fears and hates her own perceived limitations, she pretends to know, or not know, as social situations require. It is hard to enjoy her life without her friend; it is impossible to enjoy it with her friend. They are bound together, each depending on the other for her complicated, fragile sense of self.
Like Lenu, I often wished for more independence from my friendships. I wished to be the center of the story, rather than the supporting actress I knew myself to be. But I was afraid to assert myself, and uncertain of who that person was, anyway. That fear, of exposing the real, muddled, yearning me - and being met with conflict, judgement, or rejection - subtly colored much of my childhood and adolescence.
Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of my dad's death. I feel his absence most with my children; I feel his presence most with them, too. He would have been a stellar grandpa. Instead, he is a stellar ghost grandpa; my kids know enough about him to say, Oh Grandpa would have really laughed at that! Or, wouldn't Grandpa have liked this amazing dessert? I can easily imagine his delight in them.
But besides my growing and beloved family, I don't know often think of my accomplishments, or lack thereof, and wish my dad were around to be proud of me. I don't imagine what he'd say about a job I did, or a holiday dinner I pulled off, or a book I read. I think that's because he managed to communicate that it was my very being, rather than my acheivements, that he valued and loved.
In considering Lenu's youth, and my own adolescence, spent attached to more desirable and difficult others, I have stumbled upon a gift - the awareness that I've changed. Or rather, I've become more me and so am no longer afraid of being exposed, of being known as a fraud. I don't hide in the same way anymore. I don't feel weak, because I wear my vulnerability more comfortably, openly. (Geez. If anyone knows that, you all do: it's hardly a secret.)
I am writing this on the train back from New York, where we talked with Mike's doctor about more treatment and monitoring, to address his elevated EBV level and hopefully prevent relapse. It's an uncertain path, it frightens me. We'll walk it.
Because I still find my sense of self in relationship, but differently now. Something about this harrowing year has clarified my vision, helped me to realize I am strong enough to co-star, to co-write the story.
I wish I could tell my dad that he was right. I did grow up.
