Showing Up

(Artwork by Sasha Fantom and photographs of Sunsets as Reflected through Shattered Mirrors by Bing Wright)

Typically, when I hear the words 'show up', no matter how caring the intonation, it stimulates two trains of thought: 1.) I better get busy doing that 'big thing' I came here to do, or 2.) I better get super spiritual and be what I came here to be.

Both trains are heavily loaded with striving, and an assumption that simply being me just isn't enough. It can literally take me days, weeks or months to realize that I hopped on one of these trains, with some form of compulsion powering it like a steam engine, before I hop off.

However, there are those days and weeks where I am not striving, yet something is actually happening. I showed up. I showed up here and there, and it made a difference. Sometimes it looks like speaking up. Or, making my son laugh instead of get tight. More often than not, I find it's when I stopped myself from saying that thing I always say instead of feeling deeply engaged in the truth of the moment.

For most of my life, I wanted to be famous but I didn't know it.

At age four after my father was incarcerated for the first time, I ended up on the front page of the local newspaper. I knew he would see the photo and know that I was alright. Despite the places my father would get horribly off track, his love was palpable and undeniable, something my mother nurtured and reinforced. I knew it meant the world to him to see me on the paper and know that I was ok. By the time I turned seven, I lived in another state. I remember thinking "I am really going to have to do something 'big', now, for him to know that I am ok."

I am not sure if I ever expressed interest in seeing my father when I was young. However, I very much wanted him to know that I was alright and my mom was doing a good job. Unconsciously, 'doing something big' drove my existence until age 30 when I met my father face-to-face for the first time in the safety of a Colorado Correctional facility. Being present with each other in our grown bodies was the beginning of our 'showing up'. From that moment on, I could call him and he call me. When he got out of prison, I had to confront fear, and trust myself to handle being in relationship to what society calls a convict, but a daughter calls a Dad. I showed up without my mother's protection or guidance, but with her love.

I grew myself up.
I made a choice, a choice that broke unspoken agreements that had been in place between my mother and I for decades.

Eighteen month's ago my father died, just ten years after I met him for the first time. We were never super intimate, talking over the telephone every day in the way he did with his baby sister and step-mother. However, we did what we needed to do with each other. As his only child, I showed up as he was dying and held his hand. We cried a lot. We didn't speak much. But, we were present. I could have tobacco and incenses burned with his body and play the kind of music he loved at his funeral service. He would have died just fine without those things or me being present. But, it wouldn't have been the same. I'll never forget that it was a bit after midnight on the night I actually said "Good Bye," without an "I'll see you tomorrow" that he actually died.

It was shocking to me. We didn't talk every day while he was alive. I didn't turn to him when I needed things. He didn't call me when he was down. But, my "Good Bye" was different than his sister's "Good Bye." Or, his Stepmom's "Good Bye." Or, my aunts "Good Bye." Or his little brothers "Good Bye." My presence in that moment mattered.

Our presence matters. It matters to our sons and daughters. It matters to our teachers and students. It matters to our neighbors, lovers, spouses, plants, trees, birds and air.

The break-thru for me in this story is that I wasn't too busy doing big things to show up for this one man's rite of passage. I wasn't too scared to tell my mother that being with my father as he died mattered more to me than interrupting the plans we made for her to celebrate my sons birthday with us in Vermont. Instead of creating my life as if one didn't already exist, I realized without doing anything at all I already play a big role just being myself. Sometimes the simple things take the longest to learn.

As I was cleaning out my father's apartment, I found something he had written about his death. Without our having much contact over the course of our lives, he clearly scripted out how he wanted to die and that his daughter would be present for the planning and decisions at his death. From his perspective, that was just who his daughter is. But, from mine, it was the seed of who I was becoming.

I learned so much about myself and my father as he was passing. All of it remains sacred to me like a deep treasure buried in my heart. I met people I would have never met, and heard stories I would have never heard. Some stories broke my heart many times over. My Dad's friends, some that were bikers and ex-cons, went out of their way to contribute to his passing, dismantling decades of stereotypes within me through their care and sincerity.

And, my mom, she showed up, too. Instead of flying to Vermont, she flew to Colorado. Our connection was clunky and edgy, far from smooth and easy in the way we are accustomed. Yet, grace and love was present, down deep, showing us that clunky and edgy was not happening to tear us apart but to bring us together in a new way.

Together, we sloughed off decades of unspoken agreements which time had come to an end. I felt the fragility and vulnerability that exists between us. I fed my faith. I trusted our capacity to grow beyond past limitations. It's one thing to show up inside of the pictures others project onto the world, and another to track with present streams of possibility that break out of them.

I sat down at this computer to write about astrology. However, this story is what was present, another chance for me to trust that simply being me is enough.