My Dad is like the tide, ebbing and flowing

(Photograph: Area of Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon, Tillamook Island Light House / Julie Cook / 2013)

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Things seemed a bit panicky over the phone yesterday from my step mom’s perspective. Seems Dad is reverting back to some negative behaviors after we worked putting life back on an even keel a couple of weeks ago. I’m off to visit today and hopefully bring a little more order, to smooth the waters, until the next Nor’easter blows in…which I fear may be sooner than later….I wish I knew what to do to make their lives, both of them, better and easier, but there is not a clear-cut picture quite yet. Lot’s of resistance to all sorts of ideas and suggestions on both sides of the fence in that house.

My son is an only child, as I am these days. That does not make things easy as we age. I now feel badly for his potential role one day… I will continue worrying about him, as I do, but now it will be from the window to my own life with my Dad. I wish life was easy, but there were never any promises for such. We get up each morning and we do the best we can by the people we love, the ones we are entrusted to care for and for ourselves as well. It is by Grace that we can continue putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward… as forward is always a positive.

I have always found such comfort and solace when I am at the ocean…funny how I now liken it to my dad, his mind, his actions and his life. Ebbing and flowing……