My father

For most of my life I thought you didn't say enough.

You didn't explain how you felt about anything. You didn't make speeches. You worked, you fixed what broke, you paid what was owed, you carried the heavy end, you went quiet, you got older. And I read all of that as distance. I spent a long stretch quietly resentful about it, if I'm being honest with you.

I understand it differently now. I think some people love with their hands because saying it out loud feels dangerous to them, like it's a thing that could be used against you later. You loved by showing up. By driving the long way around to get me. By sitting in the car and waiting without making it a thing. By asking some small practical question when I suspect now you wanted to ask a much bigger one and didn't have the words on hand.

I wish I'd worked it out sooner. I wish I'd asked what you wanted out of your own life, before the years sanded you down into just "Dad" to the rest of us.

I went quiet too, as it turns out. I catch it in myself now, and I don't mind it, because I know exactly where it came from.

I noticed you. Late, but I noticed. And I love the real version of you, the one who tried in the only ways he had, a good deal more than I ever loved the easy father I used to wish for.