ephemeral kerry carrie and i were talking about the differences between different types of love. romantic love is painful, it seems (to me) to have an inevitable end, or if not an end an eventual fade that turns into a soft, quiet comfort. and i am afraid of that quietness. it makes me angry, the pain and vulnerability of romantic love, and i know that hiding underneath anger lies fear and sadness and helplessness. friend love is solid, stable, potentially permanent. there's not so much at stake, but you can still be fully seen and understood as you continue to evolve. earlier this week i was painting a bookshelf. i chose an almost black, sensible and not so austere. i sat in the basement in my ripped, paint-spattered jeans and turned these hideous green squares into shining charcoal, which maybe sounds like an oxymoron. i took a picture of it and sent it to my dad, told him i'd finished the bookshelf and was going to move on to paint my home office. he responded "wow, i wish i had your energy!" i can hear how he would say that, lightly, jokingly, but what came to mind was this slow agony of watching him age. he weighs only a little more than i do. he still works on and rides his motorcycles but he says it's a bit harder to push them up the driveway, those heavy vintage beasts. the leukemia came, then the pills, and it is receding. but i remember very clearly that morning in san francisco when he called me and told me about the diagnosis, and i burst into tears right there on the sidewalk, and he asked if i was crying and i said "no," he apologized for ruining my trip, and i cried all the way to class, ran into kat on the stairs, blurted out "my dad has cancer," and she held me there on the landing. though i've ridden with him, i wouldn't feel safe on the back of anyone else's bike, there is a quiet fear in the back of my mind that i will eventually get another call. because what people say about motorcycles is "it's not if you get in an accident, but when." and i've gotten that call twice now. broken collarbone, fractured finger. miraculous--not like rodney, who hit a dog on a back road in louisiana and flew into a stop sign, not like john who wound up crammed between a truck and a highway median and now has a prosthetic leg with flames painted on the side, not like rabun who fell down the side of the mountain and we all waited with his little daughter for him to be found. which he was, that evening. when he called me to say they were putting rosie down--16 years old, unsteady but still eating one day and unable to stand the next morning--i was in a car on the way to the jersey shore, and i put my head on my knees and cried, and the next day he told me how he regretted not getting me a plane ticket to fly down and be there for her death. how awful it was for us to be apart then. i didn't expect to talk about my dad with carrie that day. even saying the words aloud--how terrified i am of the inevitable--was staggering, and i couldn't say any more. and because i know eventually that day will come, i resist the impulse to imagine it. i set it aside. 240306 what's it to you? who go blather from