Holding

Come and grab a stump, the weather is so nice, I've moved the fire to the entrance and we can sit beneath the starry sky.

Driving along the sunny streets, gorgeous weather locked away from me as I spent my day locked into a large building so I can make a living, I let the smells of summer rush into my wide open window and try to shake away the depressing problems of my day.  I have to breath deep and slow, the urge to let the tears rush down my face is barely contained.  The only reason I don't is the emotional vapour lock that has decided to turn my usually rather sharp mind and senses into a locked room where the only thing to do is to stare at the failures plastered across the walls.

I can't help it.  I turn over in my mind why she left.  Why she can't see the good and only the bad, the bad that possessed me in the moments of my near death.  I beat myself up over how badly I've done things.  The friends who claim me insane.  The ones who only tolerate me out of a sense of past loyalties.  The ones who no longer talk to me because of the way I've treated them.  and let's not even get into the various folks that would probably lynch me given the chance.

I watch as the sunlight flashes off the hood of the car, and think of all the different possibilities, the different time lines that could have happened, had I just learned a bit sooner.  Actually, let's be honest, a lot sooner.  I made the same mistake again, I walked into something that would never work, I walked into a relationship that would never succeed.  I laid myself out, and let myself fail because I just couldn't find the right way to be a real human being.

So as I passed the happy people enjoying the weather I thought of all the things that had led me to this exact moment.  And in truth, I found that only one thing mattered.  The two of you. The two things of perfect potential.  Two perfect beings still waiting to be raised above what ever small damages might be awaiting.

I pulled the car over to the curb, and got out, watching you run around the small park, chasing a small bug, I saw your older sister, standing aloof, her phone clutched in her hand as she texted some person about what was going on, and I suddenly smiled.  I walked forward, an arm slung about the eldest, and as you saw me and yelled 'Daddy!' rushing to me, I flung my arms wide.  I clutched you, I held the small body, no more than 30 kilos of weight, yet an entire world of potential waiting to be unleashed.  Your sister, older yet on the verge of adding to that potential, filled with her own about to burst upon the world stepped forward and graciously allowed a hug among father and his daughters.

The world again regained its balance.  This was right and whatever else may come, these moments, moments of pure potential, they were all that mattered.