What I Come Across

Actually, this is also a morning of reflection on how I come across (as opposed to how I feel) as well as what I come across, but let's start with the what. 

Yesterday, I thought Karen and Bill, here preparing for a reading Karen will give on July 14, might want to use the computer, so I took all the piles of stuff from the study to the bedroom, where Javier will be tonight.  So now I'm going through piles in the bedroom.  I just wrote to Jonathan:

  I’m going through piles of stuff and came across an album I made of your art pre-school—I guess while you were at Kids’ Corner.  It was obviously after our move to Chattanooga, and you were drawing pictures and saying, “This is my mommy, and this is me, and this is  the kidnapper, and the kidnapper is going to kidnap me.”  “This is Tina.  This is Jonathan.  And this is the giant.  And the giant’s saying, ‘Hee hee hee.  I’m going to get these little people.’”  Oh, I see that you were a bit older.  I’ve written January 1985, and the paper of the one with the kidnapper says CAMP FIRE  I’M SAFE AND SURE SESSION 1.  Clearly, you felt very safe and sure.  With love…

Oh, and I’m listening to Dave Egger’s Hologram for the King, and the last line before I turned it off to focus on you and your art was about the characters (having difficulty making love) “They were so in love with the world, and so disappointed in every aspect of it.”  As you may know, one of my favorite lines is from Fiddler on the Roof:  “Life has a way of confusing us.  Blessing and bruising us.”  

So Jonathan felt frightened without his dad, just as I had felt that last night frightened OF his dad.  It's telling that he doesn't say a giant or a kidnapper.  It's the giant.  The kidnapper.  The one we know is lurking in the shadows.

Back to the piles