Earlier this week I roamed the downtown area of Oak Park with a friend. We went in search of discovering the roots of a distinguished American author. The town takes great pride in their once resident, although I find it fascinating that the pride wasn't shared by the individual.
Ernest Hemingway wanted a different life, so he reinvented himself. He broke from his family, religion and hometown and traveled to Paris, Spain, Florida, Africa, Cuba and ultimately Idaho where he took his own life at age 62. The same age my dad was when he passed just this November.
The meat of Hemingway's messages is in the unsaid: One true sentence. What is whispering in the background is the immense difficulty in that venture. As if truth were readily tangible. As if this crossroads on which I pace suddenly illuminated one distinct path. Hemingway was constantly reaching, so am I and coincidentally so are my sentences.
It's unsettling to grasp at the ghost of what was. Maybe Hemingway dealt with that discomfort by moving or marrying another broad. I wonder though, if the bigger challenge isn't to pick a path and run full speed down it, but rather to stay and face what is.
I didn't know my father and he didn't know me. And since this was a fact even when he was alive, I wasn't convinced that much would change when he was gone.
That's one truthfully ugly sentence.
But somehow, everything has changed because options are no longer available.
You sit at that proverbial crossroads too long and alternate roads disappear. (Back off eternal optimists who claim it's never too late to do something.) It is too late for me to have a working relationship with my dad, roots that for so long I was convinced I should be separated from. I missed many opportunities but then, so did he.
Hemingway, if we could sit across from one another, I'd order you and me a mojito and ask for your truest sentence. If I'm brave enough, I'll stay and try to find mine.
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