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Forever Blue

When I was growing up, I often heard my father talk about the struggles of his childhood and youth. Too many mouths to feed not enough money, no home and no land. They worked with what they had and worried constantly about tomorrow and the day after. 

 There are things about him that I did not understand then and still do not. Why for instance, it is so hard for him to be optimistic, why he cannot overcome his many irrational fears and why he only expects to hear bad news from everyone he cares about. I treasure the streaks of lucidity I have encountered where I glimpsed his full humanity until the clouds of gloom took over.  I like to believe that is my "real" father, the rest is who his circumstances turned him into. Reading this poem by Naomi Shahib-Nye struck a deep chord for me

 My father couldn’t swim either. He swam through
sorrow, though, and made it to the other side
on a ship, pitching his old clothes overboard
at landing, then tried to be happy, make a new life.
But something inside him was always paddling home,
clinging to anything that floated —a story, a food, or face.
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