I hugged my father before leaving today.
I haven't hugged him in more than ten years.
This morning he ran down the stairs to come get me to look at a watercolour that he bought from what he was very proud to himself dub an "up and coming" artist.
It was a pretty watercolour. He was so eager for my approval.
In the kitchen over a very fast coffee before I ran out to meet the boys, I told my mom what I thought of Il Pagliacci, of the tenor that she didn't like, of the baritone that I found felt more comfortable in his second role than in the Rusticana one.
My father pitched in with his opinions of certain sopranos, why he hates Maria Callas otherwise known to him as "the first Onassis woman" and most of his opinions were utter bilge and air heated to a fairly high temperature, and again -- he was trying to sound right about everything but for the first time -- not to put me down.
For approval.
When I was leaving he hugged me goodbye and it felt so natural I hugged back without thinking.
On the drive to breakfast I was so confused.
He was such a sweet man so suddenly, almost the man I remember putting daisies in my hair (still my favourite flower) that he picked from the field on the farm over twenty years ago.
There is a picture of us like that in a photo album that my mother keeps.
I haven't had the urge to look at it in ten years.
At brunch Seb and Sophie and Isabelle and Yann joined us, and Isabelle screamed "GILA MONSTER GILA MONSTER" very excitedly and talked Seb and I into singing the gross song.
The entire diner went quiet for the duration.
Marc had wonder in his face again.
There was laughter of a calibre that could have imploded planets, and oral hugs aplenty.
At Mich's I was flirted at and fondled and I smiled and thanked for the massages and turned my cheek into the lips pressing at me for goodbyes.
The affection was appreciated, and returned in ways that is slowly becoming more comfortable -- without the guilt of constant rebuffing.
My father hugged me, looking for approval, precisely twenty four hours after he stormed out of the house in a rage that I haven't seen in anyone else in very many years.
I don't understand, yet.
But maybe there is a secret to be uncovered there.
Because that picture with the daisies and the white chairs that my grandfather made from the old picket fence fourteen years before he disowned me, is burning so brilliantly in my mind right now.
Tiny little me with my lamb's cropping of yellow curls and a crown of daisies in my hair, sitting in the lap of a man who is smiling, his face full of love.
Gods, I haven't used those words, not in my head not in my heart not anywhere, within a wormhole's distance of any thoughts involving my father in a very very long time.
Since long before I stopped feeling, and then learned to start again.
I... I'm going to start hoping despite myself, this last place where I had never let hope return to, and I can already see how hard it is going to hurt next time he goes off his meds
but right now
there is nowhere in my life where hope is missing anymore.
Nowhere.