In March of 1993 I left Indianapolis, Indiana for a job in St. Louis, Missouri. My marriage, like Icarus, had flown too close to the fire and had crashed and burned. My bride and two young children stayed in Indy and, excepting a brief sojourn as tenant in my second bride’s house, it would be 26 years before I would once again share a space on a permanent basis with another person.
For the past six years, I have enjoyed a happy encampment in what I called my loft. The occasional visitor would marvel at the way I had become embedded in a space where there were few places where I could not reach up and touch the ceiling. Approximately one thousand books sat silent sentry throughout three of the four rooms, (I stored no books in the bath) and the apartment filled with my exhalations and was emptied of other emanations when I created a cross-breeze by opening a window in the kitchen and another in the living room. When I danced to the music that was always on, dust swirled, and the stink bugs would dive bomb me. There were hidden spaces for the figurines that I had received after my mother’s death, and all of the boxes and baggage that I had accumulated over the years, baggage that weighed, but could not be displayed. I loved my loft, and then I started to provide day care to my newest, youngest granddaughter.
Myah and I were easily able to navigate the intimate spaces of my apartment when she was 5 ½ months old, but as she started to grow into her potential, she became more mobile and inquisitive, crawling into the corners of danger and reaching for the wires of wonder, keeping her grandfather busy blocking access, restricting entrance and scattering about the floor the healthier alternatives. Her mother was rising before dawn to pack her daughter’s daily bread to deliver to me before she went to work. I decided that it might be beneficial to the three of us — mother, daughter and Cool Papa — if we consolidated our living arrangements. And so it was done, and for the first time since 1993, I am bumping into another soul at night.
When one has become accustomed to spending his days and nights with only art and music as company, it requires some adjustments to integrate a person or two into his routine. Compromises must be made as people tune their behaviors to a frequency that is unlikely to irritate. The small things that we do, those eccentricities that are little noticed and have a negligible effect on our daily lives may leave a different imprint on the other person. But we cannot know what the effect might be until we, perhaps, perform a task in the manner to which we have become accustomed, only to find that the other person approaches it differently, and feels that his or her way is better. And then there’s Myah, the 13-moth-old “Wreck-It Ralph” terrorizing the magnets on the refrigerator, gunning her walker-car through the short hallways and banging into the walls; climbing into the ball pit her aunt Lisa purchased for her, flinging the balls across the floor of her room, and pulling up on the handles of her dresser to reach her books, dragging them to the floor. And then she sits and turns the pages, which makes it all right.
Two people sharing spaces can challenge a relationship, even that of a father and his daughter, but listening and talking are the tools necessary for success.
Wish us luck.
cjon3acd@att.net