Hold Me a Moment

I pause with my feet on the ladder and my head and shoulders peeking up into my childhood treehouse. The sun filters in through the one open, square window, diffused by the big green leaves of early summer on the old maple in the backyard of my parents’ house. 

I finish clambering into the treehouse though the opening and hoist myself onto the dirty, wooden floor. Dust moats I’ve stirred up swirl in the panels of gentle, evening sun illuminating my old hideout. I don’t exactly remember the last time I was here. 

“Oh wow! This is awesome. I always wanted a treehouse as a kid. You were so lucky!” Her big green eyes dart around with interest, her pupils dilated in the low light - a smile fixed to her face. Her wild, curly hair accumulated a leaf on the ascension. Her childlike expression makes me smile. My baby can be so pure sometimes, and her wholesomeness fills my heart with a warmth I had been missing since I’d gotten the call about my dad a few weeks ago. 

Smiling, I crouch down and pull the leaf from her hair. She giggles when she realizes what I’m untangling from her curls. “Oops, thank you.” 

I offer my hand as assistance and pull her up the final few steps of the ladder. When her feet find purchase on the floor she shifts her arms to wrap tightly around me. I accept the hug and bury my face in her chest. She stands a head taller than me, I’ve always enjoyed the way she makes me feel small when she envelopes me into her softness. 

I still haven’t cried about him. I know that’s what she wants. But I just feel numb. Or less than numb. I feel nothing. 

I ease away from her and look up at her round face. I’ve always thought she looked like an angel with her soft cheeks and halo of amber hair. Now more than ever, with the golden hour sunlight filling our quiet space, her seraph features shine. I dissolve into her Emerald City eyes and the love emanating from her gaze. No one can love me like she does. No one has ever loved me like she does. I can feel how much it hurts her for me to experience a loss. That’s my empathetic baby. Her heart is bigger than any you’ve ever met or ever will meet. She wants me to feel because she feels for me. 

But I can’t. “You know he hated you, right? And he didn’t even know you. Didn’t even want to.” 

My mom died when I was a little girl, long before I came out five years ago. Couldn’t get as lucky with my dad. He immediately disowned me when I told him I’m gay. My girlfriend at the time had given me the courage to tell him my truth. Even though it lost me my father, I was still grateful for her urging. I may have lost him that day, but I learned who he really was in the same moment. 

A close-minded bigot who can’t even look past his heinous homophobia to see the daughter he raised by himself. The daughter he made dinner for every single night no matter what - even if it had to be left in the fridge on the days he had his 24 hr shifts at the fire department. The daughter he took fishing once a month on weekend trips all through grade school. The daughter he taught to drive. The daughter he laughed with, had countless inside jokes with. The daughter he seemingly cherished more than anything. The daughter he built this treehouse for after a whole summer of begging. We were thick as thieves right up until the nanosecond my confession took root in his ears. It was like a switch flipped, and he saw a different person standing in front of him. 

“I know, honey,” she says softly. She brushes my hair out of my face and tilts my chin up with her finger. Leaning forward, she plants a sweet kiss on my forehead. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t mourn the good parts.” 

I look back down and fix my eyes on the grain of the floor. I hear her sigh as she starts walking toward the window of the treehouse. She leans against the windowsill and looks out over our land toward the setting sun. A long time ago, before my parents bought the place, the property was a working farm. Now it’s just an old farmhouse sitting in a big, empty field, the barn barely a shell of warped wood held together by rusted nails and the passage of time.

I can’t help but admire her beauty and the curves of her body silhouetted by the sunshine. And my father hates me for it. Hated me for it. 

“Honestly, he has already been dead to me for five years.” I join my baby at the window. I lean my head against her shoulder. “The fact that he couldn’t love me after I told him I’m gay makes me want just as little to do with him as he does with me. Did with me. And now I’m stuck taking care of all of his garbage or estate or whatever you want to call it. How am I supposed to be sad when mostly I’m annoyed?” 

First comes the call, next comes the funeral, then comes the only child and surviving family member forced to deal with the assets. Death is the ultimate hassle. I wish the old man would have written a will so I could have been written out of it. I was better off when I wasn’t thinking about him. 

She moves the arm I’m leaning against to drape across my shoulders. “There’s not a perfect way to grieve, honey, you’re allowed to be annoyed. And angry. You’re allowed to feel whatever you want to feel. I’m just worried about you because you’ve been so distant since you got the call that he was gone. You haven’t expressed any sort of emotion at all.”

“Maybe it’s because I truly don’t care.” I step back from her side. Turning away from the window, her eyes meet mine, and I know she doesn’t believe me. 

“The only thing that I’m even sad about today is that I didn’t feel safe holding your hand at my own dad’s funeral. I can’t even be comforted by my girlfriend because everyone in this tiny town thinks I’m the bad guy. Practically the whole damn town turned out because my dad was a fireman. Everyone knew him, everyone liked him. And he was a big churchgoer. Coached my softball team. A real active participant of his community, or whatever. Everyone in this town sees me as the big bad sinner who ruined the town hero’s life. Like I did something wrong to him by being gay.” 

My baby just stares into me with those big green eyes, concern on her face.

“I know what they say about me.” Throwing my voice into my best Bible Belt accent, “‘Can you believe it? After everything he done for that little girl she’s just gonna choose a life like that?’ ‘Well, what do you think will happen when a girl don’t have her mother?’ ‘I always knew she was one of them lesbians.’ Or that I’m ‘Disrespectful.’ ‘Ungrateful.’ ‘Disgusting.’” 

She doesn’t say anything because she knows there’s nothing to say. Instead, she just continues to hold my gaze. Her eyes doing more to move me than her words could. I feel something shift inside of me, like the first boulder to start an avalanche. 

“I just don’t understand how he didn’t love me anymore.” 

And the flood gates are open. I never cried when he told me to get out of his house. When he said he didn’t want to see my face again. I never cried when I called him on his birthday the first year of our falling out, and he said if I called again he would change his number. I never cried when I was called to be informed of my father’s condition. That he wouldn’t make it through the night. 

But now. In my old treehouse. I can hardly catch my breath as the sobs rack my body. I’m purging every tear that has been collecting within me. 

My baby holds me tight, rocking me gently on our feet side to side. She has one hand in my hair, gently stroking the back of my neck, the other is secured around my back. And I’ve never felt so loved. I’ve never felt so cherished. Or protected. I know this woman loves me. She loves me even though she knows everything about me. And that’s something my own father couldn’t handle. And it’s something that has been so worth losing him over. It was his choice to abandon me. My baby wakes up every day and chooses to love me.

I don’t have to forgive my father for his hate, and I don’t think I can. I’m thankful for the life he gave me growing up, but had he truly known the real me, he would have given me nothing. It’s so confusing to feel sorrow over someone who can throw you away. But I do. Because despite it all, I miss him. Even though he’s been gone from my life for years, now it’s final. 

“Now he’ll never change his mind.” My whimper is muffled as I’m speaking into her shoulder. I’m crying all over her. Snot and tears and spit all accumulating on her funeral attire, but she holds me just as close. 

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry…” She kisses the top of my head. 

The sunlight has faded to a peachy pink as the midwestern sunset glows through the window. That was the only good thing about growing up out here. The beauty of the sunset is unrivaled by anywhere else.

I left my head from her chest, turning away from the sunset and looking up at her face. That angel face that brings me so much peace. 

“It’s okay… Please, just hold me a moment longer.”