Still A Whisper On My Lips
Feeling At My Fingertips
Pulling At My Skin

There’s the obvious love pain, the kind that comes when it’s lost, ripped, stripped, gone.

The kind that comes with a flash when you’re sitting on the couch on Christmas morning and it’s the first one in years that he isn’t sitting next to you in pajamas, opening the so-him shirt your mom picked out, the personalized license plate your dad ordered for him online, the funny magnet poetry your sister and her husband found in Santa Barbara.

When you pick up a box that still has a tag with his name on it from last year.

When he sends a text message saying ‘have a safe trip home for Christmas and remember I love you. always.’ And then another one: ‘I don’t want this. it’s all happening so fast. I screwed up a really good thing.’

But that’s nothing because it isn’t happening so fast, he doesn’t belong anymore, doesn’t fit in with a family that’s built on loyalty that doesn’t waver.

I discovered a new kind of love pain this morning on the airplane leaving Detroit, bound for Chicago. During the announcement of doors closing for an on-time departure a stream of tears slid off my chin, onto my wrist.

I love my family so much it hurts.

Vivid flashes of five days of Christmas in Detroit:

My mom in a role I’ve never had to see before: protective. Momma bear. Fierce. Five days of tender, around-the-clock active protection. Her letter to L last week once he pushed too far, said the end of this marriage is my fault, my decision, my ugly mistake. Her words to him included these:

ohmy....how little you knew this woman….you owe her the validation that you behaved egregiously and that this marriage is ending entirely because of you. That any ugliness that enters is entering on your footsteps. Do NOT accuse her of bringing ugly to this sad ending of a marriage. The celebration of that marriage is still a recent memory to me. You have made it ugly. You must own that. And that is what I need you to hear.

A walk downtown with my sister on Christmas eve. It was raining ice chips but we didn’t feel them. At the end of our route we circled the block ten times before going inside because we weren’t finished talking. Later that night we had a moment from across the room where we had to get up and go to each other; link arms and squeeze.

One of those me-and-dad times that we will both file away. Driving to the airport early this morning wasn’t a chore for him. It was fun. It was special. One of those conversations where I could point at a fish and say ‘look, dad, I think it’s a mermaid’ and he’d smile and say ‘yep, I think you’re right. That’s definitely a mermaid.’

My mom’s friend telling me she heard about that mint water I like to buy at whole foods, she’s dying to try it. Feeling proud to be my mom’s daughter, thrilled that she talks to her friends about me.

Kevin letting me call him my brother, laughing at the way I say wolf, letting me squeeze in on the couch between him and my sister late at night with the TV on

Dad opening the martini glass I bought him and putting it in the freezer right away to chill it for a Christmas cocktail.

Wrapping presents late at night with my sister unleashing her quiet golden wisdom and making me wish we could sit up and talk like that every night before bed.

Those flashes are lumps in my throat today. It isn’t fair that I have this family, this tribe. It helps explain his text message about how hard the holidays are this year, and my feeling that the real hard part was this morning, saying good bye to a family that loves me the same strong way all the time, every time.