Barrett Dorko
19-10-2006, 08:36 PM
It's been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls...
I arrived at the Cleveland airport to find that I would be leaving 3 hours later than originally scheduled. As usual, no one is waiting for me tonight so I don’t let such things bother me. I had been given the gift of time once again, and I’ll use that to produce some writing or to read or stare blankly into space. To me, all of these things are pretty much the same. Not an exciting life to most, I’m sure, but it’s mine.
This delay meant we’d be in the air at the same time. I’d be surrounded by businessmen, young mothers with children and people who didn’t seem to know much about travel. He’d be crammed in with equipment, supplies and other men all dressed alike. Oh yes, there’d also be some weapons.
I look out at my classes full of therapists and wonder what connects us. Too often I can see very little despite the fact that our job descriptions are pretty much the same. Clearly, our education is remarkably disparate. I know many listening to me struggle to relate to the things I’ve read during the past couple of decades. I have to find something that we’ve all seen repeatedly and reinterpret for them in a convincing manner. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes not.
The air above Atlanta was heavy and wet and that above Baquba dry, as always. Today I am delayed by the forces of nature and he by forces much more mysterious. There are decisions made by people above and below him in rank moving a mountain of paper in order to accomplish anything, and any one of them can stop the entire process at any time for no apparent reason. Anything can hold him in place.
My son and I share many things, not all of them obvious to anyone but the two of us. We’re larger than most others but his body has the contours of a McCann and I’m pure Dorko. I joke that I gave him his internal organs and I think that’s actually true when I see his endurance in the face of so much physical stress. Being invisibly connected is what I’m dwelling upon just now, and both of us being forced to wait for a trip into the air above our world today makes me sense the connection even more acutely. Soon we’ll be up there together and, despite the distance from each other, I find some comfort in that. Of course, he’s flying from a place called Warhorse to another called Anaconda. I’m going from Cleveland to Atlanta. Clearly, we are not in the same situations while on the ground.
Finding an intimate and unique connection with other therapists is much harder for me and I suppose that’s no surprise. When I do manage to find this tie to my colleagues it is usually through our mutual disappointments and failures. Not always a whole lot of fun.
But Alex and I will soon be on the ground and in close proximity. We’ll mirror each other’s gestures and vocal inflections. We’ll laugh at the same things. I intend to tell him that I want to say to a stranger on a plane at the moment of takeoff, “You know, this whole thing was invented by a couple of Ohio Boys,” just to see if they get it, and Alex will smile and shake his head at his father’s foolishness. But I know one day he’ll probably say this himself.
Soon I won’t have to imagine our connection, I’ll see it before me, and I’ll feel it when I touch him. Today however all I can do is know for sure that it is only the air that separates us for a while.
That will have to do.
I arrived at the Cleveland airport to find that I would be leaving 3 hours later than originally scheduled. As usual, no one is waiting for me tonight so I don’t let such things bother me. I had been given the gift of time once again, and I’ll use that to produce some writing or to read or stare blankly into space. To me, all of these things are pretty much the same. Not an exciting life to most, I’m sure, but it’s mine.
This delay meant we’d be in the air at the same time. I’d be surrounded by businessmen, young mothers with children and people who didn’t seem to know much about travel. He’d be crammed in with equipment, supplies and other men all dressed alike. Oh yes, there’d also be some weapons.
I look out at my classes full of therapists and wonder what connects us. Too often I can see very little despite the fact that our job descriptions are pretty much the same. Clearly, our education is remarkably disparate. I know many listening to me struggle to relate to the things I’ve read during the past couple of decades. I have to find something that we’ve all seen repeatedly and reinterpret for them in a convincing manner. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes not.
The air above Atlanta was heavy and wet and that above Baquba dry, as always. Today I am delayed by the forces of nature and he by forces much more mysterious. There are decisions made by people above and below him in rank moving a mountain of paper in order to accomplish anything, and any one of them can stop the entire process at any time for no apparent reason. Anything can hold him in place.
My son and I share many things, not all of them obvious to anyone but the two of us. We’re larger than most others but his body has the contours of a McCann and I’m pure Dorko. I joke that I gave him his internal organs and I think that’s actually true when I see his endurance in the face of so much physical stress. Being invisibly connected is what I’m dwelling upon just now, and both of us being forced to wait for a trip into the air above our world today makes me sense the connection even more acutely. Soon we’ll be up there together and, despite the distance from each other, I find some comfort in that. Of course, he’s flying from a place called Warhorse to another called Anaconda. I’m going from Cleveland to Atlanta. Clearly, we are not in the same situations while on the ground.
Finding an intimate and unique connection with other therapists is much harder for me and I suppose that’s no surprise. When I do manage to find this tie to my colleagues it is usually through our mutual disappointments and failures. Not always a whole lot of fun.
But Alex and I will soon be on the ground and in close proximity. We’ll mirror each other’s gestures and vocal inflections. We’ll laugh at the same things. I intend to tell him that I want to say to a stranger on a plane at the moment of takeoff, “You know, this whole thing was invented by a couple of Ohio Boys,” just to see if they get it, and Alex will smile and shake his head at his father’s foolishness. But I know one day he’ll probably say this himself.
Soon I won’t have to imagine our connection, I’ll see it before me, and I’ll feel it when I touch him. Today however all I can do is know for sure that it is only the air that separates us for a while.
That will have to do.