To Call More Often

Last month, the day we took this photo, my father and I spent two hours unexpectedly hashing out forty plus years of complicated and often unspoken family history. Things we hadn’t really ever talked about. We cried over regrets. We laughed over forgotten stories. And we realized, together, that we had stopped calling or checking in with each other anymore, for more than a decade. It wasn’t that love was absent, but that love was frequently sitting on a shelf, waiting for more convenient times. At the end of our lengthy and much needed talk, we agreed to call each other more often, at least once a month, not for any reason in particular, not for holidays and special days, but simply because I’m his son and he’s my dad. Today happens to be one of those special days, but oh well. He’s my dad. And we’ve already spoken at least three times since early May, just because. #fathersday2021