Chapter Fifteen: Love Is Infinite
I have a friend who used the term “I released him to his future” when talking about an employee she decided to let go, and I adopted the phrase when I referred to my divorce, that my wife didn’t divorce me but rather that she released me to my future, a future of sobriety, solvency and sanity. But one day, when Taylor was in the seventh grade, a year of worry and wonder when the hormonal changes of early adolescence were set on high, we sat at the kitchen table while Taylor nibbled away at a buttered baked potato. Suddenly, she suggested, “let’s go to Shepard’s Park and see the sunset, Dad.”
Taylor loved sunrises and sunsets, the alpha and the omegas of the day. I’m sure if she had been an Egyptian girl three or four thousand years ago she would have been a Ra Ra, a cheerleader for the sun god. It is interesting when children are small that they see more sunrises than sunsets, but it reverses itself in adolescence for teens prefer the sunset to the sunrise.
Shepard’s Park was a great place for a sunset and I agreed to take Taylor there, for I enjoyed the walkway out over the river. That day the St. Lucie River was tranquil as usual. Small boats with “liveaboads” were rocking gently, anchored against languorous current. Across the river the sun was beginning to dip down over Palm City. It was a postcard p.m. Taylor felt chatty.
“Dad, something weird happened in school today,” Taylor began.
I asked her to explain.
“A new girl in class.”
“Okay, so?”
“Dad, her parents live together,” Taylor said.
I chuckled. Was that it?
“What’s so funny, Dad?”
Seeing the perplexed look on her face, I recall I erased my smile and asked her to go on with her story.
“Well we all gathered around her and asked her what it was like to have two parents on your case all the time.”
Then it hit me. Most of Taylor’s friends came from “broken homes,” as my mother used to call them: children of divorce. Children from two parent families were anomalies to Taylor and her friends, except Mike and Pat Jordan. Since Pam had “released me to my future” when Taylor was only five, she didn’t remember when Pam and I had lived together.
I remembered saying something witty in response to her, something like. “Hard to divide and conquer when the parents are under the same roof, eh?”
“Yeah.” She responded.
“Are you sorry Mom and I aren’t together, Taylor?”
“Heck no,” she said with a smile I considered a bit too mischievous. “I like it better this way.”
Which I knew translated into: I can get away with anything at Mom’s. Her mother had a more laisseze-faire attitude toward child rearing, but after seven children perhaps her child raising might have been viewed more or less as a survival tactic.
“But the new girl…” Taylor went on, “it was as strange that her situation wasn’t normal for my group of friends. Most kids go back between a mom and a dad. That’s what seems right to us.” She thought for a moment and then changed the subject, “The sunset is pretty isn’t it, Daddy?”
It was what the ad man might have dubbed “a Kodak moment,” father and daughter admiring the sundown together, but there was no photographer to snap a picture for posterity. I wish there had been. And she called me “Daddy.”
“Daddy!” She hadn’t called me “Daddy” in quite some time. I put my arm around her shoulder and smiled as the sun went down.
“I love you, Taylor,” I said.
“I love you as much as infinity,” she replied, and for the next couple of years she would add infinity to her love. When I think of her sisters with their infinity tattoos I am reminded of Taylor’s “I love you infinity, Daddy.”
And now she is with infinity, with the Alpha and the Omega, her day is done, her sun has set and she is with The Son. She is with the Infinite. It was a divine calling.
It was a sad day for me two days later when I had to wake Taylor to accompany me to the airport. I had to get back to work. My job was essential as I had to pay for the insurance. Sister Beth was relieving me.
Beth and her twin sister Jenni had been very close to me. I met them at age 3 and they were my daughters (technically stepdaughters) from age 3 to 12. When Pam and I divorced, she cut off my contact with the twins. But Beth had moved back home and I made a phone call and helped her get an interview for a teaching position; Taylor’s illness had a positive effect in one sense as I was able to see the twins again. Beth had sent me an “amends” letter, apologizing for the way I was treated. She had been out on a date and her date bought her a York Peppermint Patty and she burst out crying, because that was the candy I bought her and Jenni after school when she was a little girl. A flood of memories engulfed her: her loss. My loss. Jenni would send an “amends” letter as well.
Anyway, as Taylor and I waited for Beth to fly in and me to fly out, I felt like a deserter. My daughter was crying. The medical screw-ups forced Taylor to stay longer and for me to return. And Beth to ride to the rescue.
When Beth appeared, Taylor turned the faucet off, but I still felt guilty.