Belonging, sanctuary and silver threads

I'm sitting down to write this on September 28th. My dad would have been 74 years old today. But, as he only made it to his 68th year, he isn’t here to sip this celebratory whiskey with me. I’ll have to drink it alone, which makes me laugh. He once told me that he never minded drinking alone. Some days I know just what he meant.I do think of him on Father’s Day each June, but it’s always his birthday that gets me. Even more so than the day he passed.I was thinking about how when he died, 68 didn’t really strike me as noteworthy. But when I turned 48 myself this year, that meager 20 years difference seemed suddenly really small. And I wondered if I should have started my own countdown. I wondered if I should have started on July 3rd, the day after my birthday, counting down my own 20 years. And when the timer goes off, reminding myself I should feel crazy grateful for every extra day I have.My dad, like many dads, wasn’t a man of many words. And when I was in those terrible, awkward, teenage years, there were a thousand questions I had. A thousand questions I wanted to ask him. Asking my mom was easy, but he was harder, quieter, more difficult to access. I knew he loved me but he was strong, always working, always knew what to do. And it’s funny because that lack of vulnerability narrowed that two-way street of communication a bit. It didn’t let us share nearly as much as I wished we had.I was cleaning out my files the other day and came across a card he sent me when I turned 40. So damn funny. It had this silly message and at the end, in his old-fashioned, schoolboy, cursive writing was simply Love, Dad. My entire life imploded that year. And it was one of those banner birthdays. But in true, quiet, dad-style, he kept it simple.But in truth, I knew he really did love me. Madly, in fact. We had a special something. A couple of times he even admitted it -- yes, out loud. I remember having a feeling of pause each time he said it. An occasion among occasions. A fleeting glimpse of an inner truth. A sliver of vulnerability. I’m grateful for those moments, even now.He married my mom when I was tiny, only 2 years old. And adopted me when I turned 5. I still remember him asking me if I’d like to share his last name. I only knew that my last name was long and complicated and his was short and easier to spell, so I was thrilled at the prospect. Kindergarten was the year you learned to spell both of your names back in those days. Yes, I realize that by today’s standards I would have been considered way behind. I think kids today are born knowing how to spell. And do algebra.But I will always remember the day of my adoption. My dad and I held hands as we climbed the many stone steps at the courthouse to the judge’s office. A friend of my father’s for years, the judge was kindly and older with white hair. His private chambers seemed huge to me and filled with so many books on all of the shelves. I wanted to ask if he had read them all but I felt so small and couldn’t bring myself to utter a word. He asked if I wanted Jerry to be my daddy. And as I had only known him as Daddy, I mutely nodded yes and looked down at my reflection in my black patent leather shoes. Shoes with little white lacy socks turned down at the ankle. A pink dress and a matching cardigan sweater. I wish a picture had survived of that day. I remember nothing of the actual proceedings. But it was a banner day in the life of Lisa Knisely, now Lisa Smith. We went out for milkshakes afterward and practiced spelling my new last name on the napkins with the waitress’s pen. I belonged.Belonging. It’s what we all want, really. Isn’t it? To belong and be a part of something. That day I became a legal part of the father that raised me until he drew his last breath.Belonging and sanctuary always go together in my mind. I think they went together in his mind too. My dad understood sanctuary. He didn’t use that actual word, but he understood what it meant to invest your energy and time and love into a physical place and making it your own. He understood the vital need to have a place to come home to at the end of a long day of work. To decompress and recharge his batteries.I think of the many things he added and built with his hands in the house where I grew up. The wood burning stove he added to our family room. The shed he built out back where we still gather to this day to sit around the old table, laugh, share stories and a beer. The gardens he planted with me assisting as official seed planter. He would till the garden and I would sit there watching as he stripped off his shirt, with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips, Elvis sunglasses and a Superman curl on his forehead. It was the 1970’s and he was the epitome of cool. He was a super hero in my eyes. I sat in the soft grass and waited until he needed me, loving the smell of the freshly turned earth. I sat there in the sanctuary of our yard, just belonging.One summer we planted a line of pine trees to shield the view from the adjacent farm field. Some of those trees still survive today. I remember working quietly alongside him, pushing those baby, 4” trees into the little holes he dug. He told me that they would last long past his life and grow much taller than we were, which I had a hard time imagining. Turns out he was right.He loved to mow the grass and would have projects each summer to maintain our home -- scraping, painting, staining, trimming. Always something. How he loved that house and that acre of land. He told me that a man’s home is his castle. I just wish he wouldn’t have reminded me of it while wearing only his underpants, stoking the fire in that wood burning stove and checking on me as I sat on the sofa, watching tv with my date du jour, shielding my eyes in horrified embarrassment. Thanks, Dad. We both knew he was checking up on me and making sure that young man knew exactly whose daughter he was dating.As a parent now myself, I laugh, thinking of him puffing up his chest and lumbering down those stairs to check on me. An act of love. An act of responsibility. A reminder that this was HIS sanctuary and anyone outside our family was only a visitor there.There were visits to the ocean when I was growing up. It was my dad’s favorite place, aside from our Ohio home. Long days in the sand and sun, swimming, building sand castles, reading and tanning. But it was the few minutes in the gloaming, waiting for the darkness to fall, when everyone else was occupied that he and I would find each other at the water’s edge. We’d sit down in the sand, next to each other, no greeting needed. Looking out at the water, at the constant ebb and flow of the waves, I asked him once if he believed in God. And he sighed, lit a fresh cigarette, took a long drag and as he blew out a stream of smoke he said that he had more questions than answers. A few quiet minutes passed. I didn’t ask anything more but he offered this: “Your mom, she has her ideas all figured out. But me? Lis, I really don’t know. I only know that when I’m here, I’m close to something that is bigger than I am.” And that, in a nutshell, was my dad’s explanation of what I know today as sanctuary in my own life.When I’m there, be it in my own sanctuary at home or in the inner experience of sanctuary as I meditate or spend time in quiet contemplation, I am close to something that is oh so much bigger than I am.Therein lies one of the main purposes for finding sanctuary in our lives. Touching that silver thread that leads straight to the sparkling, incandescent star that is the Divine. To that knowing that there really IS something bigger than ourselves.Happy belated birthday, Daddy. I miss you. Thank you for everything from my name, to our laughs, to your unanswered questions that continue to inspire my life.xoLisa