"True worlds are seldom beautiful;
beautiful words are seldom true."
["Tao Te Ching", Lao Tzu]

When he speaks of the past, it's like stirring the still-hot embers of a long-forgotten fire you'd assumed dead.

I'm not quite sure to begin. I've too much to say and not nearly enough time or patience to get it all out.

How about Mongolia? They say Temujin was 10 when his father died and he became chief of his clan. I'll come back to that.

Yesterday morning I got news that my niece - Grace Beverly Elizabeth - had been born in the week hours of the morning. In the afternoon I got news that my father was at the emergency room of the hospital, having injured himself the night before. "Taiji", I call it. I believe that's the right word. "Full circle". Yin and yang together. What more obvious example could one find of the cycle of life. Yesterday, my brother took care of his child for the first time. Yesterday, I took care of my father for the first time.

When I arrived at the hospital, besides the obvious injuries (badly bruised and dislocated shoulder, black eye), I noticed something about him that I'd not noticed before. Perhaps it was all perception. Perhaps it's just a trick of the mind. But even from his "good side" yesterday, my father looked old. It was as if he'd aged 10 years in the previous 10 days. Suddenly he was old now. The beginning of the end has come. The first of the slip-and-fall injuries. The first hospital visit. I hate to talk about his mortality this way. I hope neither of my sisters reads my journal - I know this whole ordeal resonated a frightening cord within one, moreso than it does in me. Perhaps she's never before pondered his age, his mortality. He's 74. Yes, his heart rate and blood pressure yesterday were good. Yes, this was just an accident and could have just as easily happened to someone younger and healthier. And yes, he's in pretty good shape, really. But he's not young any more, and he's not getting younger.

And when my eyes gazed upon a picture of little Grace yesterday morning, thoughts turn to the endless possiblities of the future. And when I heard Dad's voice this morning, thoughts turned instead to a deeply muddled past.

I don't like to talk about my childhood for two simple reasons. First, I simply can not remember much of it. What bits I can remember are usually shameful or uncomfortable memories. There's really not much I reminisce about from my youth. Secondly, I had a difficult time growing up, but I know also that so many others had it so much worse than me, and I don't like to adopt that "boo-hoo-victim-of-a-childhood pose", as I call it. I had a house, parents, siblings, food, clothes, and love. I was loved. I was never physically or sexually abused. I know so very many people who were. We were far from rich, but there was always something to eat and something to wear. I remind myself sometimes of how much worse it could have been, and how, by comparison, I had it good.

But if, for a brief time, I might allow myself a short indulgence... perhaps my morning might make more sense.

When Dad and I are alone he often turns to speaking of the past. He tells me about how things were when I was young. He tells me things I can't remember. And because I can't remember, without frame of reference, without being able to compare notes, I cannot know where the truth lies, or even where it comes close. They say there's two sides to every story, and the truth is usually somewhere between. This story has 6 six sides: the side that died with my mother, the side my brother doesn't speak, the side I can't remember, the side rationed out to me by my sisters in bite-size pieces from time, and the side my father so readily parts with whenever we're alone. Somewhere in the vast expanse of that hexagon lies the truth, but finding it feels like looking at 12 pieces of a 500 piece puzzle and guessing at the outcome.

Why should I care? Why not let the past be the past? Why not let it go?

I wish I could. Maybe I'll find a way to, in time. Maybe in a week, or two weeks. Maybe when I'm back here regularly and not sleeping at Dad's (or trying to anyway), making his breakfast, and enduring these torturously-enlightening talks... maybe then I'll put it all behind and the embers can once again cool.

But for the moment, for now, all I can think is that "this is my disfunctional family". This is who we were. This is who we are. Sisters who deep down may never forgive a brother they think ran away. A father who deep down may never forgive daughters he feels didn't do enough. A son who may never forgive himself for not doing more.

I think we're all wrong. I think they misunderstand him. I think he expected too much of them. And perhaps I'm too hard on myself.

Sometimes, like tonight, I have terrible, shameful thoughts. Thoughts I cannot repeat. Thoughts like the ones I had in my youth. Thoughts I felt an enormous burden of guilt for when my mother died. Thoughts it took me a long time to forgive myself for having.

And I think of my father's vision of the past, and my sisters', and I wonder where the truth lies. And I wish I could remember. If people are the sum of their experiences, does my sum still include those experiences I simply cannot remember?

Tomorrow I turn 33, with no job and no mate. Do I ask too much of myself or not enough?

Temujin, now he had it rough. He and his family were abandoned by his clan who refused to be led by one so young. They wandered as nomads and survived on rodents during his youth.

But then, he later conquered most of the known world under the title "Genghis Khan".

Maybe all he really wanted was to have his father back.

I don't even want my youth back. I just want to remember it. I just want a truth I'll never know.