Mid February this year, icy conditions of Winter Storm Octavia confined millions within their home, including my only remaining family members of origin. From Tennessee to North Carolina to South Carolina. It was the latter state, where my oldest sister  lives, that we called home—where our parents raised us. A text from our middle sister, in North Carolina, reminded us older, and younger (the latter would me—arg-arg, wink-wink, poke-poke,) sibs that the day was also our father’s birthday. He’d of been 91. I think.

But, my sister’s text didn’t go into any of that, but rather shared a list, of memories, upon which I elaborate here:

Playing horsey. Up and down we’d ride on his out-stretched foreleg, our tiny, short fingers interlocked with his large, thick ones. I can see him smiling: his goofy, and—much later I’d learn—very self-conscious grin.

Late Sunday afternoon ritual of hand-churned peach ice cream. A wooden slatted and metal crank apparatus with a toppling mound of thick rock salt.

Our annual trek into the woods behind our house in search for the perfect Christmas tree. Funny, the only one I remember in detail was the scrawny Charlie Brown Cedar, circa 1968. I may have been the one who chose it. Then there was the handful of years in the groovy early 70s when we had an artificial silver tinsel tree. (I thought it was quite lovely.)

The watermelon patch. Carving from its harvest, juicy, red hearts and sprinkling them liberally with salt. Another Sunday afternoon ritual when we weren’t sugar shocking ourselves with second helpings of said ice cream.

Hammocks. I remember once when I decided to spend a summer night in the rope hammock out by the side of our house. I don’t think I lasted but maybe 20 minutes, if that long. Too dark. Too chilly. Too quiet. Too spooky.

To the last one in her list of memories, Janis, the middle sister, added: “Bringing firewood in from the cold and wet of an ice storm.” (She added a smiley face.) Ha. My hometown of Greenville apparently still has epic ice storms. I’d blocked those firewood memories until now. I didn’t text back this similar memory: Being made to pull weeds from the flower garden at night by the flood light because said middle sister and I had gotten into yet another fightin’ match about something or another. I never did develop a love for gardening. I blame Daddy.

Thing is, until very recently in my adult life, I blamed Daddy for a lot of things. I’ve had the  recent awareness that I’d finally forgiven my mother. She’s been dead longer than Daddy. She died a little over two years before Daddy released his tenacious grip on life, afraid at the end that despite his perfect church attendance; long-time status as a deacon and a veteran Sunday School teacher, plus a consummate Wednesday-night church suppers volunteer, he might still meet his fate in hell.

Both my parents were pretty amazing individuals, especially given the depression-era upbringing of their youth. Pretty close to dirt poor. They worked like mad to make sure that they never lived like that again, and neither would we. Along with that drive came some shoulds and shouldnt’s and what were acceptable occupations and what were not. And fierce prejudice of all those who chose outside those accepted parameters, including me. Or, the rights and wrongs about what church one went to, or what they wore, or if they had any social graces or not.

I get it now. All those book titles and blurbs I’d perused in bookstores and on Amazon all those years before Daddy and Mother’s death. For some of us, maybe many of us, the death of a parent is transformative. Sometimes a certain level of growing up or moving beyond doesn’t happen until a mother or a father is buried. Mother’s death was significant, sure. But I didn’t really begin to unpack the meaning of her death and/or her influence on my way of being in the world until Daddy died. Daddy’s death rocked my world. I ended a near year-long marriage a month after we buried Daddy, and it wasn’t my first one, either. I’m still arduously shedding layers of my Electra complex-driven psyche now four years later.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my parents and I still do. I owe much of what I have and who I am to them. In a lot of ways, I chose lucky. And then, the rest is up to me, to carve out those prejudices and ways of being in the world that don’t work. Haven’t worked, that aren’t going to propel me to a place of peace until I strip, strip, strip, strip it all. Strip the parental, cultural, religious conditioning. Strip down bare to the lessons that I came here this time in this life, to them, as parents, to learn.

When I look at it like that: Wow. Thank you. Thank you Daddy. And thank you Mother. I asked for you and through your wounding you wounded me and yet taught me. So there is no forgiveness necessary. Not if I came here to learn from you, who only did the best that you could do because of what happened to you at the mercy of your parents. For Daddy, oh, so much more pain than I could ever imagine. Oh, compassion. Compassion for you. Compassion for me. Mercy starts at home. So, I just need to keep waking up to all the lessons until the day I pass off my personality and I know what you know now. Thanks again, Mother, Daddy. I know you are with me now. And I know I’ll see you again. And when we do, we’ll celebrate your birthday, Daddy. Complete with a box of chocolate-covered cherries…the edible gift we gave you every year of our lives, but didn’t learn till nearly the end of yours, that you hated the taste of them. Don’t worry, I’ll be happy to eat them. And, maybe I’ll save a couple for my older sisters.