Watsonville. It's About My Dad

I stopped in at Whole Foods today, looking for tart cherry juice, which, says Julie, I should drink before bed time to help me sleep. Okay. I got some. I also bought some fresh strawberries, even though the price was too high. But they were from the USA--good--and from Watsonville, California--better.

Watsonville is one of this country's finest agricultural places, close up to the Pacific Ocean. Yes, I've been there, but that's not the point. The point is my dad. I can't think of Watsonville or see the name without thinking of my dad. It's a place he loved. The place he wanted to retire to after Mama died. He'd drive her big Dodge out there, buy some property--he was good at that--and live out his days as an artichoke farmer. (I've written of this before.)

I wasn't there, but I've been told that his other children, who were there, reminded him that he simply couldn't do such a thing. He was 88, weakened by his age, and handicapped by his eyes--this was before today's slick cataract surgery. They told him such a thing was out of the question. He said, "I know, but I want to." 

This small story, especially his response, breaks my heart whenever I remember it. Of course he wanted to. I may have thought I understood him when I wrote about it nearly 30 years ago. But now, I know better how he felt. I am without my husband, as he was without his wife. And what happens is a mix of things. I mean, sometimes I think I can do anything I want now, go wherever, because I have enough money, and I have a 
certain freedom I didn't have when my husband was here.

That's a hard thing to write, because . . .  just because. And hard for me to think my dad may have felt a certain freedom after my mother died. Seems wrong, disloyal, to even think it. Nevertheless, he wanted to go away and be somebody and do something he'd never done before. I know the desire.

But there's another part of the mix. We are not as free as we think. Something holds us back. Our age, our bodies, and, for me, my very aloneness.

Well, anyway, the berries are nice.