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Show Moon - 237 necessary truth then, maybe saved my life for a while. But that was only part of the story, one way of seeing. The vision wasn't wide enough to cover all the rest, like the stubborn persistence of love. I think now that just as my brothers need to argue, men and women need those differences to push against. The man glares and acts confident like the sun, the woman rides on the moon, insisting that we feel the heart, the darkness. It isn't all pain and misunderstanding, though it's clear, the privileges are sorely abused. There's the possibility, I think, for wonder in that whirling about of day and night. I tell them, speaking of all that, that I've finally met my real father. They look startled, as if they'd forgotten we'd had different fathers. They try to seem interested, and I do all I can to make it into a good story, but I can see that the events are too remote to engage them. How can I make it matter that David looks sort of like Uncle Michael or that he creates paintings filled with awesome circles? They have a hard road ahead of them sorting themselves out from James and learning how to listen to a woman. Then, too, I am learning that a story usually matters to a person only so far as it touches what he already knows; it takes a special kind of art to make anyone want to see something new. So I go to my suitcase and pull out David's charcoal drawing of our mother at the easel, where she sits with her hair braided into a crown, her hand hovering toward the possibility of art like a hummingbird. This was a mother they never came close to seeing. When I set the drawing before them, they gasp and are struck into silence. |