Midweek politics break: A Discourse on Passion
Hey everyone, LL here.
While my political writing is, of course, consuming the bulk of my writing time, I do try to carve out a space for my fiction. It's a carve-out I honor more in the breach than the observance. Holding a full-time job, keeping this place going, and all the other obligations of a busy life leave not much time for stories. But the other day this story came almost fully formed, and I rushed to set it down. I now share it with you for a midweek break. Hopefully I don't come off like Peter Daou and his New Age piano music. I hope you enjoy it.
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“But what about passion?”Her face was so earnest when she asked this. So young. So full of life and sure of her beliefs.
“What about it?”
“You and Mom?”
I chuckled and poured us two more glasses of Scotch.
She and I had made a habit, a ritual, a tradition of getting together every Thursday evening at her place. This wasn’t an aspersion against her mother, my wife, my love. But, fathers and daughters. You know how it goes. She and her mother did brunch on the weekend while I wallowed in the latest travails of my team. She and I had Scotch on Thursdays, over appetizers from Trader Joe’s.
“Define ‘passion’,” I said.
“When she walks into the room, you know, do you still feel it?”
I chuckled again. “Feel what?”
She blushed. “I’m not going to say it.”
I took a sip and shook my head, laughing.
“Do I feel like she’s the only woman in the room?”
She leaned into me.
“Well? Do you?”
I took a bite of an overpriced canape.
“Well, you know, I’m contractually obligated to.”
She snorted.
“You’re not being serious.”
“I’m being very serious. And you didn’t answer my question. What’s ‘passion’?”
She pulled her knees up to her chest, just like she had when she was nine. No matter how old they become, how much they grow, how much their own people they become, they’re always nine and trying to divine the mysteries of the universe.
“The flutter in the chest. The catch of breath. The thought that you can’t live without her.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course. I can’t live without her. You’ve been my daughter long enough to know that.”
I smiled at her.
“Is that line going to be in your next story?”
She blushed.
“Stop.”
I broke out into a laugh.
“Parents live through their children. I never stop bragging about my daughter the writer. Doing something her father never managed to do.”
“I thought that’s what Aunt Julia bragged about.”
“Women, women, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”
She made a face.
I asked: “Why the sudden interest in passion? Haven’t you plumbed its depths?”
“I just want to know what I have to look forward to. Or fear.”
She has just left a relationship. She told me: “I didn’t feel the same way for him. I just didn’t care whether or not I saw him.”
I said: “Don’t doubt yourself. When you know it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
“And you?”
“It’s never been time to go. As the poet wrote: ‘I plighted my troth.’”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Then tell me what you think passion is. You seem to be having trouble setting a definition.”
“Do you think of straying?”
“Always.”
“But do you?”
“Never.”
“Why?”
“Love.”
“But what if love isn’t enough?”
“Well, then, my beloved girl, passion doesn’t enter into it, does it? But you’re a writer. You should know this.”
“All I knew was that it was time to go.”
I put my hand on her knee.
“The unexamined life, and so on.”
She smirked.
“You know you and Mom ruined me.”
“That, too, we’re under contractual obligation to do.”
“You two are perfect.”
I grinned.
“No, we’re old, and have nowhere else to go.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if you two were to split up.”
“I do. Thursdays with me. Sundays with her. Life would go on.”
Our glasses were empty. I refilled them. As always, I had taken a taxi. Our Thursdays lasted into the wee hours.
“Since you still haven’t answered my question,” I began, “let me tell you what I think you think ‘passion’ is. The quiver in your knees. The catch of your breath. The idea that this person is perfection. I know. That’s not what you write about. But it’s what you think, but are too afraid to admit.”
She smiled.
“Why am I afraid?”
“Because you want to believe in fairy tales. We all do. And when we belatedly, ruefully, must admit that fairy tales don’t exist, we die a bit inside.”
“But Dad,” she said, “you’re living a fairy tale.”
“Am I?”
She got up off her chair, came over to me, and kissed me on my bald head.
“The most beautiful fairy tale I’ve ever known.”
We left it at that. Sometimes, nothing else needs to be said.
The night turned to morning. I took a cab home. I fumbled with keys and went inside my house. I entered the bedroom, took off my clothes, and laid down next to my wife, who didn’t stir. I took hold of her hand, and nestled her as she fit herself into my form. The passion of age, when the passion of youth burns out, as it always does, and all that’s left is that most ineffable thing: Love.