It's Been a Whole Hand
On looking back and holding it all
I was going to stick with my summer routine of re-posting an earlier essay from the archives but something in me nudged me to share this one instead. I wrote it back in the winter and only shared it with a women’s writing group. I read it aloud on a Zoom call and was held and witnessed by some beautiful people. I held onto it, thinking, maybe I’ll share it again someday.
Today feels right because today is my dad’s birthday. It is the fifth birthday we celebrate without him here with us. It’s been a whole hand since I’ve been able to hold his hand. So, with my hand shaking a bit as I hit post, I leave this here.
Time keeps ticking by. It’s scary as hell. And what a beautiful ride it is.
Last weekend while making a tray of finger sandwiches for my son’s high school basketball team lunch, I had to step away. As the knife in the mayonnaise jar tipped over, leaving a glob of a mess on the counter, I jog walked out the back door. I needed some air.
My mind kept returning to the weekend before. “We’re in it, Allison.” My brother said while driving, his eyes on the road ahead, literally and figuratively. “We’re in the sandwich generation. Our kids need us. Our mom needs us.”
We had just spent the last four hours in the emergency room with my mom who had a bad fall. Thankfully nothing was broken. She only needed stitches above her left eye. But in her eyes, I saw something else. I saw fear about where this fall really landed her. I saw worry over what this next chapter would bring. It’s the same look I’m seeing in my son’s eyes whenever we have a serious conversation about college next year. It’s the same look I saw in my kids’ eyes when they walked into kindergarten orientation. Where will this next path take me?
My brother and I knew as we waited in that ER, our bodies holding history, of what might be close. We were standing in the same hospital where we sat bedside vigil for my dad five years prior. A different cold wintery day, the same whip of worry.
When each of my kids turned five, I told them, “Wow, you’re a whole hand now.” The reaction from each of them was the same. Hand went up in front of their face, they looked at each finger, spread wide apart and then held it even higher in the air. All with a smile plastered on their face that somehow aged them instantaneously.
It’s been a whole hand since I lost my dad. It’s been a whole hand since the pandemic ripped into our world. Five years ago was the beginning of the end of my alcohol addiction. I’m almost a whole hand sober.
I was lacing up my sneakers to go out for a run early on a Saturday morning in late February, 2020 when I got the call. “It’s Dad. You have to get yourself to South Shore hospital right now.” The call was from my oldest brother. The cop, who always emoted calm and control. His voice was as shaky as my hand.
As I ran back into the house to tell my husband where this trail of the day would take me, everything in me knew I had to make a pitstop in my kitchen. I dropped ice into a tumbler and poured vodka underneath some grapefruit juice to ease my worries as I drove 24 miles to the hospital. I knew to sip it slowly because I had an empty stomach. I knew to sip it slowly because I had a broken heart. And I became terrified of myself when all I kept thinking about in the hospital room was returning to that drink where I could slowly sip and slip away.
The next day I returned to that same hospital room, hungover and harrowed. Standing in the hallway of the ICU waiting for the team of doctors to finish their rounds, I couldn’t help but notice the way the sunlight crackled into the room, landing like crystalized icicles on the blankets that covered my father’s legs. The doorway to the room that held him suddenly felt grander than just its frame. Something in me knew that entering this room on this day would be a threshold of before and after.
We were on the precipice of a global pandemic. It was March 1, 2020. All eyes were on Asia and Europe. Is this thing making its way here? All we could do was wait.
Our eyes were locked on the beeping machines, locked on Dad’s face hoping for a sign he is still with us. An update from the medical team laced with something that resembled hope. All we could do was wait.
With a retrospective lens, I can look back and see that the entry into the Covid days and its protocols foreshadowed the work recovery would later thrust me into. No matter how much hand sanitizer I slathered and rubbed into my palms, I couldn’t disinfect the dark that was to come.
It felt like the biggest juxtaposition of my life. A deadly virus forced isolation and quarantine. The perfect petri dish for my alcohol addiction. A deadly virus forced isolation from my family at the exact time we needed to be together to grieve.
The thing is - you can’t disinfect addiction and eradicate it. Addiction thrives on isolation.
You can’t disinfect grief. It is a contagion that needs exposure.
In that hospital room, with the wafts of sanitizer spinning in the air, I held my dad’s heavy hand in mine and leaned in to softly tell him, “It’s Allie Babe. I love you. You can go now.” As the words left my lips and my hand slipped out from his, my mind delivered thoughts of how I wish I had held his hand more. And as the months lingered on, as the pandemic delivered raw cracked skin on my palms from all the hand washing, I would look down, soap suds forming between my fingers and I would remember that feeling inside. How I wish I held his hand more often. While washing my hands I was wishing my hands were somewhere else. Back in time.
What these five years have taught me is when your heart aches and breaks what happens is it opens. It becomes a container, holding that which your hands aren’t ready to touch. Hands clasped in prayer or gripped in fear; the heart is the muscle that we all forget we’ve trained. It can carry more weight than we think.
We learn to tell time by looking at a clock. We watch its hands tick by. If you really observe it, you see there are three hands going in different intervals. One very slow, marking the hour, one moderate marking the minute and one quite fast marking the seconds. As much as you want to slow the hands of time, you cannot. As much as you wish to go back in time to hold the hand of another, you cannot.
Watching my son and his teammates pick up those finger sandwiches, I flash back to that same kid beaming on his fifth birthday. Hand wide open. The same hand that can now palm a basketball.
Walking my mom out of the high school after my son’s latest basketball game, I take her hand and walk slowly. Letting everyone else pass and tick on by. She is so fearful of falling again. It’s my turn to hold her up. Because she no longer trusts gravity.
If she falls again, wherever the next five years take us, I know I’ll be here for it all. I won’t be thinking about drinking or numbing. My heart will know that my hands reached for what matters.
TURNING TO YOU:
Do you feel time colliding with the past? How do you honor it and take care of yourself when it feels heavy?
What’s your favorite birthday memory? It can be yours or someone you love.
If you’re a new Subscriber to DARE TO BE, hello! I’m so happy to have you here. I invite you to explore below to learn a little bit more about me and find links to some of my earlier essays that connected with readers:
My “hero post” explaining what my heart wants from this space and what it DARES TO BE
One of my most vulnerable essays letting you know I Was That Kind of Drinker
I love writing about parenting - it teaches me so much. Here are two of my favorites: Preparing to Launch and Trusting the Mother in Me
My reason for taking a break from new content this 18th Summer
And, because it is his birthday, another essay I wrote for my dad - Have Your Cake and Eat it Too
If you're a writer on Substack and have been enjoying my work, please consider recommending DARE TO BE to your readers for essays from a sober focused woman and mom who is waking up to life here in mid-life, daring to speak up as a woman in recovery who is writing about recovery of self, turning down the noise of the world, reclaiming desire and walking into each day with intentional living.
If you are here visiting, I would be honored to have you as a Subscriber. Please come back for more.
What a beautiful writer you are. You captured so much of my heart. ❤️ thank you.
This made me feel all the feels. Thank you for sharing.