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I miss my father.

He’s been dead for such a long time now. Longer than my daughter has been out of my womb. Longer than I’ve lived in my house. Longer than I ever could have imagined on that first day after we left him in the hospital, eyes closed and soul dispersed.

It sneaks up on me. It feels worse when I haven’t been writing a lot. Lately my work is about numbers and connections and technical bullshit that has no relationship to what I used to do here.

Here, I wrote. Here, I shared. Here, I was vulnerable and I felt safe being so. I don’t feel that way anymore, for a variety of reasons. But as I lay in the darkness tonight willing sleep to come, I had the urge to come here, to say something.

What that something is, I don’t know yet.

But I miss my father.

Tonight both kids went down hard. There were tears — sobs, really, the kind that break a mama’s heart. Footsteps on the stairs after lights out, pleas for hugs and cuddles. I was exasperated; tired, and anticipating a busy week with company in the house. I wanted them to go to sleep already.

I wanted them to leave me alone.

They’ve been all over me this week, whining and climbing the walls. The girl is sick, and she’s contagious. The days I wasn’t working we three were trapped indoors while outside the sun beat down on the flat land. Our grass is dead. Watering it seems a fool’s errand in this sweltering heat. It’s too hot even for the kiddie pool and our eyes itch and burn from some unknown irritant.

So tonight when I heard sobs from the nursery I was impatient, angry, even. I wanted some time to just be still.

I opened the door on a screaming baby (but he’s not a baby, he turned 2, he turned 2 and I didn’t even make a note of it here). I soothed him back down on his pillow, snuggled up with blankets and a book. I got him some milk and when he looked up at me from his bed I almost had to step back.

He looked exactly like my father.

Maybe it was my sore heart — always sore in August, this month of his passing — or maybe my tired eyes played a trick on me. Either way, I saw my father’s face on my son and the chasm of longing that opened up inside my heart was a staggering surprise.

My father never laid eyes or hands on either of my children. I am so angry about that. So angry, and so deeply sad. The kind of sadness that comes on with the rain. The kind of sadness that makes a summer’s day look dark. The kind of sadness that people tire of hearing about so you keep it to yourself, like some malignant treasure box.

I am 39 years old. I had a birthday last month, you see, and now I am on the cusp of 40. On my father’s 40th birthday, I took a plane from Boston to Rochester, landing in a snowstorm so severe that the other passengers and I applauded when we landed. I was home from college, just for the weekend, for a surprise party for my father.

I was a freshman in college. When I turn 40 next year, my oldest child will be in first grade.

My father died 15 years after his 40th birthday, just as did his mother and his older brother. I feel the weight of that mortality heavy on my shoulders and it makes me regret every harsh word, every tear shed, every moment wasted in ennui or anger.

I sometimes feel like I am standing across a wide, wide river, separated from the ones I love the most by this vast history. This water muddied with grief. The rapids are dangerous and so I just stand on the shore, helplessly watching as we drift further and further apart. I know my father stood on a similar embankment and his solution was to turn away and find higher ground.

I don’t want to do that.

So I slip in the mud. I get dirty, I fall down. Sometimes it hurts when I land. But I won’t stop looking for a way across. I can’t.

Because I love my father, and because my son was wearing his face tonight.