Making Peace with the Passing On of My Denim Jacket
It is some form of foolishness, I suppose, to linger
over things, to not pass them on to the people we
love, or who claim to have greater use for them.
Your daughter wants your denim jacket, the one
that reminds you of a particular version of you, a
relic of something unrealized, the fabric of a dream,
and honestly it's probably more flattering that she
likes something that is yours, that carries some echo
you enjoy, and of course, it's a point of contact, a
shared toy, a game of keep away in which you still
have some say in the outcome, some control over
the game clock and the scoreboard, a card to play,
and isn't it nice to imagine the day you give in and
pass this worn but sturdy talisman into the hands
of the next caretaker, the next keeper of the flame,
and shouldn't every interaction between a father
and his daughter be sacred, carry weight, isn't this
the wisdom of love- the handing over of one's self-
so such a gesture should be simple, right, even if
young people can't realize what it means to empty
our coat pockets, to allow our stories to trail away.
Young people don't see how little any of us have,
how one thing can stand for many, or how wasteful
we become when we finally get the thing we want.
But love is simple and without condition and greater
than our mythologies, and denim tells the stories it
will tell, and we only learn lessons we need to learn.
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