I got through mother's day just fine but then unexpectedly found father's day hard this year.

Sunday morning we planned a zoom call with my parents, my siblings and their partners and their kids. My sister in law and the newly one-year-old S were sleeping but my brother joined. A and A and the babies.

It was a quiet call. My dad is so faded from his former self. He was pretty out of it - he doesn't have any new stories, he's just really repeating himself now. My lightning-quick, funny, dynamic, loving,interested, unpredictable dad. Hard to know how he is experiencing it. Just try to show him I love him while I still have him.

It's been a long time since we were all together. We didn't do Christmas together this year for many reasons. We met briefly in January for V's second birthday and had hoped for a week somewhere in the summer. The weakening of our core unit has been hard to accept. It was a place that was mine, and now it's almost gone. My siblings are building their own places. I am supposed to be doing the same but it feels so tenuous.

On father's day it was hard not to think about what might have been. I texted BT to tell him i was thinking of him. i never know if these milestones are hard for him. He buries a lot of it with weed. But also I needle him with the subtext in these messages: you had all this and you let it slip away. I can't bear to think he might forget it. I can't let it go so i torture him under the guise of concern. I'm a monster in this way. But i also do worry about him. So not a monster?

Some mutual friends had a zoom dance party on Saturday night for a birthday... all of them in their homes with their families; BT and I the only people alone in our tiles. It was fun to see everyone and I was happy to be dancing in my living room with friends i've known for 20 years. I'm clearly not one of those people who cauterizes a wound and turns a page to start a new chapter (to horribly mix my metaphors). I want to keep all my old connections. But it was hard too. That laugh. I have always *loved* his laugh.

These holes in my heart. The inevitability of it all.

I gathered some friends on a hill in the park for a celebration of the first day of summer. We sat on different blankets, 6 feet apart, drank some beers. Felt kind of normal. It was nice. A new season.

7:19 a.m. - 2020-06-22