My Heart Breaks Open

I'm watching "The Namesake" tonight while I work. The movie speaks about the troubles of growing up a first-generation American and trying to balance between deep cultural traditions and the American way of life. My mom is from Germany so I feel a lot of connection to the themes in the movie.

But there is something more about this movie. This movie hit me on a lot of levels. Seeing how Kal Penn treats his parents as they get older, disrespecting them when they clearly love him. And then his changing relationship with them. I worry all the time about how my kids will treat me and perceive me as they age and I do too. I hope they love me. I hope I am close to them and they know how important they are to me.

And then there's a whole other level to the movie that I do not understand. Every movie about India, and I mean every movie, has broken open my heart. And I cried. I can't explain it. It as if something inside me springs forth with joy with only the thought of the place or the sight. I know it is not some perfect place. I've seen the pictures. I've talked with my friends, and I know that there is much there that is bad. But still...

I don't know why this happens, and I don't know that I ever will. I don't know that I ever want to know. And sometimes it scares me. I have read about people who have idolized India and I don't think I am one of those people. I don't want to be one of those people. I don't want my identity to be subsumed by a whole nation. I want to be my own person not identified by one thing, and I feel like I am sometimes. But none of those thoughts stop me from breaking down whenever I see something about India.

Thoughts on my own Death

I just finished up a post about the album "Haunted" by Poe on Last.fm. The album crushes my heart every time I hear it because of the end. It is a gentle lullaby sang by Poe to her deceased father with recordings from her father talking to his kids when they were little.

Being a father I'm so deeply and personally attached my children (normal) but to the point that sometimes at night I think about the million things I could have done with my kids and the fact that I didn't get to. I think about the fact that I have to travel to work tomorrow and I could die and never see them again. I think about the fact that I could be at work and something could happen to them, and I yelled at them today. I spanked Owen. I flit through the untold horrors that could befall us all and cry. I weep like a child out of regret and fear and anger and disappointment. I weep in the middle of the night out of terror. For no reason at all.

I lost my father when I was 16 and I know how damned hard it is, and I can't bear to think about my own children having to go through that when I pass away. It is perverse that the one thing I wish I could help them with the most, the one thing I wish I could shield them from and keep them away from is the very thing that takes me from them.