{"id":479,"date":"2016-03-02T18:31:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T18:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2020-05-22T19:31:44","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T19:31:44","slug":"flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The little blackbird catches my eye, hurtling purposefully toward the slender tip of a spiky desert agave to my left. <em>He\u2019s going to smash into the side of the building, <\/em>I think, but he snags the top of the succulent\u2014an arrow landing squarely on target\u2014and swings around to perch on his fragile peak. <em>Youth.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My grinding joints have slowed my walk enough to notice this bird\u2019s acrobatics. I imagine flight, how it feels to ride the updrafts from the ocean, across the wildlife sanctuary, to where our high-rise condos make an aerial playground for winged creatures. I sit with the soaring sensation for a while.<\/p>\n<p>I recall split-second agility with a whiff of nostalgia. Crouching, lifting, skipping, running, taking the stairs two at a time, not stopping to catch my breath, loaded with bags and books and babies.<\/p>\n<p>Sadness. No more skidding to perch atop highest branches. Burdened by stairways, tethered to constant mental reminders. <em>Turn off the stove. The keys are in my hand. Stay present. Feed the cat. <\/em>I remind myself to clearly know what I feel. And I wonder, as I slow down to let my husband catch up, what it means to accommodate another person\u2019s decline. To walk in their shoes? What does it mean to be self-aware? Sadness.<\/p>\n<p>It comes to me that I didn\u2019t really want to know my father. I was too frightened, even as I searched for his humanity, when I tried to draw him out in his last days. I wanted him to see <em>me<\/em>, to see the actual me, not the child he manipulated. I couldn\u2019t see <em>him<\/em> through my terror.<\/p>\n<p>No wonder flight has been second nature until now, smashing into the side of the building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The little blackbird catches my eye, hurtling purposefully toward the slender tip of a spiky desert agave to my left. He\u2019s going to smash into the side of the building, I think, but he snags the top of the succulent\u2014an &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=479\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Flight<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aging"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":486,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}