i'll take the rain.

I went on an Iranian culture kick when I lived in Florida. I read a book about the hostage takeover of the American embassy in Iran, and the 444 days that followed, which piqued my curiosity, and led me to more books in that vein. One was titled "Lipstick Jihad"; Her family had left Iran and raised her in Sunny California, in the midst of a strong Iranian subculture with Iranian food and tradition still in tact. To her sunny California friends she was Iranian. She wasn't sure who she was. She had pursued a career in Journalism, investigating things for others. When she told her family that she was going to return to Iran to live, for a time, with the family they had left behind, they didn't understand. They had chosen better for her, and brought her to a safe place, where she could grow without fear, and figure out who she was without restraint. Why would she need to go backwards, and re-claim the restraints they had spared her from?

I overheard friends talking the other day of an adopted daughter that had left her adopted family in a fit of rebellion to find who it was that had given her up.

My cousin and I were online looking up some records yesterday. You could pay forty dollars a month to have full access to a sight that will provide for you your families genealogy; your roots.

What happened? In the past? It's a natural curiosity. While running yesterday, over the headphones in my ears, I heard brakes squeal from a car nearby. I didn't keep going, but stopped what I was doing and went back, to see what had happened...What was the cause of the squeal, and the outcome?

I have this same curiosity toward the past of those that have influenced me. It's different than a genealogical curiosity...The filling in of a family tree; It more narcissistic than that. It's a desire to understand the past to better understand myself.

The past most blocked from my view has been my fathers. Much can be learned from talking to and getting to know one's siblings; My father's only brother committed suicide at the age of 23, in my dad's 18th year. I always loved meeting my friend's parents in college, seeing the source of many of their mannerisms and expressions; My grandfather died when I was three months old, and his mother when I was barely five years. Images of my grandmother consist of seventies print polyester, the aroma of stale cigarettes, and cat eye glasses. These are good images to have, but offer no insight into the shape she gave to the man I have been most influenced by.

Growing up, I made the best of what I had to work with, asking my father questions, incessantly. Who was he? How did he die? Why did you marry her? Why didn't she want him? How did it feel to be on that drug? Did you cry at your brother's funeral? Did your dad? Was your mom a good cook? His head would spin. "Damn-it Meredith. I haven't thought of most of this stuff in thirty-years", he would complain to me. "I am sorry," I would say. "But I still need the answers". And he gave them.

Exhausting my resources, I have moved on. Running a marathon in Seattle, I spent the four evenings I was there with my father's second cousin. I saw similar mannerisms, and facial structure. It was anchoring. Here in DC, I am staying with my father's first cousin, who was the best friend of his brother. She has offered me insight into his sibling, and, to the best of her ability, my overlooked father.

And separate from the family anchors, there is the place that gave him shape...The snow that fell on top of his sleeping bag while camping in the mountains as a kid, tent-less. This same snow he now loathes. The overarching pine trees, and the slopes where he perfected his, in my mind, perfect ski form. The snow below the skis is the only snow he now finds joy from. This part of the country, his part of the country, is beckoning me.

I have been to many cities. I've walked past Roman ruins, and along the water lined streets of Venice, through the height and bustle of New York City, and experienced the beauty of the Colorado Rockies. My family took me through the Grand Canyon, and I've lived along the beaches of Florida. But no city's beauty has captured me as much as that of Seattle. I can't get the images out of my head, and I have been drawn there since the Monday that I flew out.

He left this corner of the country at the age of eighteen, and hasn't often looked back. He can now be found in the middle of humidity of an Oklahoma summer, lying in the sun to soak up the heat he managed to avoid all of his first eighteen years, or in the middle of November, cursing the cold that's making its way in. And his daughter, the child that's arguably most like him, wants desperately to escape the heat, and flee to the corner he fled.

This makes him wonder, like the parents of Lip Stick Jihad, why? Why would you want to go back there? And in light of my curiosities, and desired understanding that makes its way out of the box of simple answers to historical questions, the answer for my dad is a simple how...How can I not want to go back, there, and live in the temperature and landscape and culture that has everything to do with you?