me*dia*or

Be Good, Be Safe | Musicology.fm

I dropped my dad off at the airport yesterday. We engaged in a familiar, yet awkward dance. We hugged and said goodbye as he held back the tears welling up in his eyes.

This scenario has played out before. When I moved to LA back in April, he and I drove across the country—all 1,828 miles of it—and saw the city together for the first time.

I don’t remember much about the trip, but I do remember how it ended.

We were standing inside his terminal. He asked me if I wanted to come with him to the airport gift shop and I said “no.” We would’ve needed to take a shuttle to get to the other side of the airport and I didn’t want to get lost. I had no idea where I was and didn’t want risk forgetting where I parked. So there we were, standing there—squirming through the moment—and my dad started to lose his shit. It hit me hard and twisted inside my stomach. We’ve never said goodbye like this before and I didn’t see it coming.

But he did.

Prior, we had eaten at Jack in the Box, where he quietly stuffed a handful of napkins in his pocket, in anticipation for the moment when he would leave his son alone in LA.

He tried to hold his composure, but fell apart. The emotions overtook him and swept me up too. I held things together and maintained myself. As we separated, he muttered to me, though the tears, the parting phrase that he’s told me for years, “Be good, be safe.”

I walked to my car in a turmoil and once I sat inside it, I cried too.

Driving home, I realized something that’s always been apparent to me, but hadn’t been revealed in such a public manner: somebody loves me and that person is my dad.

It’s an insight powerful enough to break your heart and put it back together again.