Dad's hands

I think the first time I realized that my parents were weak was when my dad went on anti-depressants 2 years ago. I've heard 2 practical explanations for why people get depressed. One of my friends told me that all you have to do is tell someone once a day that they're not good enough and eventually they'll start to believe it. Someone else told me that when life deals you significant blows close enough in succession so that you don't have time to recover in between, you get depressed. That's what happened to my dad. Stuff just kept going wrong until he was paralyzed with fear and guilt. Fear of not providing for his family, guilt that he had messed up. While that was partially true, I mean, we're all stupid, the reality was, other people around him made stupid, selfish decisions and he had to deal with the consequences. After a while he finally decided to go on anti-depressants so he could function. They have some sucky side-effects . . . like you can't have a completely healthy body and healthy mind at the same time. I was afraid of the tremor in could give your hands. My dad's a surgeon. His hands are vital to his work. They're actually really beautiful too. They're graceful, steady, and precise. He uses them to make microscopic incisions into a patient’s eye that give them their sight back. He used them to get splinters out of my hands (he was absolutely the best dad at that). He got eyelashes out of my eye, painted, wrote me letters, held me. I didn't realize how much strength the most delicate side of him gave me.
So when I heard about the possible side effects, I was furious. It wasn't fair. None of it was his fault. Someone else was stupid. Someone else was mean. And because of that, he was going to loose a beautiful part of himself. Maybe deep down I thought he couldn't love me with a tremor in his hands, but maybe that's just me reading into things way too much.