| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Daniel Guess I am breaking the rules to post this then, huh? |
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For some reason, this morning I was thinking about the time that my father was chopping wood and he accidentally hit a gopher. It was like a one in a million thing, I mean what kind of gopher decides to pop up right where someone is chopping wood? At any rate, I remember my father did this little dance of joy, and displayed the mangled gopher corpse on a stick next to the peas until it started to get really disgusting. |
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Don't give Sem ideas. |
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i wonder though, how many people wouldn't take time to show appreciation for their mothers and fathers if they weren't reminded to do so by a designated holiday. also, a designated holiday would make a good excuse for people who are emotionally awkward and need a socially acceptable context for showing their love or appreciation, or whatever. |
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i have no feelings of love for my father at all. if it weren't for the fact that my sister links us together, i believe my father and i could happily forget the other ever existed. |
I usually walk away from those encounters feeling extremely pissed off. Mum told me he used to offer to pay for things like half of my school uniform or half of my glasses but it would never happen. He used to offer to take me to meet my grandparents - that never happened either. so you can understand the feelings of anger when I hear things like 'your brother is having flying lessons, Helen insisted' (thats his wife). Or 'your sister is going to private school'. Thanks for nothing fucker. |
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his reaction made no sense to me. why, then, did he go to such effort to pinpoint for me the exact spot at which the blood stain was located? it was too obscure to *avoid* after all that explanation. it was just outside the door, to the right, under the plastic stool and under the little pieces of carpet. i have little pieces of carpet like that in my kitchen, and most times when i step on them i think of that blood stain on my father's porch. i was happy to see that stain. happy because it is the last i ever saw of my father, and it was actually him. not some photo, not an e-mail, not a sorry phone call. the blood was so bright red. the stain was smaller than i expected, smaller than had been built up in my mind. i had imagined pools of blood but really, how much is there? i did not know where it happened until my brother in law described his day of wiping up the brain matter off the walls and ceiling of the porch. until then i incoherently imagined him doing it in all the places he had held court, and all the places where he might have done his dance: at the drivers seat of his (now my) car. in the kitchen. lying in bed? for some reason it never crossed that he would do it on the porch, but that made all the sense. john (downstairs neighbor) said: he went out looking out over his domain. it makes sense now, but nothing makes sense to me while it is happening. nothing. well, a few things make sense, but for the most part if you enter my mind today you wander all the same between my 2nd grade school teachers and last night's barfly. i think the dynamic between my mother and father has something to do with why i will never be a father or a husband. something about being a man in america makes me feel like an asshole -- someone from whom specific things are expected but never appreciated or desired. someone from whom things are expected but mostly scorned is, simply, an asshole, and that is who i am. my father was an asshole, i am an asshole, you are an asshole, everyone is an asshole. i still do not know who to talk to about some of the things i know now about my father that i did not know before september 3, 2005. people are busy. my dad was dashing in his day. in fact the girls told me he was cute all the way to the end. well, maybe not all the way (my sister and i told the coroner not to bother dressing him up), but i'm just saying: |
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husbands and dads, mothers and wives - they're all just people who have good days and bad days and are trying, for the most part, to do their best. i also think most try to some extent to be good even if they could give a shit about what is expected of them. moms and dads have pasts. they were in many ways completely different people before they had children. they bring that past with them to parenthood, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. how wise are those who have been poisoned by their pasts or otherwise know have not the wherewithal to be decent parents or spouses to choose not to get married and have children. how unfortunate for those who blindly or even lazily follow the American prescription for life and happiness, then find themselves failing miserably at it. and how sad for their spouses and children! don't you think that those parents know that they are failing? your own children show you more clearly and concisely than anything else in this life exactly what is wrong with you. is it any wonder they flee (physically or emotionally), or drown their failures in drugs, rather than face the sadness, disappointment, and blame in their children's eyes. |
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of course, your own children also show you more clearly and concisely than anything else in this life exactly what is RIGHT with you as well. almost everything that you are is reflected back to you in your children. i think that's part of the reason why my dad and i are so close, and why my mother and i have not spoken in almost 6 years. i know i am not perfect, but my dad thinks i am. that i've ended up happy and fulfilled in life, especially now as a mother, this has fulfilled him as a father and as a man. i reflect back to him, to him i am evidence, of all the things he did right in his life. i know this because he tells me so. not to dismiss my mother. she was a great mother too. but my dad in many ways had, in our family situation, a much easier parenting job than my mother had. it gave him an advantage, more of an opportunity to become a friend and a role model. i love talking about my dad. he's one of my best friends. until i met senor, nobody on earth made me laugh as hard as my dad does. my dad can make friends with anyone. and he's not fake either. he is one of the most genuine, sincere people i know. he is full of youth and vigor and joy, which attracts all kinds of people to him. my dad is a great cook. on weekends when i would be staying with him, he would get up early, blast some music on the stereo, and make these delicious, elaborate breakfasts. he's also a master at the grill. he loves to feed people and takes pride in setting a nice table and creating an ambient and attractive environment for eating meals with friends and family. when i was little in the spring on the weekends we'd drive his corvette out to the park and fly kites. he'd take me to the ground round for dinner and we'd play video games together. he'd take me shopping for new clothes and shoes and toys. every summer my dad and i took a 2 week vacation together - always just the two of us. sometimes we'd go fishing and snorkeling in florida. sometimes we'd go horseback riding, hiking, and rafting in colorado. sometimes we'd go canoeing and camping in upper michigan. my dad took me to Vegas for my 21st birthday. about 4-6 months prior he bought me a book on how to play the table games, which i read from cover to cover, and learned to play craps. in college when i crashed my roommate's car, i called him on the phone freaking out and crying. "accidents happen" he said. then he paid to get the car fixed and rented a car for my roommate to use in the meantime. saved my ass. my dad (that whole side of my family really) has always had huge gardens that produced ridiculous amounts of fruits and veggies which he loves sharing with his neighbors. he's also an animal lover. my dad taught me to look people in the eyes, shake their hands, and say their names and nice to meet you, when we are introduced. even at a very young age, if i failed to do that, i would be reprimanded or punished on the spot. my dad has a tendency to be very high maintenance and dramatic. his view of situations are either extremely good or extrememly problematic. when things are problematic, he blows everything out of proportion. he recently turned 60, and i'm finding that he is, finally, starting to mellow out and not make a huge deal out of everything. he is noticing it too, and is making even more of an effort to relax when things go wrong. all of his relationships end with a huge crash and burn. since he divorced his third wife, he has not had a romantic relationship last more than 18 months. apparently he's a great dad, but a terrible boyfriend. i'm pretty sure he cheated on most of his wives and girlfriends. he tends to have a grandiose view of himself. he is educated, articulate, well-dressed, well-groomed, well-mannered, and when appropriate, is extremely proper and polite. his grandiose view of himself comes from contrasting these qualities with those of the public at large. this is probably where the idea for his "Don't Breed" cards came from. my dad is a functional alcoholic. our family has the gene. his mother was a pill addict. his grandmother depressed and suicidal. his sister a food addict. i have two cousins who are drug addicts. on weekdays my dad can make it usually until 4 or 5 p.m. before he has his first scotch. i imagine a good number of his lunch time meals include a beer. on the weekends, if he's trying, he'll wait til 4 or 5 p.m. for a glass of wine. if he's camping on the beach, it's bloody mary's for breakfast. in my memory, my dad always had long periods of not drinking, long periods of light to moderate drinking, and long periods of heavy drinking. i remember them in no sequence whatsoever. i imagine his drinking had some effect on his performance as a father. my memories may be overly forgiving, because it wasn't until i was at least 25 years old that i can recall his drinking ever coming between us. he is in amazing health, mentally and physically, despite this drinking. i compare it to the 90 year old who still smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. i keep thinking it's going to catch up with him - maybe it will sneak up on us, i really don't know. but maybe he'll live to be 90. my dad is a wonderful grandpa. he writes my daughter letters about twice a month and sends them in the mail. he is counting the days until we visit him in december. and though it's hard for him to reconcile it, i know he is considering moving to austin in the next couple of year to be closer to us. if we don't move to hawaii first. or somewhere else. when i got pregnant, i told my dad that senor had a lot to live up to, and it was true. my expectations for what great fathers are had been set very high by my own father. senor is right on track. he gives 110% every single day, and he loves our little girl so much, some times i can see he can barely contain it. i am hopeful that my daughter and her dad will end up having as wonderful and fulfilling a relationship as i have with my dad. |
It was humiliating when I was younger, but now it cracks me up. He died about a month before my son turned 3. A few months later, my son asked about "Old Grandpa" as he called him. I told him Old Grandpa had died and we wouldn't see him anymore, but he would always be in our hearts. I explained that we'd had a funeral and everyone was very sad because they had to say goodbye to Old Grandpa. I'll never forget my then-toddler son's indignant outrage when he realized he'd missed his chance to say goodbye to Old Grandpa. He was seriously pissed that I'd deprived him of that final goodbye by not taking him to the funeral. I was floored. I (re)learned the lesson that kids - even toddlers - understand more than you think they do. Thanks for that, Dad. My Dad and I had a complicated relationship, but I always knew he loved me and was proud of the person I'd become and the life I'd built. I'm so glad he's not around to see my Mom - the love of his life - deteroriate into dementia. I never dreamed about him until after I had to move Mom into an Alzheimer's facility near me. Occasionally, I'll have dreams that he's come back - expecting to live in his old house with his wife - and I have to figure out how to explain to him what's happened in the 13 yrs since he died. He would not be happy. |
My thoughts today are "thank you Mark and thank you Agatha and thank you Sarah and thank you Droopy. But,....My first thoughts were of Agatha's present and real grief over recent loss, and my second thought, of Mark's. I too agree that the Hallmark Moment public celebration of what may be an incredibly intimate relationship (whether valentines' or mothers' or fathers' or grandparents' days) has cheapened memories and at the same time reduced obligations to purchasing a meaningless piece of folded paper. But I have not had the obligation to send a card to my mother now for 42 years, nor to my father for 27 years, nor to my grandparents for nearly half a century. The other obligatory motions of remembrance also have lessened over the years: I no longer visit the graves in New York because? I live in Missouri. Even visiting my son Colin's grave in Illinois, but an hour's drive from my home, I no longer feel the need to do. What I recall. I remember how I felt when my mother and father were both gone, when I felt I now could grow up and be my own person, was on my own, for good now it seemed. Or earlier, the coming home from sixth grade to find my father mourning my grandfather now dead while on a fishing trip in Florida, and his hatred of Florida thereafter, even though we would visit and retrace grandfather's last steps, before his heart had stopped in the middle of the boat to take leave of its owner. Actually both of them hated the humidity there, and I recall the pain my father felt when he read a letter from his father's own hand, written before the fishing trip that sunny day, and recieved some days after his death, but before the body arrived home by train. Dead, and later as I grew into college, married, but before the birth of my children, my grandmother's funeral and her frail and unfamiliar aged remains. And later yet, I recall through some alcohol-induced fog my own two oldest children were suddenly no longer, the beginnings and the endings. Why do we recall the endings more perfectly? I don't believe -- despite some efforts --that I was reconciled with any of them, especially my father and grandfather, before they died. I held my father's hand while he was in ICU and didn't know me except the tremor in his hand told me he recognized my voice. I was not by his side when he died and often wonder if he knew he would last until my birthday the next week, and let go then, alone. I don't forget that now that I am sober. Sometimes the humidity and heat feels like death moving over me, but my father died on a crystal clear icy cold January day, a day I will not forget. Eliot or Pound, loud wailings of the fire of life turn to a small whimper and ice at the end. As a father, I was able to hold my son before he died; I didn't get the chance with my daughter. There was nothing to hold. But all is not joyless and dark for this father. I sobered up for some reason, left my marriage behind, and took my two remaining boys forward into life. They are now grown men living life fully and esctatically. And son Zach will again miss father's day as he is in Europe again this year, and son Adam will no doubt pick up the slack and come visit me. In 2000, I was in Aruba for fathers' day, and the boys came to stay with me for a while. I held them both as they sobbed for the loss of their step father six months earlier to his cancer. It was very hard for me to do that (then), to help them grieve the loss of their (step)father, when I was alive in the flesh there with them enjoying the beach and Carribean sky. Sometimes it's like that, father, joy and loss, life and death, all combined in one breath. And gone, everything, even the memories, all gone the next. I am reminded lastly of my client whose father begged him to assist in his (the father's) suicide. This client called me to wish me ahappy father's day while he would not even speak to his own father writhing in self pity on the couch in the room from whence he called. Such is fatherhood. |
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? |
Been thinking a lot of him lately, primarily because others have talked about him and I have been reminded of him by an anonymous stranger. In my mind though, neither of these remembrances are pleasant, or ones I want to think about much. I know, and remember my father as a verbally abusive alcoholic. The separation of my parents’ marriage occurred when I was 14, but it was bad long before then. I find it very sad that I have only one fond memory of him. It was an average day and I was playing in the back yard with my brother and sister and a cousin. My father came out and very uncharacteristically played with us. We rolled down the back yard hill, ran, swung from tree limbs and laughed. I remember it like it happened yesterday because of how odd it was, and yet it happened probably nearly 30 years ago. Between the time our house was sold and we moved elsewhere, I probably saw him 4 or 5 times, never though, because I wanted to. He would show up at our door, and one time my mother and I went with his sister, my aunt, to take him home from the hospital, because he'd had an epileptic episode while drunk at the Knights of Columbus. When he died in 1993 of epilepsy and emphysema, I told my aunt, who well knew of his many problems, because she let him live in her house until her children threatened to move out if he did not, when he died, that all of my memories of him were not bad. I just didn't tell her that only one was not. My aunt is one of the greatest people I know. She has always included us at family events when it may have been easier not to. I'll always be appreciative of her for that. At recent family events, various cousins, who are considerably older than me, told stories about him, clearly recalling him fondly, as they only knew the non-alcoholic man, and had never met the man I knew and remember. And I don't begrudge them their remembrances. To me it's as if they are talking about a co-worker or friend of theirs. The most recent of these family events, sadly, was my cousin's husband's funeral in Long Island, NY. The following weekend, I went with my partner Ethan to Las Vegas for my best friend's daughter's wedding. It was a great time. On the bus to the wedding ceremony though, an old man got on the bus, and sat somewhere behind me. He was clearly agitated by something or someone and began ranting. He sounded exactly like my father, almost the same voice, the same phrasing, and the same kinds of words. I froze, but shook it off when Ethan said something. I forgot all about the old man until trying to go to sleep much later that night. I had come down with a cold during the day, and was congested, and all of a sudden remembered the man on the bus. Because I had this cold, I opted to sleep in the other bed, as few people want to lie next to a snotting person. Ethan told me to come over, so I did, and the floodgates opened. I was a kid again, terrified, shaking. He held me tight and calmed me down. I said I just found it impossible to reconcile the man my older cousins knew with the man I knew, that they couldn't possibly be the same man. I fell asleep at some point feeling safer and more secure than I ever have felt. |
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An email I got today: from t****@hawaii.rr.com to little*****@gmail.com date Tue, Jun 17, 2008 subject Pool time with daddy I love the photo book you sent for Father's Day... it is now my morning ritual to go through it every morning at work before I start so as to remember that our work is NOT our life, our life, our family, is our life. My favorite photo for today is "Pool Time with Daddy". I did the same thing with you, and you became a water baby so fast. "That's my daughter in the water, every thing she owns I bought her..." Love you so much Sarah, and I am so proud of you as a daughter, a wife, a mom, and a person who cares about her health and future. Love Dad |
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i know. i consider myself very lucky, and i consider my relationship with my dad to be rare and unique. and i'm just saying, not all Hallmark holidays are worthless. |
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so cute! now you're really in for it. |
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Jania is 19 months and Carson is 13 months and they are climbing fools,I on the other hand,am a nervous wreck. Tiggy,she looks soo much like you,except prettier:) |
Baby Deux is in the planning stages, btw. |
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my child does everything with her feet and toes. she IS a monkey, already, and she can't even climb yet. |
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my dad does the same thing. and speaking of dad and unholy food combinations, my dad makes this NASTY "protein" drink every day. he sips on it all day long. it would be impossible for me to list all of them, but i'll list a few of the ingredients: vanilla protein powder water plain yogurt green pepper carrots banana oat bran |
Oddly enough, my father also plans out the next day's dinner while eating dinner. But he does not drink weird protein shakes, although he does eat strange digestive capsules. |
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Antigone, I don't want to spend $$ on hooker. yuck. but for stimulus payment, was that something we got from us government shortly before 9/11?? I think ,I am somewhat confused. |
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www.irs.gov |
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right. if your taxable income is over a certain amount last year, you don't qualify. |
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you doing ok up there, platy? we appreciate all the smoke you're sending our way. it really rounds out the sensory appreciation of the coming apocalypse. |
Apparently there's more dry lightning due at the end of the week, along with 50 something unattended fires, so get used to that delicious smoky air, my friend. |
Stay safe, girl. |
company, which owns two thriftways in town, refused to carry plan B and went to court over it. http://www.planboly.org/ As far as I know, they still aren't carrying it... |
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At [dad's house] tonight: He's awesome. |
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Isn't a little early for the dad thread to resurface? there's some interesting shit here, and it's our lives. |