A Lost Father

The longer I continue down this path, the more at peace I feel. Thank you all for sharing this trek with me; this expedition through my mind and soul. I have come to accept that my search for normality is absurd, for the conundrum that is me, the enigma that is me, is the wonder and decidedly unique mystery of us all. Sure, we are all flowers growing in the same patch of dirt, but some of us are dragon lilies, some of us are roses, and so on.  I won't pretend to be as full of wisdom as my twitter mate @rogerpovey, but I know what is true in my soul, and my soul has been crafted by my experiences. My soul has been crafted by the miscarriage of my baby, the death of my uncle, the loss of my father.

I know it is said that memories don't start until around school age, but I have distinct memories of sharing a crib with my cousins - one of them stepping on my head as she tried to climb up the railed wall of the crib to see the cartoons on tv a little better. I have memories of my brothers and I dancing with my mother; day, night, whenever the mood struck her. She would hold us up by our hands and have us step on her feet, and we’d sway around to songs like “Always and Forever” by Heatwave : ) And I also have memories of my father. My own memories, not words put into my head by my mother, but my own picture-thoughts.

It's cathartic, looking back at these thoughts, and deciphering what a young mind can never hope to process. I remember for instance, my father taking my brother and I out to lunch while my mother was in class pursuing her master’s degree. We went to get Chinese food. I liked to look at the red paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Sometimes, afterwards we would go to a lady’s house. My brother and I would sit quietly on the couch while my father and the lady disappeared into another room. My brother and I never mentioned this to my mother; how could a four year old and a two year old know that my father was disrespecting his marriage, hurting my mother, tearing our family apart? I look back on those pictures, I struggle to comprehend them, and I am disgusted.

I remember my brother and I playing, going all throughout the house, poking through drawers and being nosey, while my father sat on the couch watching television - oblivious to the adventures his children were having. In one drawer, my brother and I found some white balls that we decided were candy and gingerly popped them into our mouths. Looking back, I know that they were moth balls and not candy, but there was no one there who cared enough to keep us out of harm’s way.

There were several such instances of my father's brand of neglect. My brother, aka my partner in crime, and I broke open thermometers and liked to roll the mercury in the palms of our hands. I drank a bottle of shoe polish. My father let me walk in the street barefoot and I gashed my foot open - I still have the scar. But in general, the memories of him were memories of a promise breaker. A person who promised my mother to watch over us, a person who made a promise to me to build the bike he bought me, the promise he made to love us - all abandoned at some point during the undertaking. All in various stages of incompleteness.

One night, my brother and I were in our room playing with a picture projector with cartoons of scooby doo and yogi bear when we heard screaming. I can't remember exactly what the words were, but I remember the image: my mother, kneeling on the floor crying, as my father walked out the door. that image of my mother was forever imprinted into my memory. When she realized that we were peeking through the cracked door, she brought us into the dining room, sat us down at the table,  and made us chocolate pudding. Why does this image make me cry. Why am I crying now? I can’t explain what this means to me, I guess it's watching my mother trying to make things normal again, trying to pretend like she wasn't just on the floor crying. We hung our heads, our eyes fixated on the little grey plastic pudding cups, and we scooped the delicious treat into our mouths knowing that something terrible had just happened.

He would come by sometimes, uninvited, and this would always lead to fights. Eventually things calmed down. We moved into a bigger place, with a long hallway outside the door that seemed to stretch on for miles. I had memories of him, my bike sitting in my bedroom, still only half put together so I was never able to ride it, and to this day, I still don't know how to ride a bike. One Christmas he came. He had gifts, he was like a six foot tall slim santa. He put training wheels on my bike which still was unrideable, he gave my brother and I rides on his shoulders, and then he left. He walked down that tremendously long hallway as my brother and I peered from behind the door and decades passed before I saw him again. . .

Tomorrow, Fists and Blood