This is an embarrassing admission, but since I’m kind of the queen of embarrassing admissions, I’ll just spill it. My custom design upgrade expires today, and I’m going to have to let it go for now. I’m not sure how this change will affect the appearance of my blog, but I’m pretty sure that it will look messy for a while, until I can make adjustments.
I’m telling you this only because it’s not going to be as easy on your eyes to read my posts (which is why I upgraded in the first place). I feel bad about it–you have such nice eyes. But–I don’t run ads on this blog, and I generate no income from it, save for the occasional very beautiful, kind, generous, big-hearted, sweet, much-appreciated PayPal donation. I simply can’t justify the expense right now, but I promise that as soon as I can, I’ll return you to your regularly scheduled font. This is not a hint or a plea for donations, by the way–it’s just the way things are at the moment, and it’s certainly not a huge dilemma. I wanted to explain though, and give you a heads-up.
So, thanks for understanding. I’m sending out big mushy hugs, and will be putting up a new, slightly uglier post soon.
This morning, I woke up and wrote the first thing that popped into my head, which was this:
My dad would have been seventy-five today, but after some consideration he decidedto end his contract early.
Some melt slowly, others blaze at twice the speed of light, then Poof they’re gone.
Bummer huh? And as far as poems go, it sucks. It’s not even really a poem. But it’s how I was feeling, on this, the 75th anniversary of my father’s birth. And you know, I want to commemorate him somehow.
He was only fifty-seven when he died, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I’ve written a lot about him over the years. About his craziness, his temper, the damage he caused to others. He was one of the most selfish men I’ve known, and certainly the most tormented. He hurt a lot of people. But today, I want to tell you some good things. I want to honor him. It’ll probably sound pathetic–these are probably things that normal fathers do as a matter of course. But my dad was far from normal, and I’m incredibly thankful for every kindness he was able to show me.
So here goes:
We shared a weird bond–it seemed his genes swam a bit deeper in my pool than in my sister or brother’s. It wasn’t just that I looked like him, although I do. There was an invisible, powerful connection that ran between us, some sort of simpatico. I was his eldest, and he lost his enthusiasm for parenting by the time the others arrived. But I was the baby he held once or twice, the one he fed once, the one who pooped all over him. Once. He was proud of these paternal efforts, and reminisced about them until the end of his life.
He could make me laugh until my sides nearly ruptured. I inherited his silly sense of humor. If I stood near him during a solemn occasion–a religious service or a funeral–I was a goner. He’d be there beside me, our heads bowed in respect, and before long, he’d start vibrating with repressed, inappropriate laughter. It was horribly contagious, and soon, I’d start shaking too. We’d turn red as bricks, tears rolling down our faces as we struggled to stay silent and respectful. Occasionally, we blew it and made snortling noises, which caused the more reverent to give us the evil eye (and rightly so). It was awful at the time, but I now look back on our looniness very fondly.
He co-signed on not one, but two cars for me. In fact, he even picked out my first one. This is akin to saying that he parted water for me, or gave me busload of doubloons. Dad wasn’t magnanimous as a rule, and these were huge gestures, especially in light of the fact that I burned the engine up on the first one within a few months and abandoned it on the side of the road (no one told me that cars needed oil). Of course, he never let me forget that he’d done these nice things–not for years and years, or ever. But that was okay.
Between his marriages, we hung out as friends a bit. He was drinking a lot then, blacking out and falling down and taking who-knows-what kind of pills. I worked up the courage to tell him he had a problem, and offered to attend an AA meeting with him. He took me up on it and stayed with the program until the end of his life.
When I became pregnant at twenty-five, Dad was the person I feared telling most. I wasn’t married, and he disliked the baby daddy (later, my husband). I broke the news as we sat across from each other in a crowded restaurant. Not only was he not angry, he seemed to really care. He asked questions about due dates and finances and by the end of the conversation, he was happy for me.
After my son arrived, Dad and I went shopping. He sat on a bench and ordered me to go pick out things I’d need for the baby. I was unused to such gestures (it had been years since the co-signing). Timidly, I selected a little package of t-shirts and brought it to him. “More,” Dad said. I kept putting things into the basket, one by one, and he kept saying, “More.” This went on for quite a while, until he was satisfied that his grandson had enough.
A year later, I moved away and married my son’s father. My dad was the only family member in attendance on my side of the family. He drove six hours to get there, and I was proud to have him standing by my side.
Okay, all of this is making me cry. I’m going to have to stop soon, because the more I add to this list, the more I miss him. It’s been eighteen years since he killed himself, and though I understand and respect his reasoning, I often find myself still wishing he was here. He was a huge presence, and he left a big rip in my universe.
He’d like Amadeus. He’d be proud of my kids and me. He’d be older and calmer, and the fire that blazed in his brain would be, by now, just softly glowing embers. Maybe he’d have found some happiness. Maybe he’d have bitten the bullet (no pun intended) and gone to physical therapy and regained the dignity he lost when they amputated his leg. I imagine him discovering the joys of the Internet, finding a community of people he could relate to, looking up information on Post-Polio Syndrome, traveling the world from the comfort of his wheelchair.
As I was growing up, he was always more of a buddy than a father, and we kids were more of a burden than any sort of pride and joy. In fact, he found it difficult to even say the word “Dad,” and instead referred to himself jokingly as “Da-Da.” He just couldn’t do the parenting thing. My mother had remarried a despicable man, and for the better part of eight years, we kids were on our own. I never shared my problems with my father during weekend visits to his house, and he never seemed to want to know. We were a horribly fractured family.
When I was eighteen, a freshman in college, my world began to fall apart. I don’t want to go into the details right now, but trust me, it was a bad time, the worst of my life.
Even my father noticed, and in a weird show of concern, he sent a friend, an emissary, to talk to me and find out what was going on. She and I met at a restaurant, two rather awkward, uncomfortable strangers. As we chatted over coffee, she began to quiz me a bit, I guess in order to report back to Dad on my well-being. It was beginning to get on my nerves. In fact, it ticked me off. Finally, I looked her in the eye and said something like, “Listen. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t want to talk about it. And I sure as hell don’t want to talk to my father about it. He’s never been involved in my life. He’s never given a shit about me. I’ve been handling things on my own for ten years–I’ll handle this too.” I considered myself very tough at the time, although in reality I was quite lost.
Just then, I looked up, through the large, plate glass window across from us. There was my father, sitting in his car, blocking other drivers, trying to get my attention. His window was down, he was waving his arm, he was saying something.
“I love you.”
Those were the words he formed as he slowly drove by, ignoring the honks of the people behind him. He circled that restaurant at least ten times, and with each rotation, he’d ride that brake and mouth, “I love you.” And at that moment, I knew that he truly did love me, probably more than anyone in the world. He seemed so helpless as he rolled by, looking through the glass, moving his lips like a fish in an aquarium. He wanted to be there for me, he wanted to fix things, he just had no idea how to do it. How could he? He was broken himself. But I knew he cared. I knew that someone gave a shit after all.
So here’s to my dad on his 75th birthday. I loved him dearly. I still do. I hope that you’ll send some good wishes his way, if you believe in that sort of thing. He probably gets lonely.
Here’s an old post that lists more nice things about my father. And here’s one of his favorite tunes:
The sun gleams bright up in the sky, Its beams shine on your face, A hundred bluebirds sing up in the trees, Fields of flowers bloom like valentines made out of lace, Painted butterflies float on a breeze.
In the night the moon glows bright, The crickets sing their song, Cicadas sing along, Every star is twinkling your name. And I look up and think of you, and wish that you were here, wish that you were near, It makes me blue that you’re so far away.
The world becomes a miracle, when you are here with me, but when you’re gone it’s just another place, I dream about you every night, of kisses warm and sweet, And all I do is long for your embrace.
Boats and trains and aeroplanes, they sometimes interfere, make people disappear, and lovers move a million miles away; And though I know it won’t be long, Until you’re here again, Until you’re near again, I sit and count each sad and lonely day.
The postman brought a telegram, it said you’re coming soon -Saturday at noon, and I’ll be waiting for you at the gate, soon the world will once again become a sunny place, when I see your smiling, lovely face.
The world becomes a miracle, when you are here with me, but when you’re gone it’s just another place, I dream about you every night, of kisses warm and sweet, And all I do is long for your embrace.
I’ve got so many irons in the fire I’m beginning to feel like a blacksmith on steroids. I’m working on a novel, a couple of short stories, an essay and some poems. I’ve even got a little erotica brewing, though I’ve got to diagram the various positions to see if human beings can actually bend into the shapes I’ve choreographed. WordCamp just contacted me about doing another presentation this year (despite last year’s debacle), and I’ve got to get going on that, too.
But my brain plays awful tricks on me. Each day, I crack open the laptop and begin writing or editing or researching or playing word games on Twitter, when, from out of nowhere, something completely different will start trampling through my head. It’s a horrible ADD thing, and I believe it’s brought on by a type of genetic insanity, combined with financial panic and aggravated by SHS (Spastic Hormone Syndrome). Lately, what’s trampling are songs. A tiny voice begins to whisper rhymes, and soon, a melody follows. It’s happened three times this week.
They’re like the old road kill tunes I used to write, only worse. Before long, I abandon my other projects, because once this hay ride starts, I can’t stop until the voice has had its say. It hijacks my head and makes me pick up a guitar, a tragedy for all who enter these premises.
It happened again yesterday. I was working on an essay I plan to submit to an online publication. There I sat, crinkling my brow in a serious manner, rubbing my brain cells together and trying to make sparks, when a little sing-song started. La, la, la, tee dahhh. I’d been writing about important things– beauty and society and the size of my butt, but that voice in my head was drowning it out. It was like American Idol in there. This time though, the tune was sweet and wistful, a little old-fashioned. I stopped construction on the essay and began jotting lyrics, the ones above. I became a gypsy in our living room, automatic writing for the spirit of some 1920′s flapper.
I thought it was pretty swell for an amateur, much better than “Little Dead Squirrel.” By the time my hubby got home, I’d finished. I was overjoyed, because although it had disrupted my regularly scheduled writing, I rather liked the end result. Best of all, Amadeus didn’t grimace once when I sang it for him. In fact, he liked it. We had some errands to run, and we hummed that sweet tune all around town and home again.
“Catchy, isn’t it?” I beamed, feeling kind of hopeful. Maybe I can do this songwriting thing. Maybe we should do a demo. Maybe we should move to Nashville.
He nodded. “But you know, that tune sounds a little familiar.”
“It does? Well, I wrote it to sound like an old standard. It probably sounds like a lot of songs.”
“No,” said Mr. Music. “It sounds exactly like something I’ve heard before.” He puzzled over it for a while, then it hit him. A few days earlier, we’d listened to a Jesse Winchester song someone had linked to on Facebook. We’d only heard it once, but now he played it again. As we listened, my heart began to sink like Lance Armstrong’s career. With a few differences in the pattern, my new ditty was almost identical. I’d committed otic plagiarism.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. How was it possible that a four-minute song–a song I’d heard one time–had crawled inside my head and stayed without my knowledge? How could my brain have betrayed me so? I guess the answer is that it really is a very beautiful tune, as you’ll discover if you click on the link below.
At some point, I’ll come up with a new tune for those lyrics, but in the meantime, I may need a prescription for Ritalin if I want to get any work done. And if this keeps up, Amadeus will need earplugs. And beer.
