father daxle I remember your tan arms, your black and grey hair, how tall you were, how you walked just like me, brown eyes just like mine, skinny just like me, the way your fingernails were always dirty and long, the belt buckle with the silver eagle and inlaid abalone shell, your smile of yellow teeth, blackened behind from smoking, the way you looked when you were being mischievious (the same way I do) and they way you looked when you were proud of me (mom never looked at me that way). There was that time when we went camping and you wore the green shirt, same color as the leaves, and the dragonflies started landing on you. We stood in the creek admiring the cat tails. I remember when you took me hunting even though you knew it meant there was no chance you would catch anything. We walked silently though the mist for hours and I thought "I hope heaven is like this". But I also remember the times when you woke me up in the middle of the night with your screaming. I remember when I got stuck in the room between you and mom and a cowered and you got mad and told me to stop because you would never hurt me. You didn't, but you hurt her. I forget you more and more and all of a sudden it's scaring me. I can talk about you casually and not get sad. "yeah, my dad died" I couldn't believe it when you weren't there to see me graduate from high school and now you won't be here to see me grduate from college. God I miss your approval. Ever since you've been gone I feel like such a failure to mom. And all she ever does is rip on you, when you're not there to defend yourself. I know she suffered a lot with you, but I know that I make people suffer too, and I know it's not on purpose and I know how bad it must have made you feel. You're so much of who I am now, but you're not here... 020212 ... bethany he gave me 200 dollars on a credit card once his mouth has more spit than useful words he is a ba'hai, which i think is one of those flower giveres at airports he was born in ireland he walks around like his legs were stilts coz his hips hurt his taste in music is nonexistent he tries to get me to open up to him but i just stare at the window and cry he keeps wearing jeans that fit him when i was born he keeps insisting he's loosing weight he is moving to china for 5 years he lives in an apartment in an office building, yes it's the only apartment there he figured office space was cheaper and bigger, i don't know how he always tells me about the time he came to see me in the hospital nursery and my grandmother shooed him out like it was some big feat he came he tells me how he asked my mother is she was pregnant and she matter of factly said "yeah, sure" i know it coulda gotten messy but i only met him when i was 17 and i didn't like his turquoise jeans or his 7 sisters and their hairy moles 020212 ... amy barriers insecurities sacrifice and regret of that sacrifice hasn't imagined how many flavors of love are possible. wouldn't be interested at baskin robbins, either. gave me my freedom, and then misinterprets the golden rule. mostly is upset that his family broke apart into four separate people... it was a fluke that we were ever together, period, is the way i see it. must spend a lot of time feeling sorry for himself, while smoking cigarettes in the garage. i do what i can do. i'm not a bad daughter. how do you help a person deal with pain and regret like he has? i just encourage him to move on, it's all i can think of. says he doesn't feel "cherished", though. :( 031229 ... tessa I sit and stare at the crossword, reading over the clues and the words he has filled in. With a kind of horrified fascination I wonder if he really has tried his hardest. He's filled in 5 or 6 words, is this the best he could do? Here, 14 accross, he's filled in his answer, and there's two squares left blank at the end. Didn't he see those last two squares? Doesn't understand that for the word to be correct, it must take up all the boxes? Why did he leave his word penciled in, when the eraser is right here, within reach? And this one, 3 down, he has left blank. "Dressing for a wound (7)", starting with B. Did he read this clue? How long did he sit puzzling over it before giving up? Still, he attempts the crossword every morning. He leaves his efforts here on the table for us to see. Is he proud of them? Does he believe he has done well? Usually I have a go at the crossword myself, but I don't feel like doing it today. 040515 ... belly fire I have discovered it is infinitely harder to let go of the image of my father as a type of superman than to look past his current condition. Part of me is saying he will get well again, but the other part is saying, he will never be the same afterward. How can a daughter be rational about that when her father looks at her with eyes so full of fear and doubt? 050201 ... belly fire and then it becomes - she can't look at him because he will see that same fear looking back at him he said to her, "I'm not going anywhere." she said to him, "Just shut up, Dad." 050218 ... birdmad it was strange to watch him dwindle from the strong, imposing figure he presented, the same man who could, when cross, leave me cowed into behaving myself simply with the raise of an eyebrow - two watch him become a frail imitation of that person. the hair loss from the chemotherapy had taken the black from his salt-and-pepper hair and when he was done with chemo and grew back, it was all silver-white and stood out in stark contrast to the deep red-brown of his skin the puncture scar from a stab he took in the back as a young man became more pronounced, looking like a misplaced umbilicus he put on the brave face and displayed his usual sense of humor through it, but in his eyes i could see how much he resented the pronounced decline of his physical capability. When he passed away, I was sad, but more, i was relieved for him, even though there were still good moments and bad moments, celebrations and confrontations between father and sons that had not yet happened and never would because when he was gone, i was still at the age when i had to struggle against him to establish myself as something other than simply the son of my mother and father the last days were colored with relief and regret and as one of his pallbearers it was a strange, disheartening feeling to know that as he had carried me off and put me to bed so many times when i was little, here i was, carrying my father to that last, enduring sleep. 050218 ... crOwl it will be three years in march since he died and to say a day doesn't go by without at least one thought of him is actually a gross understatement because most days its almost continuously. i think when a person lives his life giving of himself there is just so much of his spirit hanging around that you can't help but feel his presence nearly everywhere. 050218 ... mon uow something happened to him he doesn't talk about it 050222 ... mon uow and i wonder what happened to my father what happened to my family 050222 ... mon uow i try to see, i try to help him see 050222 ... eat id You can tell he is a father, a nurturer of small wildlife, soft beneath his offensive jokes... you can tell he is a father. 060324 ... birdmad ten more days will equal 16 years since the day he died 060324 ... nom i still regret telling him to do the world a favour 061231 ... belly fire We can share a sunny, un-January day together at the Mountain Park look-out over Hamilton and pretend we're not heading for another CT-scan. We can chat absent-mindedly down the Linc and forget we'll only be driving back on Thursday. 070102 ... eat id check the date here we go again only this time we are different people, aren't we? oh, bitterness and 3 years more grateful 080228 ... belly fire Each time the words choked in her throat, and her chin gathered up, I wanted to reach out to her. She is so strong, oh how I envy her. She whispered, looking out onto the dark street, "Maybe if I just step out from the corner...it can all be over. I can stop everything then." I cast my eyes to the dirty pavement and whispered, "No..." Words said in grief. A terrible grief. On the way home I practiced a call to my father, the same age as hers, that I would make later that day. "I called to tell you I love you." " What?" "If I haven't said it lately, I wanted you to know. I didn't want to go another day without telling you that I love you so much." "Samantha, what's wrong? What's happened?" "Nothing...I love you." 080730 ... belly fire She said, "I told myself I could live without a mother, but not him. Never him." a long pause "And now I have to." 080730 ... birdmad would have turned 71 this past Saturday 080730 ... unhinged the more i live, the more i appreciate my father. it helps he has been mellowed out by his grandchildren, is not so oppressive with his kids because we're 'all adults now.' no more anger, bile, spite, fear. he has a hard time really showing his emotions but so do most of the men of his generation brought up by even more repressed men themselves. it's gotta be hard work being a parent. now, i'm grateful, appreciative, forgiving, loving. i am lucky to have the dad i have. for sure. 080730 ... raze "i've gone out of my way to make horrible life choices so you'll know to do the opposite of what i've done," he said, smiling. "and i'm happy to say you're doing a wonderful job." "i appreciate that," i said. 211224 ... tender_square i didn’t know how far i could pedal when i’ve struggled with self-propelled momentum as of late. he let me take the sidewalk ahead of him, and i felt like i was ten again in my helmet, checking behind my shoulder every few blocks to make sure he was still there, watching over me. we took a road until it ended, a new subdivision of modern homes in black and stone rising from the former farms when i was young. at the bike path, we stopped and i sipped from the bottle of water in my basket, offered some to him. he waved me off. “should we keep going?” he asked. i didn’t want to turn around. there was a narrow dirt path wide enough for wheels on our left and i wondered aloud about where it led. “we can take it,” he said. and he pedaled ahead though a field of reeds, horsetails, and scouring rushes that were soft walls granting us passage. dainty white anemone and pillars of arrowgrass swayed in a breeze that cooled our sticky skin; butter-coloured artichoke and purple-tinted bog aster dotted the hillside. i tasted the purity of summer’s light as it illuminated our pale skin, the sky overhead diffuse with the soft clouds of heaven. the harmony of those wildflowers bowed in reverence toward him, as i watched his back and how he drifted ahead of me, unaware of the tears that soaked my cheeks; the victrolas of foxglove and bellflower playing a static and hissing hush of love. 220628 what's it to you? who go blather from