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alasanonSo says Poe's dead father?
Goodness...
I wonder, really, when I'm going to have to come to terms with the issues presented by my father, or, more accurately, the lack of his presence. I'm fairly sure I'm not trying to replace him in the boys I choose to have relationships with. None of them are much like him, and none have been his precise opposite.
I do have some memories of him, good and bad, and I think I remember when I stopped believing in him. Not in the sense of disbelieving Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but in the sense of having no faith. Yet there's something so untouchable about it all, as though it happened to someone else, not to me. I grew up with my mother and a man who happened to marry her and tried, on and off, very hard to be a parent to me. I don't think it was his fault that I wouldn't respond, or didn't love him, or whatever happened.
I stopped believing in my father on the first Christmas he didn't come to his parent's house for Christmas Eve. There were presents there that my grandmother said were from him, but there was something lacking, something false in them. They weren't the sort of presents he would have given me. He gave me books and silly things, knick-knacks and whatsits and tapes of music by people my mother didn't really approve of. He didn't give me clothes. My mother told me later, rather disparagingly, that his mother had probably gotten them and he hadn't actually gotten me a thing. It seemed to ring more truly to me than the pretty story my grandmother had given me. I don't remember how old I was, just as I don't remember how old I was when he gave me my first copy of 'The Hobbit'. Younger than seven and older than four, I think. Perhaps a little older, but I think it was before I started grade school.
I remember sitting at Farrell's the day (my birthday?) he gave me the Barry Louis Polisar and Tickle Tune Typhoon tapes. My mother hated that first one. She thought it was just awful.
I remember being so frightened by the Sweeney Todd albums he played at his apartment in Greenwood. I remember Dallas and her caffeine-free diet Cokes near Greenlake. I remember Pauline and Sarah and feeling sorry for this little girl, my age to the day, whose mother insisted that she was fat and threw away the little candies we bought at the gas station.
Really, what could one Tootsie Pop do?
I don't have any solutions yet, really, not to anything, and I don't want someone else's. That wouldn't be proper for a girl who believes firmly in making her own decisions.
In all honesty, I don't think about him very often. He was such a non-presence (except when I looked in the mirror)for most of my life that I eventually basically wrote him out of it.
But I know that somewhere, hidden deeper than I can see most of the time, there are some Issues that I'm going to have to Deal With at some Point.
That's all right, though. I don't mind. Keeps me humble, in a way.
Goodness...
I wonder, really, when I'm going to have to come to terms with the issues presented by my father, or, more accurately, the lack of his presence. I'm fairly sure I'm not trying to replace him in the boys I choose to have relationships with. None of them are much like him, and none have been his precise opposite.
I do have some memories of him, good and bad, and I think I remember when I stopped believing in him. Not in the sense of disbelieving Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but in the sense of having no faith. Yet there's something so untouchable about it all, as though it happened to someone else, not to me. I grew up with my mother and a man who happened to marry her and tried, on and off, very hard to be a parent to me. I don't think it was his fault that I wouldn't respond, or didn't love him, or whatever happened.
I stopped believing in my father on the first Christmas he didn't come to his parent's house for Christmas Eve. There were presents there that my grandmother said were from him, but there was something lacking, something false in them. They weren't the sort of presents he would have given me. He gave me books and silly things, knick-knacks and whatsits and tapes of music by people my mother didn't really approve of. He didn't give me clothes. My mother told me later, rather disparagingly, that his mother had probably gotten them and he hadn't actually gotten me a thing. It seemed to ring more truly to me than the pretty story my grandmother had given me. I don't remember how old I was, just as I don't remember how old I was when he gave me my first copy of 'The Hobbit'. Younger than seven and older than four, I think. Perhaps a little older, but I think it was before I started grade school.
I remember sitting at Farrell's the day (my birthday?) he gave me the Barry Louis Polisar and Tickle Tune Typhoon tapes. My mother hated that first one. She thought it was just awful.
I remember being so frightened by the Sweeney Todd albums he played at his apartment in Greenwood. I remember Dallas and her caffeine-free diet Cokes near Greenlake. I remember Pauline and Sarah and feeling sorry for this little girl, my age to the day, whose mother insisted that she was fat and threw away the little candies we bought at the gas station.
Really, what could one Tootsie Pop do?
I don't have any solutions yet, really, not to anything, and I don't want someone else's. That wouldn't be proper for a girl who believes firmly in making her own decisions.
In all honesty, I don't think about him very often. He was such a non-presence (except when I looked in the mirror)for most of my life that I eventually basically wrote him out of it.
But I know that somewhere, hidden deeper than I can see most of the time, there are some Issues that I'm going to have to Deal With at some Point.
That's all right, though. I don't mind. Keeps me humble, in a way.
