back when i was a child, before life removed all the innocence
my father would lift me high and dance with my mother and me and then
spin me around ’til i fell asleep
then up the stairs he would carry me
and i knew for sure i was loved

(loo-tha : dance with my father)

~from the June 2006 archives~

SCREECH!! *sound of needle being pulled abruptly off of the record* yeah, that’s all well and good but that particular song will never be included on the sound track of my life…

*sigh* i don’t even know where to begin, but let’s go back to father’s day. no, let’s go back a little further. see, in order for you to understand this post you have to understand the dymanic that exists between my father and i. i love him because if it hadn’t have been for he and my mother, i wouldn’t exist. and i admire him professionally, because he overcame tremendous obstacles in his life in order to be where he is, but i have no respect for him as an individual.

as most of you know who’ve read me for a while, he was abusive. and my mother and i left when i was 8. even though i saw and experienced a lot of things early on in my childhood, my mother tells me that i was originally a daddy’s girl. i have pictures of me sleeping on his chest and laughing with him, but even back then i didn’t like him.

recently, my father had a tumor removed from his leg. he’s had a lot of other serious health issues lately and somehow i get the feeling that something may be wrong with him that he’s not telling me. his behavior has been different. and i’ve been thinking a lot lately about the impact of the reality of him possibly being terminally ill and trying to sort out my feelings. and to be honest, i feel nothing. sad but true.

in a detached sense though, i want to say that feel pity for him. i always compare him to “mister” from the color purple at the very end of the book, when he has no one but his chickens. i didn’t even want to call him or visit on father’s day and yes, i waited until saturday to ask if he had plans. i’d thought about maybe taking him to dinner or going to a movie, but he told me that since he hadn’t heard from me he’d made plans to go out for dinner. after an awkward silence, he blurted out “i miss seeing you” . that sentence left me a little confused because i usually only see him once, maybe twice a year even though we live only about 20 minutes apart. and it’s not like there’s ever been a time in my life where he’s seen or talked to me on a regular basis, so what the hell? you miss me? ok.

so, i asked if maybe he wanted a raincheck and since he was busy yesterday, if he wanted to get together tomorrow (which is today). he said sure. he wasn’t doing anything but waiting for a phone call from his lawyer about his property in florida, so i told him that i’d call to confirm around lunchtime. well, he still hadn’t heard from his lawyer by 2PM and i told him to just give me a call back when he talked to the lawyer and then we could meet up for dinner or a movie or both. i’d thought about going to get him a gift certificate to sports authority since he’s almost back on his feet since the surgery, while i waited. but i figured i’d come home after work, put on a load of laundry and wait.

and um…it’s 10PM now and i haven’t heard from him. it’s not an unusual occurance. when i was little and had to do the visitation thing, my mother would drop me off at my grandmother’s house where he was supposed to pick me up…and he’d forget to come get me. it happened so many times, that my mother finally stopped driving all the way home and would just drive up the street to the k-mart and wait a few hours. then she’d call to see if i’d been picked up and if not, she’d come back to get me.

funny thing is that i’m not upset…not disappointed…i don’t feel anything. i guess that i just don’t have any expectations left to be disappointed by. i almost wish that i wouldn’t have even made the attempt to reach out yesterday and today. but still, sometimes i wish that i could go back to being that little girl that i see in the picture in my childhood album, laying on her father’s chest while he’s napping with a big old kool-aid grin on her face. *shrug*