On the Cusp

If my dad, had cut out the fried food, his 2-pack-a-day pleasure, the 1/2 of a cup of sugar he added to his coffee and the years and years of loving hard, partying hard, and lying hard, he would be 63 years old, today.

I’m thinking he would’ve read the DaVinci Code before it became a best-seller, voted for Dean and then Kerry, would’ve call Bush something like, ‘a fucker’ or a mean mother-fucker’ or a combination of the two, would’ve been on disability, and of course still weaving tales of the life Colonel Alexander's treks in ‘Nam specifically Saigon, and the Tet Offensive, which he proudly, yet uncomfortably and emotionally struggled with.

If he were here today, I’d tell him that heat..helps heal. Muscles. The Mind. When it’s hot, I don’t think as much, I just am. (I do think about my hair and degree of frizz forming though).

I’d also tell my dad that promises and regrets are what fills souls. Without them, I would guess one is most empty, or at least sensing ‘ the missing of something’. My dad had severe colon problems (okay, Crones), and I’m thinking it was less disease and more the pain of promises unfilled. Steroids can’t fix that shit, just make you puffy and mask the truth.

My promise and my regret.

I told my dad, as he lay dying, whispered in his ear actually, not to worry about Nicky (my half-brother) that I would make sure he was taken care of and safe. He could leave the world. I was 30 years old. Nick was 8 or 9. Sadly, I know Nicky’s life only in reference to my own. If I was 30, he must be 8.

I was 19, and living in NYC when my dad informed me that his 2nd wife and he were having a child. My response was, now romanticized, “ Didn’t you have a vasectomy?! And are you going to pay for him with the child support you still owe mom?”. This account has been mildly altered--with only the first part being somewhat true. He informed me that a vasectomy could be reversed (I recall this being a little to much for my sexually tepid self to handle—I was into the Muppets, not envisioning, my father in positions of procreation.) and so he and his 2nd wife had a child in July when I was a senior in college.

A slight diversion –when he told me (my brother Peter and I) he was marrying someone (his secretary 20 years younger) my response (of course heightened for literary effect) was, “It’s like marrying the summer girl!” The summer girl, was perhaps still is, a mainstay of the upper-middle class world in north Chicago, where young women from Wisconsin and Michigan came to live and dream close to Chicago. Their job was to take care of the children while the Mothers’..worked? Swam? Hung out? Ellen, the woman my father married and the mother of Nicky, my half-21-years-younger-than-I-am brother or from his perspective, the girl who never calls or write, but lives 2 hours away, was like many of the Summer Girls: pretty. young, thin, tall, blonde, a partier, and someone who either liked motorcycles, had you drink beer, but told you it was iced tea, liked the Doobie brothers over Disco, and/or came from a military family. A Chicksa. And soon, my dad’s wife.

The promise and the regret.

So, I promised my dad that I would make sure Nicky was taken care. At the time, his x-second wife (Ellen) was in prison (not jail) for shooting out someone’s tires or something except that she was sauced, and it was a government-issued gun (she worked for the CIA). The Commonwealth of Virginia. where they all lived was relentless and she had to make a deal. So, Nicky I guess lost both parents within 4 months. One temporarily, one permanent.

He went to live with his mother’s boyfriend (my father felt him to be a good guy) in Michigan and waited there for his mother’s return. We talked sporadically, a couple phone calls, a letter or two.

Me, the queen of outreach, feline saver, could not reach for her own brother. It’s easier to love and/or save those who you don’t feel responsible for, and where the reach often results in reward or accolade. “You’re amazing, you shouldn’t help all those people!” “ I know,“ I could humbly respond.

Nicky symbolized time with my dad that Peter nor I ever had. He was the result of what I felt to be, rejection of my dad’s first life, he didn’t/doesn’t look like my dad, my brother or I. He was/is the opposite of all three of us (introvert to our extrovert). He’s mathematical and scientific (which I guess my dad sorta was), and which my brother and I are so.. not. And he’s 21 years younger than I, and though perhaps I was not a sexual patriot at that age, he technically could be my child. (Though, I’m slow…I mean I just joined a credit union and bought (on credit..) a couch. It’s red. So, maybe not my child .. but plausibly)

It’s funny; now that my dad has gone and passed, I sometimes think/feel he is more part of my life. I talk to him more, sense he is watching or concerned about me, and throwing some crazy-ass situations and people into my life so he could watch the sparks. An example. for the last year, my intestines have been on a wild ride. They are either allowing the contents to pass or holding on to them for safekeeping. In extremes and nothing in between. It’s like my Dad is talking to me through my body, and with my mind a little broken and my heart quite closed-where is there to go, but through the colon? eh?

I wrote a letter to Nicky a couple weeks ago and he wrote me back a couple weeks later. The letter was more surprising than I could’ve ever conceptualized. mIt wasn’t this gush fest, it simply was a letter from a complex, intellectually fascinating, funny, sarcastic, and a deep person. The letter was a brief synopsis of his birthday and why it wasn’t so great, a birthday gift that broke, an Air show that wasn’t so dynamite and a rant (his word) on why it was so lame and he could not suspend his disbelief.

This week prior to my dad’s birthday was also filled with me being sued and having to go to court for the second time (more on this later), and the meeting of a woman there named Henrietta who just wants to say out of jail, a recent relationship which never found closure (not my choice) now being publicly played out (or rather the individual is now engaged to someone else and competing for an all-expense paid wedding on the Today-more on this later, too.), the devastating break up of two of my students, students who are less students and much more family, and a wandering around the streets of Ann Arbor with.. a spark.

My dad was born on the cusp, he was also ambidextrous (like I) and I always felt this was just why he was.. fucked. He was always in between many worlds - responsibility and rebellion, love and lust, warm and cold.. present and past.

My dad – trying to live in liminality, in the spaces in between of what was and what could or should be – my dad ever present, made a lot of promises, and told my brother he had no regrets. I don’t think my insides, intestines, colon and all could live that life.