Any day now...

A little over a month ago I was considering my options for health insurance for my family.  I won't bore you with all the dreadful details, but everyone knows insurance is expensive and I wanted to see if I could get a better deal with an individual plan for my family than I get through the group plan from my job.  I called a broker, got facts, got prices, called human resources got more facts, more prices, etc  It was overwhelming to say the least.  In the midst of looking at all of this information and feeling too paralyzed to make a decision before the enrollment period at my job ended, I had a wonderful, unburdening thought.  I will ask Dad.  Dad knows about all this stuff and while he won't tell me what to do, he'll lay it out in a way that will make the decision easier for me.  A few minutes after comforting myself with this thought came the crashing, heart wrenching realization that I couldn't ask Dad.  He died almost nine years ago.  Then, I had myself a good cry.  I don't know why the realization hit me so hard at that moment, and when I asked my mother later when this sort of heartbreak would stop, she simply replied that it wouldn't and that she was sorry.

This week was the ninth anniversary of my dad's passing.  It is, as it has become, a sad and contemplative  week for me.  I had some Budweiser and listened to The Doors and Otis Redding (favorites of my dad) and thought about writing something worthwhile about my father.  I thought long and hard but everything I came up with seemed trite and did nothing to say anything real about my father.  I made a list of some of the sayings he used : she looks like 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag, it's colder than a well diggers asshole out there, they can burn you but they cannot eat you, etc.  Thinking of my dad's witty one liners did a lot to improve my mood, but did so very little to accomplish actually saying anything about him (the fact that he was funny was sort of implied).  This went on for most of the week until I decided to scrap the compulsion to write anything about him at all. 

Then, a miraculous thing happened.  I spoke to my brother.  My baby brother, who is currently in the midst of putting together a benefit for a friend of his who has recently and suddenly gone blind due to diabetes.  On Facebook my cousin Tara made this comment about my brother in regards to the benefit:  "Funny on the outside, but completely filled with a huge heart on the inside. Sounds comfortably familiar to me. I know he's smiling down on you ;). "  And there, my dear cousin hit the nail on the head.  She managed in a brief comment to say about my father what had been alluding me all week. 

My dad was funny and brusque on the outside.  Downright intimidating sometimes.  He had a way with language that sometimes had you wondering whether you should be laughing or heading for the door.  There was no one he didn't make fun of, no one was safe and he certainly wouldn't have been considered politically correct (not that he cared to be either).  Ballbusting was a specialty of his, nay an artform.  Thing is, while he made fun of you, he made fun of himself too so that you never walked away feeling bad about yourself; you walked away laughing and feeling good about the world.  He was terrible with names and called everyone, friends and strangers alike, some endearment or another.  Chief, big guy, sweetheart, doll.  He did it in such a way as to never make these endearments seem cheesy or diminutive, rather they seemed genuine and they were. 

He had a HUGE heart.  He did things for people that we didn't even know about until after he died.  Loaning people money, time, his home, his clothes, his love.  One of my cousins told us that my father gave him his first baseball glove after realizing that my cousin's father never did.  It meant a lot to my cousin and a lot to those of us who never knew.  He went out on a limb to get people whatever they needed, even if they hadn't yet realized they needed anything.

I am saddened, all the time, that my own children will never get to know my father.  He would've eaten them up, of that I am sure.  I like to think that he might have had a hand in choosing the precious souls that have been placed in my care.  Every once in a while I see something, a rascally look, a chuckle, or a quiet act of kindness in one of my kids, and I know my father is around, always. 

I'm not sure I accomplished what it was I set out to do when I set out to write about my father.  I know that I'm a hell of a lot closer than I was at the start of the week.  I know that I could think for years and write for decades and never get down in words what it meant to have such a man in my life to shape the person that I am, the person I watch my brother being. Any day now I will stop feeling weepy when I think of the loss of my father.  Any day now it will be only laughter (which it often is) when I think about him.

This weeks tip: Chris Rock once said that real dad's deserve the big piece of chicken (paraphrasing here) - if you need to sew two chicken wings to a pork chop to get that big piece of chicken for the man you will celebrate this father's day, then goddammit go out and do it (or you know, buy him a tie).  Either way: Celebrate we will, for life is short but sweet for certain (D. Matthews)








 

A Tale of Two Donnies

My brother had two friends named Chris: good Chris and bad Chris.  Good Chris was a regular kid, played sports, spoke normally, ate large amounts of pizza and played video games with my brother.  Bad Chris wore lederhosen.  You read that right, he was a thirteen year old kid, living in Queens in the twentieth century, and he wore lederhosen.  Frequently.  He also mumbled a lot, looked moist, had a vacant stare, and seemed to stumble around the streets while playing roller hockey with the other kids.  He was a nice enough kid, if you could get him to speak coherently, but he was a grade A goof, ergo Bad Chris.  Fortunately, for me, my brother spent a lot more time with Good Chris as he got older because he was allowed out after dark and didn't bring headgear to sleepovers.

Since my experience with bad Chris, it seems that I have a preternatural sense for goofballs and losers; people I refer to as strays.  I lose patience easily with these societal castoffs and tend to steer clear.  This is not true of the rest of my family who is decidedly nicer and more patient than I.  Members of my family have been known to drag around with whomever they find out in the streets, inviting them to dinner, holiday celebrations and to live in the basement in some cases.  I remember visiting my parents for the first time after their move to Colorado, when a guy I'd never seen before ambled down the stairs (from the bedrooms above) to fix himself a garden burger.  No one seemed to notice this guy but myself and I watched incredulously as he sat down at the dining room table to eat his meal.  I had to finally ask who the hell he was.  While my immediate family is ridiculous in their stray pickup, no one can beat my husband for his uncanny ability to attract and become entangled with the sorriest of human creatures. 

Years ago my husband worked for UPS in the middle of the night.  He drove every night to and fro by himself and put up a notice on the work bulletin board to see if there was anyone interested in carpooling.  This innocuous notice brought a couple into our lives who I came to refer to as the Chubbs.  I don't know what their actual names were, but they were a young couple who approached my husband about the carpool.  They asked if he would mind driving every other week, with him beginning the rotation.  The first week of his driving went without a hitch, they lived close by and he didn't mind the company.  When their turn came around, it was revealed that they didn't have a car.  THEY DIDN'T HAVE A CAR.  What they really wanted was someone to drive them to work and later someone to drive them to work after waking them up by flashing his headlights at their window.  Sometimes he had to bang on the window because they were in too much of a stupor after partying all day long to get up with just a flash and a horn toot.  Most people, and by most people I mean me, would've washed their hands of these meth addicted messes as soon as their end of driving fell through.  Not only did he continue to drive them, but he had them to our house for Christmas Eve one time.  They brought us a really nice bottle of scotch as a gift, which the male Chubb proceeded to drink until it was empty.  The female Chubb also got extremely intoxicated and they had some sort of disagreement during which the female fled and the male had to  be carried home.  My husband stuck by them until he no longer worked for UPS and checked in on them every once in a while afterwards.  We haven't seen them in years, but if you ask my husband, he will refer to them as his friends.

While the Chubbs are part of our history, my husband has more recently acquired a man we call Ron-Don.  On either side of our house, their are men named Donnie.  There is a good Donnie who lives with his girlfriend, tells funny stories and is nice to my kids when they're out playing in the yard.  Bad Donnie reminds my husband of Sally Struthers, if Sally Struthers were strung out on heroin and aimlessly roamed the streets talking to herself.  I think he looks more like an old, white version of the disadvantaged children Ms. Struthers works to raise money for.  My husband mistakenly called this Donnie Ron once, a mistake for which he has been verbally abused going on three years now.  Ron-Don is a drunken, mumbly mess who likes to stop by, holler at my husband and borrow money.  My husband has driven this man to the store, to see his father in the hospital, loaned him money and invited him in for vodka and Pepsi cocktails (this combination alone offends me on many levels).  On one such visit, Ron-Don insulted our paint choices and commented that our fishbowl was dirty.  This from a man who wears his hair in bobby pins.  Ron-Don had moved away for a about a year, but has recently returned to his family home (he is in his fifties).  I think I saw him and my husband out for a joy ride last night.

This weeks tip: Changing your phone number is free if you tell the phone company that you are receiving a lot of solicitor calls or calls from creditors that are not yours.