behindtheax

dad

The furnace kicked in this morning for the first time. Woke up to a warm house. Wandered down stairs to let the dogs out and stood by the kitchen window for a few minutes looking out at all the patterns of dissipating grey as night slowly evaporated in front of me. My dad called yesterday and talked to me for a few minutes. It’s quite rare when he does that but it is getting less so. How do I explain my dad? The athlete I guess? He used to box in his early years. Also played hockey back then and was a pitcher for my hometown’s baseball team for years. (Left-handed). There are lots of old newspaper clippings that mention him that he saved from the sport’s section of our local newspaper. Sometimes they referred to him as Lefty. Had his own landscaping company (four men and a tractor) and plowed snow in the winters. Wore jeans his entire life, still does. Loves the birds that come to his bird feeders. Walks every day with his dog, Jack. He was the seventh son of the seventh son, which makes me laugh thinking about the White Stripe's song. - Dad would often remind us of this, making it sound like it gave him special powers or something. He loved the Johnny Carson show but hated Ed MacMan with a passion that never quite made sense to us. He spent a lot of energy complaining about that guy – I believed it irked him that someone could make money by just chuckling occasionally on cue. When I first moved here I wrote a lot of journal entries about my Dad – they weren’t always positive entries but now I realize he did the best he could for who he was. –I am not saying our family didn’t have its dysfunctional moments but then again I truly believe you can fit the number of completely functional families out there on a head of a pin.
Anyway, I got Dad on my mind. It’s partly because he called yesterday but mainly because the furnace came on this morning.

From my journal 1990

The Loggiville road with its canopy of trees
Sitting in the GMC, my father and me
With ribbons of sun filtering through the leaves
Falling on the windshield
Potholes sink each tire
And we rattle for a while
As cars pass, hands wave
Acknowledgement from all
And dad spits tobacco
which seems to go a mile
To where the
pinto ponies graze
As I look upon the trailors with
rows of weather vanes and then
out beyond
to a point of sand
a moon time shore
where fires from the night before
leave behind blacken wood
to be covered up by the first big snow.
The road’s a sweet one –
That’s for sure

(before I moved to the big city I use to pronounce "sure" as "shore" – so when you’re reading it – it suppose to sound more like “that’s for shore.”)

posted by mary j. @ 2:06 PM