Finding Fathers: A Warner Bros. Picture (Middle)

Part Two of the essay I wrote years ago concerning my relationship with my father. Over the past week I saw my dad for the first time in a couple months, and I think some things were straightened out. So the anger and rage I had when I first started working the essay into this blog are gone, but since the one or two people who read this blog asked me to continue, I will:

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The years that spanned between then and college were in numerous permutations of the "weekend Dad" ritual that millions of kids in similar situations enacted. Many of those weekends blur together now, specific events and conversations rise only to wisp away on the smoke trailer from my father's preferred brand, Benson and Hedges. I remember his second wedding in the stone church with the kittens in the back, my dad dancing with his new wife to the strains of As Time Goes By from Casablanca, our favorite movie. Preparing Chicken Elegant in the kitchen of the small apartment. Walking along the Appalachian Trail with my dad, step-mother, sister, and brother. Getting my brother to eat an olive at Christmas dinner, and then watching as he proceeded to vomit all over the table. But more than anything else I remember watching movies. We would all sit in the living room, usually with seafood marinara or something from the Italian restaurant in town, and we would eat and laugh and watch. All types of movies, all different eras. I remember being in that apartment watching Paul Newman and Robert Redford jump off the cliff into the roaring river below in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remember being amazed watching him cry during the bicycle chase scene in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. I even recall talking about how great a movie Streets of Fire was, even though I didn't really like it - but I knew my dad did.

Somewhere in those years of viewing we gradually dropped the roles of father and son. I don't know how I thought of him. My mother was really both parents to me. My father played a role that was part uncle, part friend, part personal bank. Someone to have fun with on the weekends, because he liked the same things you did, and you usually never went away empty-handed. I think this was the same for my father. I was someone he could brag about to his friends - the son who made National Honor Roll, who got his name in the paper (too bad it was something on the civil war instead of for sports - I think his proudest moment was when I got a mention for an "honorable finish" in a cross country race I ran - the only sport I participated in for High School), who he could impress his knowledge and expertise on and get acknowledgement in return. As far as I knew this never seem to bother him; he looked happy with the obligatory "thank you" and "I love you" that I tried to regularly bestow on him.

Looking back now, it bothers me now that it didn't seem to bother either of us.

Adolescence puts all kids at odds with their parents. With my father and I, the diminishing frequency of visits, my growing desire for getting laid and his growing passion for getting drunk made it harder and harder for either of us to pay attention to the other. Each of us began to see the other person as a stranger, a separate person that wasn't connected to the Jungian archetypes we had etched in our brains of "father" or "son."

College, and the new physical distance it put between myself and my parents provided the impetus to allow the rose-tinted glasses a father and son wear for so many years to finally fall away from where they were hanging on the tips of our noses. We could glare (at a safe distance, of course) at what lines and scars the years and events had put on us. I saw my father not only as fallible, but corrupted. A man who drank too much, was beat down from his job, and stopped caring about anything other those thing that might directly affect him, the poor target for life's petty jokes. God's fool. Everything was too hard; there was no time. Calls became infrequent - visits practically nonexistent. I found myself hating him, damning his faults and belittling his worth to me. Eventually we stopped talking altogether.

I never bothered to think of what he thought I had become.

Cripes! Another Thing Gets Recorded For Posterity

So there's another thing that happened over the course of the last couple of days - it looks like we're finally buying a house. The entire house-buying history is too long and sordid, so the short version appears below:

Gerri and I started looking at houses last March. We found a house in June, agreed on the price, and while we were getting ready to do the inspection, the homeowners balked, saying the deal on the house they were buying fell through. We kept looking, the same house went back on the market in late November, the homeowners contacted us to see if we were still interested, and we proceeded again. Things went wrong right from the start, from the engineer who did the "inspection" to the lawyer who never called anyone back, and to the homeowners themselves, who turned out to not only be certifiably insane, but lawyers to boot. After a month of proving that most lawyer jokes are born from experience, we pulled out.

Went cold turkey on the house hunting over the holidays, got back on the wagon last weekend, where we struck gold on the first house we saw. Made the offer, got the accepted bid, had the inspection, and are taking care of contracts with our new lawyer this week. Things are looking up, and we're excited. So, expect that when we close this thing will be filled with pictures of the renovation. In the meantime, here's a picture of the future Casa de Voss:

Urine Luck! Medical Update

When I got home the other day a plastic DHL bag was sitting on my front step...

Last Thursday I got the call that my next battery of tests for my possible kidney donation to my brother was Wednesday, February 1st. But first I have to do a 24 hr urine collection. So they shipped me a very attractive little red bottle with a safety seal to do my business in. They also tagged a little card on the side, telling anyone who may be interested in my bottle of pee that this is my bottle of pee, and that it expires on 5/6/2006. Does pee expire? So I have to collect 24 hours worth of pee in this bottle, and bring it in on Wednesday when I go through the rest of the testing for the second session.

This would normally not seem like such a big deal, but I'm wondering about how to actually transport the bucket and its contents through the New York Subway System. Are they still doing those random bag checks? The last thing I want to do is have some cop going through my bag and questioning me on its contents.

So, in true bloggy fashion, I'll keep a record of what happens during the tests, and take some pics if possible. Gerri is coming with me, so maybe I'll even appear in one or two.

My God, It's Full of STARS

This post is primarily for Sean's benefit. Another trade-off, and this time I will definitely write them both up. On February 25th we'll be at Webster Hall in NYC to see Stars, whose last album Set Yourself on Fire was pretty damn great. Gerri will be coming too, and we'll do the whole point-counterpoint thing I originally wanted to do with the Opeth show last November. Which review I said I would definitely post. With pictures. Of which I did neither.

By the way, the show was amazing. Even Sean, Captain of Indie, grooved a bit.

No worries, though. Two days before the Stars show, on February 23rd, Sean and I will be going to the Town Theater in New York to revel in An Evening with Opeth. The band will be doing 2 1/2 hours of music spanning their entire discography - no opening band. Pics for sure this time!

Finding Fathers: A Warner Bros. Picture (Beginning)

This is a piece I wrote years ago for my dad during a time when we weren't talking for more reasons than could possibly be expressed in this blog. After events of the past few days concerning my family. I felt I needed to re-read this, to remember that it's possible to forgive. Man, I hope it is.

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The first memory I recall with my father involves a small, round, brown corduroy throw pillow. The pillow had been in the house for years, relegated to the dusty couch in the basement den. My father used to lie on the couch, his afternoon beer in his hand, and would prop the pillow next to his chest, or his shoulder. In my eyes it was a ritual, although I doubt he saw it that way. He would make the necessary preparations: grab a drink, pull the shades, turn on the television. Beckoned by the completion of these acts, I would sidle over, then scoot onto the couch. My tiny head fit perfectly in the pillow's soft center. It smelled of sweat, grass, dog, beer, and smoke (non-mentholated). It smelled of me, and my father. As far as I know, we were the only ones besides Trixie, our dog, who ever used the pillow. Even now, I still hold a small pillow next to me whenever I'm lying on my own couch, reading or watching movie. I can almost during those times recall the dusty scent mingling with the sweat that beaded between the ribbing. We lay there together, on afternoons and weekends both sunny and rainy, paying our oblations to the pixellated alter that was our television.

We watched everything. My father was P.T. Barnum, delighting my senses with acts and personages I'd never known before. The curtains would part, and with a wave of his whip (or beercan in this case), all my father's heroes were presented to me. We both became the same age ,reveling to the exploits of Bogart (our favorite), Wayne, Flynn, and Grant. I fell in love with the cool cynicism of Sam Spade, the "true grit" of Rooster Cogburn, the merriment of Robin Hood, and the suave sophistication that was the trademark of so many of Cary Grant's characters. More than the characters, more than the plotlines, it was the shine in my father's eyes as he watched the screen, explaining to his six year old son who everyone was, what was going on. And all the while I soaked this in, I nestled my head in that brown pillow, that tiny pillow that was always at my father's side.

Even before my parent got divorced, I think my father never really played the role of parent. He was always the one to mention a new author I had never read, a new film (always an older movie) I had never seen, but it was my mother that always helped with the homework, cooked my favorite meals (knew my favorite meals) when I was upset, played Atari with me and taught me how to play D&D when I was too timid to explain to my friends that I had no idea what the game was or how you played (which seems odd considering my favorite author at the time was Tolkein). But that was something I'm convinced children take for granted - that was what a "mom" did. But a dad didn't have to explain that Steve McQueen couldn't help but keep getting thrown in Solitary, that Maureen O'Hara was going to hit John Wayne in every movie they'd ever appear in - these were all bonuses from his normal role of working and hanging out with his friends all over town. On the night my father left our house, I was upstairs with my sister, watching the remake of King Kong on the television with the volume turned all the way up to drown out the screaming we could hear from the basement. Now I can't remember where my brother was - he may have been with us, but I don't recall.

I think that bothers me more than anything else.

A door slammed, and the next thing I see is my mother, standing on that couch in the basement, somehow managing to hold all of us in her arms as she cries that Daddy was gone, she didn't know where, and that he wouldn't be coming back. Everyone was crying, and when she cried that he wouldn't be coming back, we all wailed. Just the sight of my mom crying brings me to tears, so I know I cried for her, cried for her sorrow, but also cried (perhaps more?) that my father was gone, he had gone and hadn't even said goodbye.

I don't remember ever seeing the brown pillow after that.

I was about thirteen.