
Nostalgia. These last few months have involved a lot of me retracing my steps, correcting my path. I’m surprised most days because I had no plan to dig deep into my oldest memories to regain my stride, instead planning all along to go only through the last decade or so, mark my path and revisit them at a later date like I’ve placed a book mark. Instead…I keep having flashes of my childhood and find myself clawing up from there. The stand outs that are particularly bright these last few weeks are memories of the times that I spent with my dad. Just he and I (drop a pin here “Bar”) and the first and likely the oldest, is me sitting on my dads lap while he was trimming my finger nails. I know that the television was on, and I know that he had a Pabst Blue Ribbon because I remember drinking from the can. My dad would do this thing when he would open his beer, something that no human born later than 1985 would recall, he would peel back the tab and he would drop it in his beer can. From there he would take a long guzzle but thats not what stands out. What stands out most is the intimate way that my dad was trimming my nails, and I have thought of it every moment in my adult life when ever I have trimmed either my nieces and nephews nails or later my sweet Jonahs nails. Propped on my dads lap he would bite my nails to trim them. One by one…carefully and methodically. I rememeber the sour smell of beer on his breath and a pipe with strawberry tobacco extinguishing in the ash tray. I remember goosebumps and falling asleep hot with summer sweat and thats where the memory ends. The only memory I have of me sitting on my dads lap (drop a pin here “Back of a Harley”) It must have been one of his days off, or before he went into his second shift job at Cat. Speaking of Caterpillar, my second place Dad memory is walking with him and a women…that I believe he worked with, through the streets of my hometown (drop a pin here “fence post”) my guess is from the VFW to the car because it cuts to me riding in the back seat, dropping her off at her apartment. I couldn’t tell you if it was all in one day but one must sumise that it was because it starts in daylight and ends at night. For some reason, I feel like it was around the forth of July and for some strange reason….I see her as Truvy, Dolly Partons character in Steel Magnolias and Tammy Fay Baker because of her sparkeling lip stick. Who was this women, what were we doing with her and why? She leaned over the back seat and looked at me and said “You want me to be your girlfriend?”
What do these memories have to do with me now? What could I ever decifer through those memories in relation to my current life situation? I have no idea. What I know is that they happened, and as fleeting as they are, they have molded me in some way. I find myself cocking my head to one side thinking about them, trying to make out faces in my minds eye and poof, done. My dad was not a bad man, he was a pained man, and he moved through his life always trying to make up for lost time and until later in his life never finishing what he started. I’m not a bad man I too am a pained man and the more I reflect on my life these last dozen or so years the more I find myself surprisingly more like my dad than not. Was he always trying to make a memory with me by asking me to tag along or was I just a bystandard too young to be a designated driver? (Drop a pin here “one hitter”). Am I a sequal to my dads life? Is my story another example of history repeating itself? Do I blame myself or do I blame the generations of drunks before me, for gifting me this empty disease? You’re lucky enough to be along for this ride. You’re lucky enough that you don’t have to try and answer my questions, they’re mine to decifer and yours to Muse.
I miss my dad. I hear his voice all the time but don’t hear him giving me advice, you know…from one cleaned up drunk to another trying to clean up. I want to be able to drive down and sit next to him with a pack of cigarettes and a couple pitchers of iced tea and ask him how long this battle lasts. I want him to tell me that it will hurt but that the gift is at the end of the journey. I want him to tell me that he’s proud of me and when I hit my stride or some daunting anniversary I want him to tell me that he told me so and that he never doubted that I would get there. I want him to tell me that his mistakes were bigger than any I have ever made and that I still have a silver lining. I miss my Dad. I miss him more now than when he died. I miss him more now than when my sweet son was born. I tell myself that was him that opened the clouds and showed me the light of the sun through the trees the day I carried the anchor and chain to the side of lake….5 days before my day 1. 🧡🧡🧡