Squirrelly

Early morning hours … I like to end a day and immediately start a new one, I perform this feat well. A few hours ago, my first “father-less” Father’s Day officially started. As Saturday melted into Sunday I met it head-on, sitting back in a butterfly chair on the roof. Drinking a quart of blue Gatorade and smoking a bit of weed with the recently dead. Weed is not a constant in my life, although I do see its necessity for long journeys inward. When I’m stoned, my aura changes from red to blue and I magically transform into antithesis of “party” --- my banter engine whirrs to a complete stop.

My intention was to get completely still so I could meditate enough to have a conversation with Dad, anxious to see if Johnny A. would show himself in the dim light of early morning. He’s been on my mind, especially on my birthday a few weeks back. It was the first year without a sentimental Hallmark birthday card with the big sloppy “Love Dad” at the bottom.

Dad was the first person I would stop to see when ever I took the five hour drive home to Wisconsin. I made it a point to time my drive so that I could stop at Riha’s Bar and have a few beers with him after his shift ended at the paper factory. In the past few years we’d sometimes spend the whole night talking on those first nights home --- about the past --- about Letty --- about life. I’m so glad I got a chance to know my Dad as a person --- I miss the safety of him, his loyalty and his love. He had a lonely soul too --- and I think I inherited it --- I don’t know where his came from, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to fill mine with. So I just make a lot of noise and hope no one will notice.

Johnny was a robust young man early in life, thin and lanky later on but he remained quite handsome until the day he died. I remember when the old Jimmy Dean song “Big Bad John” used to play on the radio. I thought it was written about Johnny – as a child I felt like I had a movie star looking dad. He developed Type 2 diabetes in his 40’s and shortly after this, Letty took off into the wilderness of her own mid-life crisis and never looked back at us. Johnny quietly resigned himself to the structure of his day --- it revolved around the daily shot of insulin --- being on time for work at the factory --- and then a few beers and Liar’s dice at Riha’s until well after bar time. One by one we left him --- I was gone by the time I was 15. Toward the end of his life he still adhered to the structure of his day, except he added a daily obsession with watching a soap opera before he left for work, which he referred to as his daily fix of “The Dumb & the Sexless”.

Earlier in this decade --- Letty’s remission from cancer and first round of chemo brought all of us together at my youngest sister’s house. It was an awful day --- Letty was being the emotional coyote as usual --- chewing me up to the armpit and saying inane things like “I know so-and-so loves me because unlike you, he cried when he came to visit me…” Johnny slipped in the back door after his shift ended at the factory --- and my eyes watered at the sight of him. I fell into a hug with him – I felt protected in that embrace of bone and muscle --- I could smell the factory on his shirt and a tear escaped from my eye --- I remember thinking “I’m so glad you’re here Dad” so then I whispered it into his chest. All he did was hug me tighter.

Stoned and weepy… my head back in the chair, my feet rest on the railing --- I croaked “I’m think I’m fucked up enough to see you without freaking out Dad.” He didn’t appear, but I could feel him everywhere and I could smell the unmistakable Schwartz MFG company paper smell. I remembered the time I drove in sub-zero weather with the goddess in tow to surprise him for his 60th birthday. We walked into Riha’s at about midnight --- he looked shocked and then he yelled at me, “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you thinking, driving across Wisconsin when its –50 --- with my grand daughter! Sometimes you can be such a squirrelly broad!” I stood there shocked --- he saw my face crack and the tears about to start. He looked me in the eye and said, “Sorry Babe, you know I love squirrelly broads the best.”

I looked up to whatever the city lights surrendered of the summer sky that night. I said aloud “Oh… that ‘s right, I’m supposed to have faith in times like this and just believe that what I’m feeling is indeed real.” I was hoping he’d magically appear on the railing in a transparent, otherworldly form and say, “God’s watching Grace… this is no time to be sarcastic.” He didn’t of course.

Tears came … no crying, no sobbing, no spasms or reverse hyperventilation. Just a steady stream of fat tears that wet my neck and being quite stoned I could feel them stop short of my heart and seep back into my skin. I enjoyed them for what they were --- somewhere in my head I heard “It’s a belated birthday gift from the old man.” I wonder aloud, “A gift?”

I swear that somewhere in the night the old man finally said something, “Tears are a gift babe… and you know why… you just won’t say.”