Happy Birthday, Dad

We almost lost you in November.

You came home, though.

It didn’t stop us from worrying. It hasn’t yet.

But in those early days after you came home, I found myself saying, to myself and anyone who’d listen, that you had a birthday coming up, and that’d be a nice milestone. It’s here, and it means you’ve been with us a couple months beyond the point where we wondered if you’d be with us a couple more days.

***

I remember:

Being five years old and watching some cartoon special about… jeez, a journey into the human body or something. It ended long about the time you got home from work, and that broke my heart. I cried, and you patiently explained that TV shows come from someplace far away, and we can’t play them again. (Times have changed, eh?). What patience.

Sleeping on the cots in your apartments.

Trying to release the hammer on a shotgun I’d cocked but didn’t manage to use. I guess whatever critter I wanted to shoot zipped away. And I wasn’t strong enough to let the hammer down slowly, and the shotgun went off, straight into the air between our heads. You didn’t say a word.

Walking along the edge of some island out in the bays one dark night as we were floundering. You were explaining that somewhere close by was a sudden dropoff. At that moment you disappeared into the water, and nothing was left but your lantern, floating there. “Holy shit!” I said, as I plunged my arm into the water. I doubt you heard. Ah, so THERE’S the dropoff.

How you never begrudged me for being a typical teenager and spending what seemed like years locked in my bedroom.

How you got excited about the blues with me. I can still hear Stevie Ray Vaughan echoing off the hardwood floors in that house.

How you told me the world was bigger than Angleton, and that it was okay to explore it to find my place.

And how you explained that working where I grew up, in a chemical plant, could be a bad choice because it’s a job that’s too good to leave. (I think most of my career to this point has been a misstep, but I’m trying to correct that.)

I remember clubhouses and tire swings and bee stings and fishing poles and betamax movies and Rancho Deluxe Supreme and weekends at Charlene’s and Gold Rush and an unexpected belly dancer (I’m laughing now!) and a mashed potato fight.

***

I’m glad that there’s more to come. My kids need to know their Papa, still a kid himself at 58.