My father called me around 10:15 Saturday night. We spoke for about half an hour. It was the longest conversation we’ve had since two years ago, when I went out to visit relatives in Colorado and saw him for about 45 minutes. It was really good to talk to him.
He said he was calling to tell me that he loved me. I waited with some anxiety for the next sentence, but it wasn’t anything about suicide or my grandmother (his mother) dying – the only reasons I could think of for him to call with such a message.
He said that he’d sold the property where he’d had his pawnshop and they were going to tear it down and make a dialysis center there. He said he wanted to call all his kids just to let them know that he loved them and he wasn’t sure what had gone wrong with his life and everything but that he’d sold the property and were going to use it to make a dialysis center. And they’d sold the property. And they were going to tear down the building and make a dialysis center.
Did I mention that he was four sheets to the wind?
After we spoke, I typed furiously on a keyboard at great length about the conversation and about my feelings for my father. The next night, I wrote more about it. In fact, I’m thinking that this is as good a spark as any for me to work on that collection of stories (or even – dare I say it? – a novel) I’d been toying with doing about Dad.
It’s funny that I should get this call now, only a couple of weeks after my birth father had sent me an email checking in to see how I was doing. What a contrast between the two men. My birth father, whom I first met two years ago, is very humble and careful about his relationship with me. He’s never done anything to harm me, and yet he almost acts like he doesn’t deserve to get to close to me. (“Pshaw!” I say to that.)
My father, on the other hand, has done an amazing amount of damage to the health and well being of the people around him, and yet the closest he comes to remorse is a whiny self-pitying litany of drunken excuses.
Hmm. That sounded a little harsh, didn’t it? Yes, it did. And I’m probably the person in my family who was least hurt by him.
I know that alcoholism has a lot to do with Dad’s inability to face reality. In fact, one of the many interesting parts of our conversation Saturday night was when I suggested that he shouldn’t call my sister until he was actually sober, and he said, “You may be right. But I don’t have a problem with alcohol.”
And I said, “Dad, you are the epitome of an alcoholic. I can’t remember the last time I saw you when you hadn’t been drinking.”
Damn, that felt good. He’s been drinking my whole life and that was the first time I’d confronted him about it.
He denied that he drank I pointed out that denial was all part of the disease, too, but I don’t think he heard me.
He said, “I don’t drink. I’m on medication.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” I said.
He said, “Well, I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you."
"I love you too, Dad, " I said. Because of course, in spite of everything else, I do.
"Well, okay," he said. "And I just wanted to let you know that they sold the building you saw when you came out, and they’re going to tear it down and build a dialysis center there.”
“So I hear.” I told him.
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