Thursday, September 2, 2010

dateline: traverse city, mi

yeah, i haven't mentioned my dad much here. but today i heard he's back in the hospital. electrolytes all outta whack, hypotensive to the point of spontaneously passing out, down to 177 lbs. my dad hasn't weighed 177 since he was in high school. he must look like hell. 


*sigh* my dad, who gave me my long-ass legs. who at 6'3" was the runt of the entire family, cousins, everything. who played defensive back and right field, and if he hadn't been so fucking criminally minded he could have made the bigs. fucker could hit, power and average. held the boys' high school state record in the 220. 


i think i'm preparing myself here. he's having a colostomy reversed tomorrow, if the adhesions between his stomach and small intestine can be dealt with. it's either the colostomy is reversed, or he continues wasting. he's getting nothing from the food he puts in his mouth. things aren't looking so good right now. and i think i need to make some peace, in my own mind if nothing else, with the old man. i have bitched about him aplenty in the past, but he isn't all bad. or rather, he wasn't. i don't know how well i know him anymore. 


i know he always wanted to get rich. did some pretty harebrained shit trying to get rich. moving solo to colorado to be a rug doctor franchisee with some old friend of his from the iowa state penitentiary. (i wasn't kidding about his being criminally minded). moving all of us to texas (odessa yet! scarred for life!) to be in the chain link fence business. like those good old boys were gonna allow a uppity fuck from california get in on that racket. and then finally, the coup de grace - about a month before i started 8th grade, he charged with attempted murder and some variety of drug trafficking. after damn near a year as a guest of the county of los angeles, he was acquitted. our relationship never recovered. 


but i did get the legs from him. and the mouth i kiss my husband with? it's from him. and for all his stupidity about money, he wasn't stupid. i see lots of him in me. mostly it's bad habits, but loving books is something i learned from him. my mom was the math genius (and that's my brother. lol), but dad loved words. when he was locked up, he used to write my mom these letters. like 10 legal sized pages, printed small. and she was going up to county to see him every damn day! but he wrote her these tomes anyway.   


he's having this surgery tomorrow. his docs wanted to be doing this in about a month, but he might not be around in a month. 


i hope it goes well.