Come Saturday Morning
I don’t journal here. I don’t comment much on politics, either. I am a misfit blogger, then, a square peg looking for a round hole and not going to find it.
And I’m going to stop this incessant posting soon, I think. I just have things on my mind.
This might take a while, by the way.
I was telling Beth yesterday about Site Meter, a little scrap of java that serves as a website counter and referral marker. I mentioned this to inform her that, since she linked to me in her personal blog, I now know where she lives. So to speak.
Not that I’m going to spend any time reading my daughter’s journaling. Some things are better left unseen and unheard, particularly when it comes to fathers. I don’t want to wade through rants about Texas weather and music major trivia and suddenly come across an essay on, say, The Penis. Too much information.
I did mention to her, though, that Site Meter gives me a nice little graphic about time zones of my readers. I’m a sucker for maps, as always, so I check this one all the time. It looks like this: 
So my readership is primarily PST, then, which is no surprise, although there’s a fair amount from the eastern seaboard and beyond (I can see you, Linea!). It’s the one on the far right that interests me, though. Is someone reading this blog in China, or Russia? Or Indonesia? Nah. Probably an Aussie. Still. It’s fun to think about.
But back to Beth. This is what she wrote in her journal once.
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i wish i had some way to predict when i'd get so sad.. |
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Comments: share your thoughts. |
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[25 Oct 2003|02:22am] |
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in addition. i have a painful hangnail. |
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Comments: share your thoughts. |
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She writes better than I do, although she’s always been inconsistent and more than a little sloppy with punctuation. I have this neat little fantasy of the future, actually, when she calls me at the last minute to babysit my grandchild, having a singing gig in Seattle and needing Dad’s help. Of course, I say, and she drops this red-headed offspring at my door for the evening. I entertain the kid with multiple episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD, and on their way home Beth asks him/her how the evening went.
“Grandpa taught me about the appropriate use of a semicolon,” will be the answer, and I will have won.
I could link to her blog, I suppose, but she tends to use bad language from time to time and we wouldn’t want to shock Grandma or Aunt Jeanne (or Clarence, for that matter) so I think we’ll pass for now.
She occasionally quotes from my blogs (yes, I have another one. It was just a…thing. It means nothing to me), so I feel free to quote from her. She’s very quotable. This one cracked me up:
I have a large amount of vocal shit i want to talk about.
but no one really cares.
and i'm gonna wait until
this font ASS thing
fixes itself.
And then there was her Thanksgiving commentary on Texas and her relatives:
I spent an awkward day of people trying to explain to me the life story of every single player on the Dallas Cowboys. I learned that if you shoot a poor defenseless animal for sport, you get a plaque if it’s worth a certain number of points. I learned that the whole family owns enough animals to keep a zoo, and they’re constantly trading them about.
I could go on and on. Really, she writes a very entertaining journal. She punctuates it with beat poetry and philosophy and just silly stuff that makes me smile, like this:
Also. Mustaches, never acceptable. ever.
ALso. I MISS GREGORY HINES
I am such a dad.
But I’ll spare you any more of this. And I’ll probably ease up on the blogging myself, as I said. I wonder how healthy it is, sitting here, spilling and contemplating my navel online when I should be doing more productive things.
But I collapsed last night, and I think maybe I will say something just once.
It was a normal day, some hectic stuff and some usual stuff. And then, toward the end of the day, I discovered that I really wanted to talk to my dad. And I somehow didn’t understand why I couldn’t.
This was bound to happen, as predictable as the sound of rain on my roof this morning. What I know about the nature of grief I could fit in my wallet, but I’ve been wandering around the mechanics of death for two months and suddenly last night I’m Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride,” confronting the six-fingered man, forcing him to promise me anything I want.
“I want my father back, you son of a bitch.”
So I collapsed and today I pick up the pieces, put it all back together and understand, finally, what it is. What’s been bothering me, what’s been on my mind, what’s insinuated itself into my life and nagged me now for nine weeks, defying logic and repudiating my brain, which is a very good brain by the way, thank God, even if I have destroyed a fair number of cells in my day.
I want my father back.
And I can’t.
So I will cherish my family now, my friends and my work. I will not blog so much. I will walk more. I will go to more AA meetings. I will talk about my feelings the way a good boy is supposed to.
I will not drink cheap wine and cry at my computer. I will remember that there is goodness all around me, waving its arms to get my attention. I will not say, “I’m 45 years old” as much, because Dad would always sigh.
“I know how old you are, son.”
And I will read my daughter, from time to time, and admire her and love her and try to take better care of myself so she can postpone this particular life struggle for as long as possible.
This is what I read.
I had a dream about my grandpa last night.
I dreamt I was coming out of a department store, and my grandfather was there. In that weird in-between between the inside and outside of the store, he was in the blue sweatpants that I know he was buried in.
I walked past, and then turned around and knew that I needed to tell him goodbye.
I gave him a hug, and told him I loved him, and he asked if it was "really me". I said "of course it's me" and he smiled, and I hugged him again, and walked out, looking back only once.
It seemed really nice, made me feel good, although it makes me cry now.
Merry Christmas, by the way.
9:02:55 AM 
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