Fathers

 

Time and Space

When I was a child, my father’s arm was long as a bridge. Now it can’t span the distance between the chair and the medical alert button.

 

A Dose of Your Own Medicine

Wellbutrin, supplemented by Abilify, replaced Prozac. Lithium came next. My father said all I needed was a good kick in the pants.

Years later, my father is on so many pills, he keeps them in a miniature tool chest and has to be prodded to take them on time.

 

Lesson

“Now that I’m old,” my father told me, “I forget things. Like why I ever got married.”

“Me,” I reminded him.

 

Asleep

People think I killed my octogenarian dad on Father’s Day, but that’s not true. It was the day after. In my dreams.

 

Moderation

As a man in his thirties, all my father could think about was pleasure. All he can focus on now that he’s 80 is pain. Somewhere there must have been an in-between.

 

Conjugal Visit

My mother died one morning in the assisted living facility, wrapped in the sheets like a mummy. What I want to know is whether my father slept there that night.

 

Fairy Tale

We lived uneasily ever after. The evil stepmother had won the custody battle, but the dragon remained at large.

 

Cannibalism

I had to look up to see all of her, the woman who’d finally eaten my father. Her RN name tag was illegible.

 

Fun and Games

At 83, hypertensive, confined to a wheelchair, and half-blind from glaucoma, Dad still shouted at people and gave them the finger. He said he liked to test limits.

 

Joke

My father died last week at 83. He died alone. In a latex fright mask he bought at Wal-Mart for $7.95.

 

Promise

The night my father died, he was having trouble breathing, terrified. I held his hand and told him I’d return in the morning.

Here I am.

 

Sons

Sure I’ll protect you, I’m your dad, and sorry if I forgot you that time on the #11 bus, but I love you, guy, even when I’m on a bender, or how about think of it this way—I need a return on my investment, ha, ha ha, ha ha ha.

He’s my baby, words he hates to hear, so even if he breaks something expensive like a vase or gets arrested for shoplifting candy at the 7-Eleven, which was clearly a mistake, I’ll forgive him, though I wish he’d remember me on Mother’s Day.

As his grandmother, I don’t got much to say because I croaked in 2002, so I didn’t know my grandson, but if I’d been around, y’know, I’d’ve visited monthly and brought candy—though my son, his dad, he makes scenes—because I could up and leave in that case.

As his long-suffering aunt, uncle back on parole, and nondescript cousins, we don’t see him much—we live out of state; it’s a long drive—and anyway, when his folks came to see us, the kid broke that Chinese vase in the hall, and he never apologized.

Arf. I’m golden retriever, Ralph, always friend, rrruff, but mother walks me when he doing homework or getting high. When 15, aghhh, get kidney failure and never have new dog.

Who, me?—I’m his girlfriend, his first fuck, his ex, but I’ll never forget when we made it in the backseat of his Camaro, my feet against the window, and afterwards he said, staring at me with those blue anime eyes, “I love you.”

We were his teachers, suspecting that he was bright—at math or English or some subject we didn’t offer—but just didn’t care or was trying to piss us off, so he ended up at the principal’s office a lot and then at the local community college, where he dropped out after a semester.

Hi, I’m Dan, the sales team manager who hired him at Target, a part-time gig that turned into a full-time position, which he stayed at after I left, so it was weird running into him the other day because now he has my old job, him wearing a ratty tie and looking haunted, with that whiff of booze that I know too well.

Wife #1, that’s what he calls me when he’s had 1-2-3 too many, and I do love him, I do, but now that I’m pregnant, I worry about what kind of family we’ll have, though I know he can’t help it, given the stories he tells about his dad.

As his son, I don’t like him because he drinks, like, a lot, claims he loves me, whatever that means, then goes after Mom, who always forgives him, and all I can say is I’d never treat my family that way and don’t plan to have one. Why start another round of this?

 

Practice

At the accountancy firm where I work, Dale Packer was a CPA with nothing going on after work. Never even talked about trips. Then he invited me and Melinda to a place called Luther’s, where he was on jazz trumpet with a group called Quarter Time. Played a two-minute solo like some golden angel. Over a beer afterwards, I asked him how the hell he learned to do that.

“Practice, Brad. Two hours a day.” He fingered his embouchure, which looked like he could crush a peach pit between his lips. “You either give up or you get better, y’know?”

I’m in my mid-forties, no kids, no hobbies except maybe drinking. Play a little golf, and last year we went to Cancun. I could do that until I die, and then what?

I couldn’t get to sleep that night. Melinda told me to stop squirming. But you gotta change your life, wrote some poet she once quoted to me. If Dale could do what he did, how about me?

Next day, I picked up a used acoustic guitar on eBay, and soon I was strumming. I watched a couple of YouTube videos on fingering and learned three chords.

Melinda started clamping her hands over her ears. I began inventing excuses not to practice. After three weeks, I resold the guitar.

Next, I tried Spanish. I studied with a program that was like a video game, with a lot of green lights and bells. Eventually I knew words like mouth and walk, but the only full sentence I could say was “No podo hablar español,” which Melinda informed me was incorrect. She’s always been the smarter one in our marriage.

I thought and thought some more. Something all mine, something that no one else around here could do. Something that my wife couldn’t dismiss.

Then last Sunday on TikTok, I saw this Indian in a dhoti, seated on the ground. The video didn’t go anywhere for a moment, but just as I was going to swipe up, he rose straight in the air. He was humming like an engine, and when the cam focused on his eyes, they were closed in concentration.

I copied down his website and paid to download a book, Secrets of Ascension. In it, Guru Maharishi explains the concept behind levitation. “It’s all mental control. You must work for it, perhaps spend five years before you can ascend even an inch. But here is how you start. Adopt the lotus position and focus on something. Your hand. The breeze. Do it every day.”

I began on Monday, going outside at 6:00 to stare at the azalea bush at the edge of our yard. Sitting cross-legged made me fart, so I changed to hugging my legs. I was just getting into it again when the garbage collectors smash-banged down the block. Steady, I told myself. I got so rock-still that a sparrow landed on me.

By 6:30, I was getting dizzy because I hadn’t had any breakfast, but I stayed with that azalea, which by then looked good enough to eat. When Melinda came out to ask what the heck I was doing, I just hummed at her like Guru Maharishi. Then I farted.

“Really?” she said and stomped off.

I imagine all holy men have to put up with that.

I actually kept at it for an hour. It made me feel…focused, in a way I’ve never felt before. Not even when I watched five Lakers games in a row on ESPN.

Anyway, I did that every day last week, including Sunday, just sitting pretty and humming. I wanted results so badly, I could feel it in my whole body. Monday, I could feel myself rising ever so slightly.

I don’t think it was flatulence. For one second, I felt above the porch. It was a tiny lift, and I knew it would still be slow going, but as a line in the book read, “Even a thousand-mile drive starts with one foot out the door.” I’m paraphrasing.

Now I don’t skip a day, not even when it’s raining and I get soaked. Often I’m so focused that I miss going to work, and I had a batch of emails from the company that I purposely ignored. After a while, they stopped coming. Sometimes I don’t even bother to bathe because the body is sacred.

Melinda no longer bugs me. She knows I’m on a quest. Last time I saw her, she was headed somewhere with a suitcase.

“Brad, I’m leaving for a while. Look, are you really making any progress?”

I smiled at her, though she was blocking my view of the azalea bush. I closed my eyes, but somehow I could see everything. “Check back with me in a few years,” I told her, and felt positively elevated.