This is my mom:
Since my birthday was a few day ago, I've been thinking about her a lot. She's pretty awesome. Whenever I say something totally off the wall, it's because of the eclectic life she exposed me to. Whenever my voice goes up two octaves and I'm frustrated, yeah, it's because of her too (sorry friends, 28 years and I'm still working on it). I could write forever about my mom and our relationship (the ups and downs). But really, that's not what this post is about. Yes, my mother raised me and infused the belief of strength and determination in me, but she deserves a post all her own. And this one is not for her.
Tonight, this one is about someone I don't talk about often: my father and one of my initial sources of my internal slideshow.
This was my father:
Check out those tattoos friends. Yes, my name and my mother's. Go figure. I had a father who had my name tattooed on him. And a rose beneath my name. Pretty sweet, if I do say so myself. I can die saying that my name was tattooed on someone and check that off of my list of things to do in my life. Now before you go on, make sure to press play down at the bottom. Did you do it? Good. Because nothing goes better when telling a story about this man than a slow Jackson Browne tune.
While I've been thinking about my mother on my birthday, I recently started thinking about my father on my morning drives down the 105. At 28, I've experienced a lot of losses, this man is the first of more to come in my story and once you hear the story, you may think he preoccupies my slideshow.
Truthfully, he's a fragmented piece, but he's crucial to knowing me.
My good friends know, but don't say much about it anymore, that I drive by the cemetery my father is buried in at least once a day. I, to tell you the truth, don't notice that I'm driving by it anymore, except on occasion. And it's on those occasions that I kiss my palm and hold it to the car ceiling. It's a strange thing because I only do it alone and I only do it during the day. And I only do it because it's one of the few ways I remind myself that I came from not just my mother, but from someone else I hardly knew.
And other times, I force myself to go through photos.
Considering I just had my birthday, I figured this was appropriate. I don't have words really to tell you what this photo means to me. I can tell that here, my father did want to be good. He wanted a good life. This photo embodies love. Never once in the last 21 years have I doubted that my father loved me, I know that he loved me the best way he knew how. But his love for me, never necessarily translated into a love for himself.
My father couldn't hold on long enough to give my mother and I a life that was worth leading. By 1985, my mother and I were living with my grandparents and my father, well, he sold everything he had until he was living out of his car, and then when the money was gone eventually sold everything else until he was living on the streets. In so many ways, my father became the poster child of what happened to those in th 70's who experimented with drugs and then transitioned poorly into the drugs of the 80's and would eventually never make it to see 1990.
In the summer of 1989, I was six. That's me and my father doing what we did best that summer: playing at the park and having lunch. I don't remember this photo (nor do I remember that blue bathing suit). I vaguely remember the trips to the park (except for the one where I punched a little boy in the face because I didn't like what he said to me and in one of those rare memories I hold onto, I remember my father seeming so proud).
And, if I can be honest, there are little memories I retain of my father. This photo is one in a series taken in August a few weeks before he overdosed on heroin in the bathroom of a gas station.
I can say this statement casually because it's a simple fact. It hurts and offends other people more than me because I've had 21 years to say to myself, matter of fact like, that this is what happened.
For better or worse, this was my father. From what I'm told, he was charming, he was funny, he was likable, and ultimately he was an all around nice guy. I like to think that, if anything, I got a little of his likable personality. Sometimes I have to remember that if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here (yes, my mother is the key player in all of this, but I got to give a little credit here). It's a simple cliched statement. But, really, I don't know how else to phrase it.
Ultimately, I have managed to take every weakness of my father's and turn it into a strength of my own. Who knew? Maybe he did, I can't really say. I do know one thing for sure about my father and it's something I cherish more than anything and something I consider one of his few strengths: he loved my mother. He never stopped loving her even when he was at his lowest and I truly believe, in all his disillusionment, he really thought he could get her back at some point.
So, you've read this, and you're thinking, "Well, thanks Beck, for that oh-so uplifting story." Yeah, I know, it's a downer, but there's a point, right? Sure, there is!
Part of what makes me who I am is this story. It no longer seems real and maybe that frightens some people. But, as an adult, the uselessness of holding on to emotions that no longer hold bearing on my decisions today seems so important to me being able to exist in the world.
My father was not a good man. Nor, was he a bad man. Sometimes I think he simply was. But, in that simple act of being, he indirectly taught me that some things are entirely possible despite their appearance at being impossible.
For all my father's failures, I counter each with a success.
For all this, and honestly not much more, I am grateful for the fact that he made a brief appearance in my slideshow.
