Cancer

There’s no pretending you didn’t hear the word. It makes itself known. It doesn’t wait for you to introduce it to friends and family. It takes the lead. It lures dreams of grandchildren to the edge of the plank, and pushes them off with no remorse. It shatters spirits and terrorizes stability. It crouches like a tiger, waiting for the right moment to pounce. It’s the six-letter word you never want to hear. Last week, I watched the syllables drip out of my father’s mouth. They did not evaporate into thin air. They lingered like the smell of burnt popcorn. And I am left to brush elbows with a six-letter.

Epidemic

Many have considered sexual abuse an epidemic. Do you agree? What are the lasting affects of sexual abuse? How does it alter a person’s boundaries or their ability to trust or love someone?

Loss of Innocence

They question themselves.
As if ten year-olds can be sexy.
They blame their mothers.
She should have protected them.
They equate sex with love.
Because daddy loved them.
They bounce between boundaries.
He had none.
They become intimate with repression.
To make life seem a little more fair.
They become mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, aunts, and uncles.
And silence breeds more of them.
And more of him.

Unlovable

You must be taught to be unlovable
And we have mastered the lesson.
Our fathers, former students, have become the teachers,
Through unintended lesson plans with the “I’s” of illigitimacy and insecurity dotted.

We are very intimate with childish games.
They jump in and out of our lives like a game of Double Dutch
And we are unable to dodge the sting of Their absence.
Our birthdays share the relevance of Wednesdays.
We ingest our sadness like cake and ice cream
And allow it to eat us from the inside out.
We bring our insecurity blanket for show-and-tell that keeps us warm,
Far into adulthood
and becomes a hand-me-down for our children.
Shame is our second-skin.
We wear it to graduations, football games, and dances.

We must be taught to be unlovable
and we have mastered the lesson
That 2+1 does not always equal 3 when a child is born.
That sometimes we grow up to feel like 1/2 a man
And a fraction of a woman.
We multiply,
Carry the remainder into every relationship
Without factoring our division into the equation.
We then become the teachers
Because we have mastered the lesson so well.

Watching Your Parents Argue

I was alone but sounds and words swirled inside of my room, as if they were aromas from our neighbor’s cooking. Iraq and Iran had converged between the lavender of my walls. I became accustomed to bullets disguised as voices shooting through the key hole and underneath my door.

Being seven in a warring household, was like being in the middle of a terrible storm. I knew it would end, I just didn’t know when to expect the thunder and lightning, or how much damage would be left behind. There was no place to hide where the collision of insults and screams could not find me. My volume button on my television was no match for them. Pillows on my ears were as useless as earmuffs at a heavy metal concert. All you could do was wait….until you heard a door slam and suddenly there was peace amid the friction that hung heavy in the dark corners of the hallways, and festered in the dust on the window sills.

Staying For the Kids

Wake up. Go to Work. Come Home. Repeat
The kids didn’t fit in his schedule.
Wake up. Go to Work. Come Home. Repeat
You left. You went back. Repeat.
You stayed.
How much of it was because a broken home would make you feel
broken?

Pride

Can you think back to a moment when you were the most proud of your father?

“I think it was more the combination of stories and what I observed. When I would look at the picture of he and I standing at the University of Maryland where he finished when I was three years-old and then think about the fact that at that same time when he was finishing school, he was working three jobs. He was working at the National Institutes of Health, he was working at the Giant, and he was the manager of the apartment complex. So if somebody had a leaky faucet or he had to throw coal in the furnace. That was his job at 2 am. That was the hard work ethic and the attitude of I am going to do what it takes.”

What are you most proud of?

Cancer

There’s no pretending you didn’t hear the word. It makes itself known. It doesn’t wait for you to introduce it to friends and family. It takes the lead. It lures dreams of grandchildren to the edge of the plank, and pushes them off with no remorse. It shatters spirits and terrorizes stability. It crouches like a tiger, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Last week, I watched the syllables drip out of my father’s mouth. They did not evaporate into thin air. They lingered like the smell of burnt popcorn. And I am left to brush elbows with a six-letter word, an unwelcome mistress in my father’s life.

Unconditional Love

My childhood has been steeped in my mother’s adages. In the fourth grade, I sat with my mother in our huge grey plymouth. On our way to the grocery store, she looked at me and said, “Never think you can change a man. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

When I was a freshmen in high school, my cousin had came over for a visit. We had just finished a conversation about dating and marriage and she was on her way home. My father walked her to the door and I followed directly behind him. My cousin walked out first, stepping down onto our front porch. My dad, using his hand to open the screen door, stopped with one foot on the porch and turned around. He looked at me, his brow wrinkled and furled, his eyes almost tearing into me, “Don’t you ever bring somebody in this house that doesn’t look like you! Do you hear me?” To this day, I can still remember the look in my father’s eyes and the tone of his voice.

Five years ago, I sat next to my father on the sofa. He was working his daily crossword, I was flipping through channels. Staring at the television, I asked him, “Dad, what would you say if I brought a man home from another race?” My dad turned and looked at me. His eyes were soft and there was no evidence of the permanent wrinkle between his eyes.

“All I care about is that you are happy. If you brought that man home, I would know that he was kind and generous and that he treated you like a million dollars. Just make sure that the two of you are compatible and that he makes you happy. That’s all I care about.”

And with that, he turned back around and continued his crossword puzzle, as if the conversation had never existed. I sat there, smiling, and with my own personal lesson about a father’s unconditional love. That old man learned a new trick, even if it took him close to sixty years to do it.

Mass

I spent the night with my parents, something I haven’t done in years, despite living in the same city. I showed up, unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon. My mom, peaking through the picture window, had the front door open before I even cut my car off.

After some trouble swallowing even the softest of foods, she called me last week to tell me about the “abnormal mass” in his throat.

I walked in to see an older version of my dad. In just a few weeks, his body had shrunk to a 40 year-old version of his former self…twenty-five pounds lighter. His voice and sense of humor…exactly the same.

In between laughs, scrabble, dinner, and breakfast, we discussed my parents’ funeral wishes, in case that time ever creeps up on me. My laugh, my smile…did not match the sadness and agony I experienced during a conversation characterized by hymns, caskets, burial plots, ashes, and obituaries.

I returned home to a text from my dad, an incredible feat for a sixty-five year-old man:

“Thanks for your help, both yesterday and today. I love you. Let’s do it again some other time.”