Essay

K here it is very rough draft and all feedback is welcome. This started out as two and became one with some copy paste action so there may be some repetition sorry. I will do my best over the next week I don't know how successful I will be with a wedding and a time change thrown in thanks guys and see you in Oct

Family

Mom, dad, big brother, little sister, aunts, and uncles this used to be a typical family setup. Now we have the two moms and two dads setup or maybe a live in “uncle” depending on how your family deals with that situation. My particular situation was the one that comes in between when the parents marry, don’t make it, and suddenly you have two families or in my case something closer to 1 1/4. I have three brothers: Rich who is about 15 years older than me, Kelly who is probably17, or so, years older than me, and Kirk who is 22 years older than me. Rich was the only one who lived at home when I was starting school or since I can remember.

I have a tape that my brother Rich made when I was three and I’m talking about all the people in my family and I say “ Mom and Ritchie and Kirk and Kelly and Robin and …Kirk” Robin is my dad. That kind of demonstrates where he fit in. I guess that hearing my brother and my mom talk about him as Robin just sunk in. I got over it, but that just kind of epitomizes to me how non existent my relationship with him was at that time. There is another point I must make here, while I have never thought of my brothers as half siblings, in reality that is what they are. Not one of them shares a father with me. I did have a full brother but he died of SIDS so on one side of my family tree I am the only living child.

My parents tended to not get a long for more than brief periods of time. I guess it makes sense; they are as different as two people can really be. They say opposites attract, but in this case they tend to combust shortly after. My mom can pinch a penny till Lincoln cries, she raised me on her own and I never was denied anything that I needed and most of what I wanted. Then there’s my dad, he has a very interesting job, one that comes with no benefits, no stability, and often no income. He is a scrapper- one who buys, cleans, and sells scrap metal. It is heavy, hard, dirty work with long hours and I don’t know many people who could do it especially for as long as he has.

When the two of my parents get together, boy howdy, there is just no telling how that will go. My mom is an alcoholic, I don’t say this in a mean way, she just is she knows this and has been sober for years, that is not the issue. To me when she was drinking she was very nice, but to my dad things tended not to go that well. For example, she hit him with a two-by-four once and broke his glasses. None of what is said is meant to give the wrong impression about either of them; they are both very wonderful loving people who, in the wrong circumstances, get a little out of hand. The point is that, while drinking certainly didn’t help the issue, she tends to have volatile feelings towards him after a time.

My dad in his line of work needs certain things out of his vehicles. It has to be a truck it has to be big and it has to run at least when he buys it… wait no scratch the last one it could be dead and he would still buy it. So, he buys these trucks and they are not meant to be pretty and it isn’t like he has the income for a pretty truck anyway so they are ugly and loud. Usually a diesel or smells like it should be, covered in more oil than paint and the inside, after a matter of days if not hours looks just as bad. They always break down which we have come to count on. There were times in my life when we would get a call or whatever and know that dad was coming. My dad runs on his own time and if it weren’t for bad luck he would have none at all. We all know this but it can get to a body after a while. I think that is the main issue my mother has with him. I think it’s the main issue he has with himself. As I mentioned before he runs on his own time, we call it Sexton Time. This usually allows for a blown gasket, a blown tire, a complete mechanical breakdown, the load not getting turned in on time, or him hurting himself. So Sexton Time could delay the arrival from a few hours to a month because in the time that one event cleared up the next would hit causing, if you will, Sexton Time squared. I remember being so sad once when he didn’t show that I just cried in a huddled mass on my bed and asked myself why my daddy didn’t want me. Isn’t that a pathetic mental image? That wasn’t the issue; it never was I just needed a moment to be selfish.

The greatest part though, about his utterly horrific trucks, was that when he did make it, even if he was late, you knew it. I would hear him clear from the stop sign at the end of our street and go running outside. He would pull in the driveway and I would run over to him and he would kiss me on the top of the head and carry me back in the house.
He still kisses me on top of the head, it sounds cute, doesn’t it? A kiss on the head, but it really is another degree of our separation. We don’t really hug; I don’t kiss his head or even his cheek that’s just our thing. Now that I’m taller when he is getting ready to leave he says “head “and I tip my head forward so he can kiss it. I actually really like it, I’m not a real touchy person and neither is he so it’s a really intimate thing for us because it is so individual.

When he did finally make it, it was often to take me and mom with him on a trip to the coast. The only benefit to dad’s chosen profession was that it often required trips to Oregon. We took trips to the coast throughout my childhood always in some big beat up old truck. Sometimes it would break down along the way, but dad could always fix it, so long as no one wanted to fix it after him. He was the jerry-rigging king and could make anything work for a while, but no one else ever had a chance after that point, just ask my first car.

Taking the scenic route to Oregon was one of the best family trips I remember. My mom and my dad were getting along (for the moment) and it was awesome. We stopped at almost all the waterfalls along the way. I have pictures of me way on the far side of a pond at the base of a waterfall. Even though they were “business” trips, this one in particular I remember being very casual, I think it was in the summer so there wasn’t a rush to get back to school. We were the closest thing to a family that we had ever come. There were other trips and other times spent together, holidays and the like, but that trip was just so damn happy and American.
Once we got to whatever town was at the end of the day, or the end of the road, and after the negotiations for scraps had been made, we found a hotel room. This room, for me, was what every childhood fantasy was about, basically no rules. I got to jump on the bed, take a shower with little tiny bars of soap and shampoo bottles that I could take with me. Then I got to watch TV until the pizza got there and then we all ate pizza in bed and watched a lame movie, best tradition ever by the way.

I love my dad. I have no real issues with him. At this point in this essay that might sound odd. I don’t blame him for his lifestyle and I don’t blame him for not being able to change it. I honestly don’t think that he has a choice anymore. I think at this point in his life there is no alternative though I wish there were. He is physically worn down at this point, all those years of heaving iron and throwing ballast and being one of the more clumsily blessed he is not holding up well, but even if he wanted to I don’t think he could get into the 9to 5 grind. At the present he is living with his mother and two dogs in her house in Inkom ID. I think if he had it in him to become a regular commuting, trading time for money member of society he would have done it to not live with his mother anymore. He loves her they just have a very poor system of communication that leads to yelling, not angry yelling really, she is going deaf and taking him with her.

We (me and my husband) lived in their basement for a few months while we were finding a place. I loved it; I loved getting to see him, to know without a doubt that he would show up because that is where he slept. I think that is it, I think I just figured out the real reason I liked it there, I knew he would make it. After all what other selling points did it have, we lived in a musky basement that we basically had to rake out to live in; their dogs hate me and bark constantly the floor creaked so we always heard them, and the entire thing smelled like dog pee because the little brown one has diabetes and can’t help but pee on the floor. But… my dad was there, he was there and he would be home and if we set up a plan it would work out. We all walked down to the bar and played pool and pinball about once a week, we had dinner together sometimes, I would make him come down and play computer games with me, I had a dad.

After all the things that have happened and all the trips and all the disappointment I still have a dad, I always have, and always will. It may be my temperament or the fact that he kind of strikes you as the abused stray dog whimpering in a rain storm type, but I can’t be mad at him. The fact that I had to move into my Grandmas basement to get a real functioning relationship with him doesn’t dampen it at all because that’s just how it is. My husband gets so upset at all of this and can’t figure why I am OK with this just the way it is, I don’t think dad can really figure it out either but he’s grateful. We needed alcohol assistance to get to the bottom of that one but we did talk about it and whether or not it makes sense it is what it is.