Saturday morning

My special woman friend is okay. Her doctor said it was "a barnacle of old age". Thank You Jesus, thank you God. She doesn't want me to use her real name and I will not make one up--so she is my woman friend or special woman friend. And she truly is. Enough.

Enough already of my father knocking. He was not a vicious brute. He could be funny and charming. He seemed to rage only when his authority was questioned. A man of little or no imagination he couldn't understand my dreamy laying around. Hyper, he was always active, always with a project. Or his job or golf. All his children were his servants and God forbide if you handed him the wrong tool. You were told what a dumb shit you were if you handed him the wrong tool. And I, always scared, often handed him the wrong tool. Secretly, I still think of myself as a dumb shit. But he was a good provider. That was his and my mother's deal. He would earn the paycheck and she would tend the kids. That was it. None of this love malarky. Yet he loved her deeply and he loved his kids-who of course were all stupid-- leaving him to make all the (and their) decisions. The food was always abundant and tasty, the housing outstanding and he mostly paid for my college education, a place I did not want to go. I wanted to join the Navy, but he insisted, but insisted, I go.

They, the college years, were the most unhappy years of my life. When I graduated I almost handed him my degree and I almost said "Hear Dad, here's the degree you always wanted." But I didn't. I just joined the paratroopers as an enlisted man. Somewhere I knew I was not officer material. Too many "you're a dumb shit" had been called or something like that. And I, a determined virgin, had more than one broken romance. Dad gave up his freedom like that--Mom was pregnant with my older brother when they married--I would not be caught like that. Enough for today, I will write more later. Oh, the ball glove. Mom bought it as part of my plethora of Christmas gifts. It was not a Rawlings. I could not make a sweet pocket by using a gallon of Neets foot oil and pounding the mitt with a baseball. It didn't matter. My father, a star catcher and an allstar slugger never though of having a game of catch. But I could carry his golfbag and save him caddy money. Yes, from him I inherited my illness. Perhaps he too secretly thought of himself as a dumb shit. Some say we all do. Enough already. As my costruction friend Kenny used tosay,"No hitting in the face." He was raised in an orphanage.