Getting back to my [R] o o t s

Apr 25, 2008 21:13

I mow the lawn, I have a Mike's hard lemonade lime.

I think about my father.

Somehow I'm left with an odd craving for a cold bottle of Corona, despite the fact that I hate beer. I'm half hick, what can I say?



Tight jeans, black hiking boots, a baseball tee. All I need is the hat, either a baseball cap or a cowboy hat, to complete the look. Lounging against the metal frame of the sliding glass doors, bottle in hand, looking out over the freshly-mown lawn as the dusk sets in. Finished mowing just before it grows too dark to see what I'm doing, and I feel like something's just... right.

Yet there's an unsettling feeling that lingers, coats the back of my throat with a sour taste that isn't just from the lime in my drink. How much am I really like my father? Obviously I'm not a man, though I often jokingly call myself the "man of the house". I'm the one who does the "manly" chores, like mowing the lawn, working on my car, fixing my own bike. Yeah, these are things any capable woman should be able to do as well, but I find it more fun to think about it this way.

I wouldn't mind if I'd been born a man, though I enjoy being just the way I am most of the time.

But that's not the issue here and now. As I stand here in the fading sunlight, feeling proud of a job well done on the lawn, the thought flits through my mind. I'm not the same as he is, but in so many ways I can be similar. How easy would it be to become the same?

It's reassuring to remind myself that I'm more adult than he was at my age. He was a father, an abusive husband, and an alcoholic, by the time he was my age.

Being a father and a husband may sound like being an adult, but he wasn't a particularly good one. I'm not really bitter about him not being around, not anymore. Forgive and forget, and move on, except that I don't make the effort either. It's a two-way street.

I've grown up without him, and I don't really see a point in trying to forge a bond where there has never been much of one, but sometimes I can't help but want to bond over the things we do have in common, the good things. A love of country music.

He used to take me fishing, I want to join him again. String the worms on the hook, stand up and step back a half-step. A careful cast, done just the way he taught me to. It would take practice to remember it all again, it's been too long since I've been fishing... But it would be fun.

Take his truck (he has a car now, doesn't he?) up to the mountains (it's not far in Colorado) and find a good place (I'm sure he knows somewhere) to fish. Play Garth Brooks on the way, sing along, laugh together. Why can't I have this? Why can't I have these memories with him?

I want to make them now, but it makes me incredibly sad that I don't have them already, that we never did that over the years.

Will we ever find that bond again?

Can I become someone who isn't everything he used to be? I've already grown out of so much that I could see of him in myself, but there's all the things that remain, and all the things that remain to be seen.

All of this tumbles trough my head as I take slow sips of my chilled drink. Close the door, latch it, turn off the porch light and wish I knew who I wanted to be.

Someday I'll figure it out.

who i am, fighting for my dreams, look a new day has begun, homesick for humanity, storytime, once upon a time in my life, attention whore time, miss y'all hardcore

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