Post by Asila on Jun 16, 2011 2:28:17 GMT -5
So, as I've noted on the chat box, I got slammed pretty bad by parent angst. The frustrating thing is that it wasn't all bad. My reflection on my father was sad, but a good kind of sad, the type that makes life seem richer for having experienced it. Then, the very same day, my mother started trying to contact me again via phone and facebook. So while I'm honoring a dead parent in a healthy, moving way that had me feeling closer to him even though he was long gone, the parent that I had learned I had best stay the hell away from if I know what's good for my immortal soul has begun trying to contact me again.
Seriously, both of these things happened in one day. ONE DAY! Why?! It's times like these that have me feeling nothing in my life can ever happen in moderation. Revelations and confrontations always seem to hit me with all the grace of a speeding freight train, with no way to get around it.
Except...thinking about my father had felt so good, in a way that I hadn't expected. So I will move on to my tribute now, before I lose those newer, tentative feelings among the maelstrom of frustration that blows in when I'm dealing with my mother. I saw a movie that has become, without a doubt, one of my all time favorite movies this past Tuesday. That movie is Super 8, and it had all of the old-school, childhood-nostalgic charm of a movie like The Goonies combined with all of the terrifying action and brutal scenes of slaughter found in War of the Worlds. It melded humor and innocence flawlessly with science-fiction and horror. Which made this movie one hell of a treat, if only for that reason alone.
But for me, the plight of two of the kids the movie followed really struck a chord. It was Joe and Alice, and their fathers, who really spoke to me. Theirs was a small-town drama. Joe's father was the town's deputy, and Alice's father was the town drunk, and primary trouble-maker. As a result, the kids were forbidden to speak to each other by their father's but of course, being kids that have a sturdy back-bone, they ignore their parents on that count. This scenario made for intriguing interactions between these two children and their two fathers (I especially loved the moving scene that occurred when the two feuding fathers joined forced to find their kids) but watching this, I realized that this small town drama paralleled my own small town drama, and I knew my place in the story.
I am Alice, and my father was the town drunk/rogue. The deputy to my father's rogue was the up-standing citizen of the small town I lived in for three years before I moved to Whitewater. The up-standing citizen, with the house and fenced-in backyard to my father's basement room in his parent's house and beater cars, who took his kids out the minute my father crashed into the end of his parked semi and left this world so that he could point out why it was stupid to drive drunk.
My grandparents REALLY don't like him. In fact, a lot of the people in Afton don't. Because the difference between the deputy and drunk in Super 8's story and the 'up-standing citizen' and drunk in my story is that my father was a charming rogue and well-liked by just about everybody while the jack-ass who ridiculed his death before his body had even begun to cool was disliked. Especially after the stunt he pulled. Of course, I didn't realize how negatively people responded to the guy until the day his oldest son came into the local mini-mart where I was working as a cashier and began to talk to me about his father, who according to him was a pretty great guy who caught a lot of heat he didn't deserve when the 'town drunk' crashed into his semi. The movie-perfect thing about THAT scenario was that the oldest son of the man who'd used my dying father as a lesson to his sons didn't know that he was talking to the 'town drunk's" oldest daughter.
Oh, that was an uncomfortable moment for me. I have compassion enough to realize that the guy was just trying to stand by his dad, but there was no way I was going to let the guy slam my father without claiming him as my own. But even when I said "I have to tell you that this is an awkward conversation for me, because the man who crashed into your dad's semi happened to be my father" the dude didn't back off. He just kept trying to justify the actions of his own parent!
I should take this opportunity to point out that I'm not upset over this. I was initially horrified to find myself in that kind of situation, but now it's become an interesting story to tell. Show-downs like that? It's the kind of thing you don't expect to see outside of a movie. A movie like Super 8, with a scenario that mirrored the very one I lived, but with a far sunnier outcome. Partly because both fathers in Super 8 were still alive, making the circumstances less cruel, and partly because they were both good people who you really begin to appreciate by the end of the movie. It helped me look at the whole mess through a more cheerful lense. It made me glad that I spent the previous three years of my life recovering in my father's hometown from the damage dealt by mother. I chose my father's old room for myself, drove by the semi parked at the end of the bridge which had killed him, not even a quarter mile away from where he had lived then and I live now, whenever I went anywhere. It made me glad to live among his family and friends, who told me what a great guy and good friend my father had been, or how much I resembled him and how I had his eyes. I became glad that I'd been followed by these ghosts of my father all along, because I had begun to know him in a way that had never been possible before. And I am so grateful for that, because knowing that I missed my chance to get to know him has been such a heavy burden for me to bear. I'm glad to realize that it wasn't too late after all, and that we still share a connection even though there hadn't been adequate time or opportunity for us to forge one while we both lived.
My sister shared a memory with me regarding the old, abandoned factory we used to go and play in all the time, before it was boarded up. I couldn't remember how we discovered it, but she does. Our father brought us to the factory one day, and according to her went upstairs to scout it out and see how safe it was. He told us to wait on the first floor, but we were curious and followed. Until, out of nowhere, he suddenly shouted "Coon!" and, barreling back down the stairs, picked both my sister and me up in each of his arms and raced out of the building with a very angry mother raccoon on his heels. -grins- How I wish I could remember that! I feel like the difference between my sister and I is that for me, my father's father, my grandpa, had, for the most part, always played the role of father for me. So I have more memories like that of my grandpa, while my sister fixated more on our actual father.
It is amazing, though, how much my father and I resemble each other. My mother really got sick of hearing from people how much not only I, but even my sister as well, resembled him. I'll have to update this thread with our pictures so that my tribute is complete.
I really miss him, still. But I feel better about it, now. I'm not very religious, but I do feel that people are connected, somehow, and that we remain on some level after we die. As long as we are remembered, as long as we have physical ties left on this earth, none of us will ever be gone forever once our number is up. My father and I? We'll meet again. I sense this on an instinctual level. It's a thought that will comfort me as long as I keep my very fact-oriented portion of my mind from undermining what I feel to be true.
Seriously, both of these things happened in one day. ONE DAY! Why?! It's times like these that have me feeling nothing in my life can ever happen in moderation. Revelations and confrontations always seem to hit me with all the grace of a speeding freight train, with no way to get around it.
Except...thinking about my father had felt so good, in a way that I hadn't expected. So I will move on to my tribute now, before I lose those newer, tentative feelings among the maelstrom of frustration that blows in when I'm dealing with my mother. I saw a movie that has become, without a doubt, one of my all time favorite movies this past Tuesday. That movie is Super 8, and it had all of the old-school, childhood-nostalgic charm of a movie like The Goonies combined with all of the terrifying action and brutal scenes of slaughter found in War of the Worlds. It melded humor and innocence flawlessly with science-fiction and horror. Which made this movie one hell of a treat, if only for that reason alone.
But for me, the plight of two of the kids the movie followed really struck a chord. It was Joe and Alice, and their fathers, who really spoke to me. Theirs was a small-town drama. Joe's father was the town's deputy, and Alice's father was the town drunk, and primary trouble-maker. As a result, the kids were forbidden to speak to each other by their father's but of course, being kids that have a sturdy back-bone, they ignore their parents on that count. This scenario made for intriguing interactions between these two children and their two fathers (I especially loved the moving scene that occurred when the two feuding fathers joined forced to find their kids) but watching this, I realized that this small town drama paralleled my own small town drama, and I knew my place in the story.
I am Alice, and my father was the town drunk/rogue. The deputy to my father's rogue was the up-standing citizen of the small town I lived in for three years before I moved to Whitewater. The up-standing citizen, with the house and fenced-in backyard to my father's basement room in his parent's house and beater cars, who took his kids out the minute my father crashed into the end of his parked semi and left this world so that he could point out why it was stupid to drive drunk.
My grandparents REALLY don't like him. In fact, a lot of the people in Afton don't. Because the difference between the deputy and drunk in Super 8's story and the 'up-standing citizen' and drunk in my story is that my father was a charming rogue and well-liked by just about everybody while the jack-ass who ridiculed his death before his body had even begun to cool was disliked. Especially after the stunt he pulled. Of course, I didn't realize how negatively people responded to the guy until the day his oldest son came into the local mini-mart where I was working as a cashier and began to talk to me about his father, who according to him was a pretty great guy who caught a lot of heat he didn't deserve when the 'town drunk' crashed into his semi. The movie-perfect thing about THAT scenario was that the oldest son of the man who'd used my dying father as a lesson to his sons didn't know that he was talking to the 'town drunk's" oldest daughter.
Oh, that was an uncomfortable moment for me. I have compassion enough to realize that the guy was just trying to stand by his dad, but there was no way I was going to let the guy slam my father without claiming him as my own. But even when I said "I have to tell you that this is an awkward conversation for me, because the man who crashed into your dad's semi happened to be my father" the dude didn't back off. He just kept trying to justify the actions of his own parent!
I should take this opportunity to point out that I'm not upset over this. I was initially horrified to find myself in that kind of situation, but now it's become an interesting story to tell. Show-downs like that? It's the kind of thing you don't expect to see outside of a movie. A movie like Super 8, with a scenario that mirrored the very one I lived, but with a far sunnier outcome. Partly because both fathers in Super 8 were still alive, making the circumstances less cruel, and partly because they were both good people who you really begin to appreciate by the end of the movie. It helped me look at the whole mess through a more cheerful lense. It made me glad that I spent the previous three years of my life recovering in my father's hometown from the damage dealt by mother. I chose my father's old room for myself, drove by the semi parked at the end of the bridge which had killed him, not even a quarter mile away from where he had lived then and I live now, whenever I went anywhere. It made me glad to live among his family and friends, who told me what a great guy and good friend my father had been, or how much I resembled him and how I had his eyes. I became glad that I'd been followed by these ghosts of my father all along, because I had begun to know him in a way that had never been possible before. And I am so grateful for that, because knowing that I missed my chance to get to know him has been such a heavy burden for me to bear. I'm glad to realize that it wasn't too late after all, and that we still share a connection even though there hadn't been adequate time or opportunity for us to forge one while we both lived.
My sister shared a memory with me regarding the old, abandoned factory we used to go and play in all the time, before it was boarded up. I couldn't remember how we discovered it, but she does. Our father brought us to the factory one day, and according to her went upstairs to scout it out and see how safe it was. He told us to wait on the first floor, but we were curious and followed. Until, out of nowhere, he suddenly shouted "Coon!" and, barreling back down the stairs, picked both my sister and me up in each of his arms and raced out of the building with a very angry mother raccoon on his heels. -grins- How I wish I could remember that! I feel like the difference between my sister and I is that for me, my father's father, my grandpa, had, for the most part, always played the role of father for me. So I have more memories like that of my grandpa, while my sister fixated more on our actual father.
It is amazing, though, how much my father and I resemble each other. My mother really got sick of hearing from people how much not only I, but even my sister as well, resembled him. I'll have to update this thread with our pictures so that my tribute is complete.
I really miss him, still. But I feel better about it, now. I'm not very religious, but I do feel that people are connected, somehow, and that we remain on some level after we die. As long as we are remembered, as long as we have physical ties left on this earth, none of us will ever be gone forever once our number is up. My father and I? We'll meet again. I sense this on an instinctual level. It's a thought that will comfort me as long as I keep my very fact-oriented portion of my mind from undermining what I feel to be true.