Ok, there is a guest speaker here --- oh shit, this journal doesn’t have a name does it? --- on The Box. I’m using the Box as a place to store this. My daughter has been doing the month of thanksgiving thing. Without going into a rant, which is a bit hard for me, her dumbass boyfriend had the nerve to post something about thinking “all these” month of thanksgiving things are stupid. I think she is the only one he knows doing it. She politely suggested perhaps gratitude would be a better attitude than scorn.
Anyhow I wasn’t really going to follow the directions in the intro (‘y’all might want to document this one) because I know the longer version and have the great good fortune of being close to my daughter, both geographically and otherwise, and hear this stuff in person. Heh, at breakfast the other morning I was teasing her about twelve stepping which she loudly proclaimed in the crowded restaurant ‘I am NOT in recovery”. Made my heart swell, reminded me of being in a crowded grocery store with her and her best friend as teens, her mom having recently said how proud she was that her daughter was fearless in her love for another girl. I told her I was proud of my gay daughter and she shouted “I am NOT gay”. Her friend, Anna, put her head on my shoulder when everyone had turned around to look and said “Thanks Dad.”
I accused her of twelve stepping because she seems to be making amends and doing an ongoing moral inventory. Which is the polite way of saying she’s been forgiving assholes in her life and family and affirming her love of the rest of us (some of whom are borderline assholes or sitting on the fence which, for an asshole is not as non-committal as it sounds, in fact, I submit, for an asshole to ride the fence is a strong commitment, yea, perhaps a lifestyle). I mean she hasn’t just been doing that since the start of November (I think some preacher affiliated with USC came up with the idea, of course this is 2013 where every month has some sort of thing going on with it). She’s been doing it for at least a year, even got baptized by my little sister (who might possibly be the least jesus-y preacher ever ordained in an orthodox church with the name Christ in the congregation).
I’m supposed to bad beta beagle sit over thanksgiving as she’s going home for the holidays. We try not talking much about Oregon as it leads to tears in the coffee and copious tears in the beer. Even so, I’ve only been gone for a year, she hasn’t been back in two. I might have an offer to do something else. I told my friend I’ll try to arrange it but that push comes to shove I was not going to ‘bag’ on my daughter.
I was thinking about that expression, I’m not sure it’s in common use anymore. I think it’s short for to leave holding the bag. Leave holding the bag is really not in common use any longer and I’m hard put to place it, I think of it as like telling your spouse you’ll help unload the groceries and then disappear, but I also think it might be the idiot left with the money while the others yell ‘Jiggers! It’s the Cops’. In either case it’s abandoning someone to the winds of fate when you have promised not to. What I plan to do is offer to pay for a dog sitter and if that’s not possible I’ll stay here to take care of her dogs.
Anyhow, below the four ghost lines is the post she put up on FB regarding me and the seahag. Again this is mostly for storage and not a clever ruse to show y’all that someone loves me. Oh, yeah. I was thinking about that too, think I might have discussed it my friend. I am from a time and a place and a culture and family where I have never really doubted I was loved, never doubted that I was smart enough, pretty enough, charming enough, tough enough to do whatever I set my mind too. That sentence seems so very obvious to me that I feel foolish to boorish even typing it out. In my half century stumbling around this orb as it spins around the sun I’ve come to find I am more the anomaly than the standard. It’s not praiseworthy, for one thing I didn’t do anything to earn this or disabuse myself of it and for another a great many people use the drive to be respected for qualities they are unsure to achieve great things. I am wholly lacking in any ambition and this is, in part, because I’ve never really found it necessary to prove anything. Especially my tales of adventure and misadventure. I’d just as soon the folks who think I’m full of shit continue to think I’m full of shit. It’s possible one day them and I will sit down to a lovely game of poker.
Ok, Spud;
Alright mom and dad, y'all might want to document this one... it's for you. I don't say it often enough, but I am really thankful for my parents. Two of the most wildly different individuals you have ever met, my parents' lives converged in the raising of me and my brother. All of their separate strengths and weakness creating me, flaws and all. My parents are probably the two most articulate folks I have ever met, in person and on paper. They may be writing in two different voices, two different styles, two different motives.. but man, you really understand what they are trying to tell you. My parents both love to be outside, music, poetry and literature, my parents both lean to the left. I'm grateful these are the things my childhood was built on. I'm grateful for the memories of my Dad reading me Gunga Din when I was eight washing dishes. For those of my mom sitting cross legged in front of our record player, when her hair was longer and we still had that giant console with the ripped speaker. I'm grateful that when I really needed them, they always showed up. My mom, who stood beside me, a 17 year old without much ground to stand on. My mom, unwavering was there through the whole mess and, even if it wasn't always easy, watched until she saw me safe on the other side. My dad, who taught me to be fiercely independent, who grew me in my creativity, who set me on adventures and assigned me books to read. So that I became the only 12 year old on my block who cried at the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the only kid who could quote Dalton Trumbo in my high school. My parents made me, all of my ironic parts, all of the delicate idiosyncrasies, my passion and my tenacity, they planted it all in my heart and said, "grow." Thanks Y'all.
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