Dear Dad (3 page)

The sun shined on this cocky countenance of the vast majority of Californian residents, but there was a shyness with my father that made him somewhat invisible. Sure, he had the cool cars, the Model-T Ford or the Model A Ford, one of those is considered a lemon but I forgot which, but the material really didn’t matter. When your somewhat poor, or just starting out, you don’t compete with the Materialists. You go for the sensitive type, the James Dean type, with the squinty, swollen eyes on the verge of tears look, or close to making a move on a tragic vixen look.

My dad and I are almost identical at this age, but his commitment to society was hip when my anti-establishment stance was chic. We wore the same weight at one time, but my weight was from starvation when his was from activity. A big difference in morality makes a big difference in who dies first. One of the most tragic concepts is dying before your parents. There were times when I hadn’t eaten for a couple days and I was so shaken with withdrawals I couldn’t make out a door knob from ten feet away. Have you seen the movie “The Butterfly effect”? Ashton Kutcher has a choice to make a seemingly positive decision or a negative one in all his encounters throughout his life. You get to see different periods in his life when he had made a good choice or a bad one. Very interesting stuff.

My dad and I last night were on the computer. He saves up cool Youtube videos for us to watch when I come over once a week for “Family Night”. He gets excited and says “You gotta see this one!” It was the video of a homeless man Ted Williams, who sings when this guy filming drives up to him to hand him a buck. Ted Williams does this fantastic Disc Jockey voice, just amazing. I got excited too. I told my dad that I had seen him on the talk show circuit a couple months ago, that I was ahead of him on this one. I moved the mouse over to a newer video of Ted Williams and clicked play. My dad was deeply absorbed, then looked over at me and said “You’re right! You did know about him! I love you so much!” And gave me a big hug. We walked down the stairs together, my dad’s thirty years older than me, I thought to myself, as I watched his knees wobble a little on the stairs. We walked towards the dinner table and sat down when my mom yelled “Dinner’s ready!” Things have changed for the better, I think, and what a crazy ride it’s been.

DEAR DAD

I know you were under stress, raising my sister and I and starting a new life in a new town. It just seemed like yesterday when mom christened the boat, with a thick bottle of Champagne at the launch dock, your five year labor of love built from scratch in the backyard, which joined other boats floating in the harbor. You worked with your hands day and night, maybe trying to forget your own past with your old man, who drank a lot and napped in a dark corner of the house with a shotgun. You wanted a semblance of normal, which exceeded Normal and went into that little sneaky devil: abnormal. Our family floated through hundreds of hours of Television on automatic pilot, as mom got breakfast, lunch and dinner ready and a silence fell on us at the table. You wanted to throw the ball with your son, who had the curly little blonde locks of hair, which you had mom cut and save in an envelope because it was precious to you. It was that day when you tried throwing the ball to me and it hit me in the mouth, that we never had that innocent chance at play again. We both became adversaries with our ego, to see which one would crumble first. Silence filled the house except for mom, who begged me to speak to you. Your anger was built upon a deceptive family legacy, patched up on the falsities of manners and forced laughter. We tried and had moments of true Father and Son, watching the geese migrate overhead, from the loveseat in the living room. You tried coming to school events when I begged for you to stay home. And when it was your turn to share something personal with me, I looked away. Never eye to eye, until one day I left and didn't return. It broke you. You and mom went to counseling. Mom had nightmares I was dead. Two years passed as I, unknowing to you, lived two blocks away. A dread filled me and it sobered me to come home and reconcile. Our Big-headed game of Chicken with our egos was finally over. You opened the door as I came back to you and there was peace and it's been that way ever since. I love you.

BOOBA & THE SYSTEMATIC ART OF SURVIVAL

My Grandmother "Booba" is on the left, holding hands with her mother. Both 100 percent Russian, tied to heritage, the Iron Curtain and a climate prone to disease, Alcoholism & corruption. Booba, as you can see, looks like she already has plans of her own, with a glimmer of hope, almost leaning forward away from Mother into a limitless expanse of prosperity and freedom. Their cottage was probably in the middle of a barren wasteland, or in the middle of the pristine undeveloped wildlife of Russia. When I see the show on the Discovery Channel about Wild Russia I think of Booba and all the chapters in her biography that she filled with a reckless childhood abandon, and how she matured into a divine woman, eloquent and distinguished from having been there,  in the face of a hundred storms, a thousand days where she watched the sun beams hit a certain part of a rock in her back yard, and how she saw a face of the many dead that lingered on her soil, and maybe one of them took her. The ghost of her dreams, the positive one, who didn't drink and die but the one who wore his skin to the bones, working in the fields to feed his family. He took her on top of the cloud line, where there were more ghosts and angels, whatever was remembered and revered by Humans was disposed in this junkyard of pink and blue spirits, like a simple pink and blue signifying gender on pillowcases and infantile clothing. There was also an imprint on her DNA that held a formative smile. Unlike other children crying into their pillow and leaving a sad face, Booba had a smile imprint in her DNA which gave her a strength seen only in men during those times. She rose in the morning like an emperor and fell asleep like a diplomat. There were little traces of diamond dust around where she played. She finally moved to America and unleashed her powers. The Karma at that time in America was dark with mafia ties and pimps and hookers strolling around NYC, baiting bystanders with perversion and fear. She walked through with an impenetrable light. She toed her aging mother behind and spoke maniacally about the Beatniks and the Art movement. They settled in Los Angeles where the sun turned Booba's hair platinum. Booba became the poorest star on Earth and attracted the Buzzhounds, who began following her like Andy Warhol groupies from the Factory. She tied connections and sealed deals without stepping foot in the hierarchical white-collar incest of corporate land.  She began to get a warm glow of motherhood yearning and wanted to begin a family. Alas, my mother was born and her sister, and the spirit continues.
 
.
 
.

BOOBA

Booba was my Grandmother on my mom's side. She was a Russian stoic and a iron-fisted matriarch. Her name derived from a cousin of mine, a little cute girl with bouncing blonde funneling braids, who spoke her name "Booba" rather than the Russian term for Grandmother "Babushka".

Booba was worn from time, but it was a leathery brown disposition that awarded her greatness and sublimation. Her life was riddled with mysteries and trials of hardship unimaginable to her little Grandchildren that ran around her in the house, playing their own little courting game of tag. Joe, my step Grandpa, was a loud, bald and funny man who had the same coarseness that He used to run his hardcore tavern next door to the house. He would laugh during dinner, using both hands on the table to support his great bellowing lungs, meanwhile whispering over to Booba to get the pliers. He was going to pull my baby teeth out! I squirmed and tried getting my left foot down off the three foot chair to run. Booba, with her hands folded, would shake her head with gracious bemusement.

As I played outside their house, in the hot desert sun of Southern California, I would find bullet casings between Booba's house and the tavern, an echo of violence that traveled through the arteries of America, via the Hell's Angels. Joe ran the tavern into the wee hours of the morning, until the last bad ass was stumbling or falling off the stool. Joe would just look at them, shining his glasses with a ultra-white bar towel, as the bad ass would fall, what seemed like slow-motion, to the ground with a clapping thud.

Joe eventually passed away, leaving a house empty and cold, and a Tavern too wild for Booba to run. Booba moved to Reno, where one of her daughters moved with her family. My mom and I went down there to visit when I was Twelve. The casinos attracted me, even though I had the slightest idea about gambling. We eventually went to the all-you-can-eat buffets and I watched the giant Goldfish swim in the glass cylinders next to the booths. My mom and Booba were getting ready to play the slots. My mother handed me a roll of dimes, the same way she handed me my allowance, looking over her shoulder to see if my dad was watching. She would drop the dimes into the slots for me, since I wasn't old enough to play myself. Booba looked over to see my mother handing me the roll and saw my expression was lit up just like the neon signs that promised millions of dollars. She snapped: "Don't BE GREEDY."

I came back down by myself, when I was Seventeen to visit Booba and the other relatives. I had dropped out of society basically, and went to Santa Cruz first, to visit a surfer that I had met in a restaurant I worked at in Washington. We did pure LSD and watched the surf break as I thought I heard "Time keeps on slippin. . .into the future."