We’re playing basketball. We’re
always playing basketball. When it’s hot out, when it’s cold out, when I still
have 10 chapters to go in the book I’m reading, we’re playing basketball.
I whine and cry and give up
trying, but it’s no good. He insists. We play more basketball.
He shells peanuts and munches them
on the couch, watching basketball on TV. Sometimes he paints or draws or sings,
but most often he’s somehow involved in a basketball game.
He doesn’t usually have a job. He
sleeps a lot. He makes homemade donuts. He finds me a kitten for Christmas. He
rakes the biggest leaf piles, and we jump in them.
He and Mom argue and yell. A lot.
In kindergarten, I tell my teacher, “My dad moves in and he moves out. He moves
in. He moves out.” It doesn’t occur to me that that might not be normal.
He cleans the house from top to
bottom sometimes. We go to school and it’s a mess, but when we get home it’s
spotless.
He writes love letters to Mom, or
sometimes apology letters. My brother and I find them when we’re snooping in
drawers in desks we’re not supposed to get into. He has the prettiest
handwriting.
He thinks I am going to be the
best basketball player the world has ever seen.
He yells sometimes, using the
really big bad cuss words.
My sophomore year in high school,
he is diagnosed with Schizophrenia. He moves out of the house….again. He goes
to the hospital and takes medicine and then moves in with his sister.
I lose him for a long time. I vow
that he will never be invited to my wedding or welcomed at Christmas time. I
promise myself lots of things when I’m hurt.
As an adult, I learn a new
perspective. I begin to accept him as he was and as he is. He remains very much
a gentleman to me as a grown person, and bows gracefully out unless asked to
attend. His presence becomes an awkward, almost-welcome shadow in the outskirts
of my life.
This year, I feel the urge to
call and wish him a Happy Father’s Day for what I believe is the first time
ever.
I have to ask my sister for his
number. I haven’t spoken with him since maybe before Christmas or maybe even Thanksgiving.
I haven’t seen him in even longer.
I call. He answers. I can hear
the pleasure in his voice when he realizes it’s me. We chat. Nothing heavy or
personal, just the sort of stuff you might share with someone sitting next to you on
a train.
For my own reasons, I keep it
short. I say Goodbye and that I don’t mean to keep him. He stops me just as I’m
about to hang up and says,
”You know I love you, right?”
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