| Subject: Letters to Samson - 31 - Your Father the Couch Commander |
Author:
Holly
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Date Posted: 09:01:49 08/21/07 Tue
In reply to:
Holly
's message, "Letters to Samson - 1" on 18:59:32 06/04/05 Sat
It's been a very strange summer. I feel vague and always three steps behind where I want to be.
I've been going outside and doing things, but I am sick for days afterwards. I'm finally getting to the point where I can wrap my failing brain around the facts: that is how it is.
So, about four or five times now, I've come to this place to tell you exactly what I think about your father. But then, I think, he's your father, and I should not say anything that isn't strictly complimentary. But, after last night, I think you can handle it. Besides, you can't read big words, yet, so I'm safe for a bit.
Your Dad
by
Your Mom
He's 6'4. I don't know where else to start, because that's the first thing you notice: he's tall. Right now, he looks really good, because he has ulcerative colitis, and he's been sick. Usually he's a little heavier. He likes good food - really, he's a totally physically oriented guy - good food, music, landscape, soft cats, the smell of garlic.
His childhood was like nothing I've ever seen or heard of - his mom is still alive, but she's so crazy and so mean that we don't have any contact with her. Maybe when you're older and can deal with her brand of crazy, but your dad isn't looking to inflict that stuff on you.
A lot of guys with your dad's kind of background end up in prison, but, instead, he's a person who moves through time and tries to fix his crazy kidstuff.
Which there's actually a lot of. He can be mean - like - really mean. And he can be really controlling (or, when it comes to me, try to be really controlling). We've just been through a whole adjustment period with moving into our current place and trying to share the new space. He made all these "rules" about what we could bring and how everything had to be arranged.
We had to buy a new sofa, because the old one did not conform.
So, lately, he's been bringing in all of this recording studio equipment - and pushing me out of the office. We agreed on this - that he would start moving toward work that took less out of his back, and small production/recording seemed to be a good idea. But all of the ugly equipment he was bringing in broke all of his rules.
And I've been all pissed off at him for making me get rid of one of my feral cats. Ozzie was really unhappy inside, and another cat was terrorizing him all the time. I wanted a month to try to work things out, but Andrew was a total dick about it. He has asked me (politely and rightly) not to call him a dick or a fascist in front of you.
So, between the cat and the furniture, I've been calling him the Boss and the King and I think he's okay with that.
But then, last night, we were in the van discussing the furniture situation and Frank Zappa (we got there by going from the new sofa and the trying to pull together the recording equipment in a visually sane manner to Frank Zappa's Sofa Song).
And I said, "Daddy's the King."
And he said, "Ich bin ein Chrome Dinette."
And something about a sofa.
And I said, "Daddy's the Sofa King."
"The Sofa King?"
"King Ree."
"Sofa King Ree?"
"King Ree Todd."
And you pulled it all together much faster than I expected: "Daddy's a Sofa King ReeTodd!"
Your dad started cracking up, and the two of you were gone. Sofa King! Sofa King! Sofa King!
So, it took awhile, but we explained that this was not a joke for anyone outside the immediate family. Little kids who say Sofa King in public do not get invited to other little kids' birthday parties.
Daddy is now officially the Couch Commander.
I love that about him. Not the part where he bosses me around, but the part where he can acknowledge that. And laugh about it. And really work on making things better.
There was a time when I thought your father would never support me or take care of you. I thought he was beautiful, but self-involved and maybe even a little sociopathic. And, just between you and me, as a young woman - a very young woman - I was attracted to that very thing. The damage itself. We'll talk about my issues some other time.
But your father is a person who
Who what?
Who is yapping at me right this minute, and I'm having a hard time thinking. He says, "Oh! Oh! Tell him!"
Your Dad's a surprise, a revelation. He is so much more than a Couch Commander.
The night that you woke up with your first athsma attack, he got us to the hospital and kept me from completely freaking out. When you had that double ear infection and threw up into my coat sleeve, he had carried you through a snowstorm to the doctor's office. Then, he walked home in the snowstorm, got you and me some clean clothes, and took our vomit-soaked stuff home so we wouldn't have to smell it. All on foot, because everything was snowed in.
He is a professional musician who is actually capable of making enough money to keep us alive and inside.
He stays with me, even though I'm having a
really
hard
time
trying to figure out how to make this lupus thing work with who I am as a person.
Even though there are days that I despise him, and he's not a person who can see through to the end of that. In that moment, in his mind, I have never loved him, don't love him now, and will never love him again.
He works on living through it until I get over whatever it is I'm mad about.
He's writes a beautiful letter.
He is a freight train of a drummer.
And he can parallel park a Ford Econoline 350 - with no windows - in a spot that would be tight for a subaru.
I guess what I'm trying to say with all these words - loud, soft, angry, sweet, hardworking, hoity toity, damaged, growing, talented, self-defeating, loving, steady, supremely confident in one moment, total basket case the next, lets me down when I think I need him, sustains me when I expect him to cut and run - is this:
He's dynamic.
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