Bad Dog Dinner with Dad #2

I had dinner with my dad Sunday night. And where as you may glance over that line and yawn I assure you the story is far more intriguing than just dinner with a stuffy old fart you were raised by. I have always been known for my “daddy complication” or should I pluralize the “daddy’s” and make it far more accurate. I suppose a modest explanation is needed.

At 22 years old I don’t have many things I can say about my life that most people can’t already say about theirs. I graduated college, big deal. I moved around to many different cities and states as a child, who hasn’t? I lost my virginity in the front of a pick-up truck, I think most of the girls in my town will raise their hand to include themselves in that statistic. I have, however, always been the soul person I know to claim that I have three fathers. More so then that, three fathers who are not, or were not, in fact worth a damn as I so boldly put it throughout my teenage adolescence.

A brief character sketch of each father:

Father #1, adequately named B: I can count on one hand the number of encounters I have had with this one particular individual and still have a key finger intact to encourage our lack of verbal communication but mutual understanding. B was my mother’s best friend. My mother already having already experienced a teenage pregnancy, followed by a teenage marriage and a teenage divorce decided to run away to Florida for a few months and upon her return her best friend did what any best friend would do: threw a party where in a lustful state of drunken bliss they… well, you get the picture. The man did what any respectable man would do, he ignored the fact that I existed and has never met me face to face. I have spoken with him on the phone once, mainly because his mother wanted to speak with me before she passed away. I believe he now resides in Hawaii and I have developed a fear of becoming involved with anyone in the North-Eastern part of the county in fear of randomly hooking up with his son, who happens to be my age.

Father #2, titled M: This is the gentleman who met my mother during her pregnant state and decided he had always wanted a daughter. M was recently divorced, with a boy about two years older than me. They had me, and another boy and married within five years. M’s name is on my birth certificate, I carry his last name, I even call him “Dad”. I would know nothing of B if it were not for the fact that my mother informed me, Thanksgiving Day when I was 8 years old who my real father was. I have still yet to seek the appropriate psychiatric help for such childhood trauma. Shortly after M and my mother married he found himself in love with something a little more mind numbing and expensive, crack. They divorced, M proceeded to continue to experiment with the drug and others like it which lead to many many years of jail cells, warrants, theft and my all time favorite, random moments where he disappeared, the longest being almost three years. He is now back in my home town, married, driving a tractor trailing and claiming he has been clean for almost 6 months, the longest in almost twenty years.

Father #3, the saint-like-bastard we call G: G and my mother got involved shortly after her and M divorced. They moved my two brothers and me from our home town to North Carolina where they proceeded to embark on a very rocky life-time together. They loved each other irrationally, and broke each others hearts every chance they got. They would break up at least once for a few months every two years, but there was never a doubt in my mind they loved each other. G had his own two children but fathered my brothers and me more so than them. I suppose I should say he fathered me more so then them. I never understood why he took a liking to me in particular. The mean old-bastard as we had been known to call him fought with me and pushed me, turning me from a sniveling child who whined every chance she got to the woman I have become. I am opinionated, and difficult and stubborn, good lord am I stubborn. I suppose you could say I was his favorite. G was diagnosed with Pancreas Cancer April of 2006. On that day my mother, G and I stood in the hospital room with the doctor as he told us that G had 9 months to a year. We buried him the following winter, nine months to the day. I now have a memorial tattoo on my back, and although I never referred to him as Dad in all our years together I proudly have the name Dad tattooed along with it. He would have been 42 years old the following March.

So now that you have been caught up on my “daddy complication” you will understand when I tell you I was very nervous about having dinner with my Dad-M on Sunday night. My grandmother passing away the week before Christmas had forced me into a cohabitation with M for almost a week. I barely recognized him. I had not seen him in so long. The man’s hair was bushy and wild, front teeth still missing although his clothes were nicely pressed like a homeless man on trial. He slurred his speech and snuck out to the car multiple times to take a swig of whiskey from a brown paper bag. He smoked cigarettes by lighting the next one with the previous, sucked all the way down to the quick. His hands shook each time he tried to take me in his arms, a reaction to the pills he pops like candy. “It keeps him off the crack” my brother M Jr. told me. M Jr. would keep an eye on our father, and one on his own hands, shaking from the same withdraw, as he strummed his guitar.

I fought him tooth and nail throughout the entire week. I did not want to let him in. And although I knew he was grieving the lose of a parent, something I had been through only a year before I could not let him in. Maybe that makes me a bitch but I feel entitled. When he called me Friday and informed me he was in town I quickly declined his offer to dinner. “I’m in Nashville Dad,” I said coldly. “I won’t be back till Monday.”

Oh thats fine, he said, I won’t have a load out of here until Monday morning. We can do breakfast. No matter how much I wanted to decline I couldn’t. My little brothers voice rang in my ears, the words he had begged the entire week of our grandmothers funeral. “Please Kirby, give him a chance”. So I said ok.

Much to my surprise my associate and I returned back from Nashville early Sunday evening, so when M called I agreed to meet him for dinner. We went to a small bar on the boardwalk Bad Dog’s where we drank red beer, ate hot dogs and just talked. My mother had told me, warned me before I returned from Nashville of what I was in-store for. He has put on weight, his eyes are less glazed over and he doesn’t slur or stutter his speech. His hands no longer shake, they grip and hold firm. His eyes remind me of the man who use to read me bed time stories. It’s hard for me to allow myself to become vulnerable to someone who has hurt me so many times but it was hard for me not to reach out to my father. With G gone M is the closest thing I have to a Dad. And although he has missed all of my important moments up to today am I really validated in attempting to continue to keep him withdrawn from them from here on out.

When is enough enough? And when should you give someone another chance, if you should give them another chance at all?

~ by kirbyann on January 22, 2008.