Happy Father’s Day

I may look more like my mother, but I am more like my father in my mannerisms. Though I did inherit his almond-shaped eyes, I also inherited his sensitivity, creativity, over-active brain, and his nerdiness. He and I can both take the grinding pain of surgery with stride and with grace, but neither us are able to shake the perhaps-unintended slight.

This is a man who spent the first five years of his life living in a post-war-torn Germany with his mother. This is a man who spent the next five years after that living in an orphanage in Pennsylvania while his mother worked at a nursing home in the hopes of a better life. This is a man who survived a difficult family situation and left home at 17 to work 40 jobs by the time he was 30. This is a man who was drafted to serve his adopted country in the Vietnam war.

This is a man who wanted better for his two children than he had for himself, and worked hard to be slow to anger but quick to teach. This is a man who loves to create with his hands. This is a man who loves nothing more than to walk out in the country with the sun on his face and the wind at his back.

This is a man I almost lost to cancer in 2006. This is a man who bravely went to chemotherapy for six weeks, and never openly complained, even as he lost weight and his hair. This is a man who will have been in remission for two years in October. This is a man for whom I will always walk for to raise awareness for the disease.

This is a man who took me to three years of father/daughter dances at Beaumont. This is a man who helped me work on grade-school science projects (usually at the zero-hour); helped me work on art projects in college; taught me how to use a table-saw, a bandsaw, a belt-sander, a drill, taught me how to plumb, how to do electrical wiring, how to lay laminate flooring, and hang tile. This is a man that I will dance with at my wedding.

And though it hasn’t always been easy to live with him, and have had some pretty terrible fights, I will always be proud of him, and I will always know how lucky I am to have him.

This man is my father.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

Casual Work Banter

I was talking to my co-worker about various and sundry things, and the topic moved to weddings (she’s getting married this year). Most of the time, I keep pretty mum on the topic of the relationship with my mother/parents: I try to keep it very simple, very unreadable – it’s just been…safer that way. For whatever reason, given the strife that I’ve had, specifically within the last week (this week has been eye-opening in the suck), I said something that I’ve been stewing in for years: since I’ve started dating at 16.

Me: I gotta be honest with you; my mother would be thrilled to find out that I broke up with [The Boy], canceled the wedding, and just stayed single until I was thirty.

[Co-Worker]: Are you serious? Does she not like [The Boy], or…?

Me: I don’t know. I think she’d be happy if I were marrying a lawyer, or a doctor, or a financial planner later in life. But she just doesn’t want me to get married. Like I said, she’d be thrilled if I broke up with [The Boy].

[Co-Worker]: That’s kind of sick….

Yeah, it is. But it’s true. She’d admit that she’d be thrilled, too, if I ever had the stones to confront her on it.

To Prove That I’m Not Making This Shit Up

Somehow, my mother and I got into a heated something, in which I became frustrated because I have two people trying to talk to me at once, which I can’t handle. At one point, I rolled my eyes; and my mother gets the narrow eyes, finger in my face, and says in a threatening hiss:

I deserve respect, I’m the adult here!

I’m going to turn 24 in March. I have been engaged for over a year. I have a full-time job with benefits.

Thank God, Medina in August.

“The List”

When I first told my parents that I was getting married, they were dubious, to put it nicely. Then they gave both The Boy and I a sheet to read of “all the things that married couples should talk about before getting married”. Any time my mother brings up our impending marriage (or impending doom, if you ask her opinion), she keeps pressing me to talk with The Boy about “The List.”

As you know (or may not) The Boy and I were both raised as Catholics. Meaning, as most religions say, pre-marital and extra-marital sex is bad news.

I guess he and I are both going to hell. Whether my parents know definitively that we are going to hell is anyone’s guess.

One of the questions goes something like this:

Do you and your partner have the same needs/desires sexually? How will you discuss your sexual needs?

So, of course, The Boy and I laughed heartily at that one. I have these weird feelings bordering between confusion and annoyance that for years she’s clung to this anti-sex-before-marriage and complete dubiousness at marrying The Boy, but suddenly thinks that it’s a fabulous idea to be discussing my sexual preferences with him on the sheer supposition that I’ve only ever seen a penis in my art anatomy books. Who exactly does she think she’s fooling? The Boy and I spent three days alone in Kentucky (what does she think we did there at night, play canasta until it was time to go to sleep in separate twin-sized beds?) And yet, even the mere thought of me living with him gives her the vapors.

But seeing as my mother seems to be “very concerned” about making sure I’m not making some huge mistake marrying The Boy, I wonder how I approach that when I finally get annoyed enough with her to tell her about the question about teh sexx0rz.

“Well, Mom, [The Boy] and I just can’t seem to agree sexually. You see, he’s really into fisting, and I really just want to do anal with a strap-on, because I’m saving my vagina for the most holy baby Jesus.”

I don’t think that would go over to well. But it warms the cockles of my heart to think about the colors she’d turn if I said it.

I’m going to edit this to add:

• Here is where you can find the original article.
• Here is an amusing response from a married blogger to those questions. I think I second most of her opinions, and according to my mother, I might as well be back in Kentucky, marrying my single-toothed cousin, Spud. Because that’s on par with the uneducated mistake I’m making.

So, question. Do I send the rebuttal article to my parents and risk them accusing me of acting “like a teenager”? Or do I bite my tongue and put on a Mona Lisa smile, knowing that “The List” is mostly horseshit?

Rambly

Okay, I promised that I would post a real entry, so here goes, in order of the things I think of.

My parents went to West Virginia for three days (visiting with my aunt and uncle who drove up to WV from North Carolina).� This means that I have the house to myself for three days.� I never thought that I would be so lonely.� Which sounds lame, at 23, I want my parent’s company, but this house is way too big for one person with a part-time job and no life.� Even though I spend most of my time by myself when I’m at home (with my parents), it’s still weird to go upstairs and no one’s there.

I’m still filling out job applications with vigor.� I’m hoping, hoping, hoping that I end up going somewhere with all of this shit.� But, I’m trying to make a better effort into looking harder and doing everything I can.� I’ve been at [Retail Job] for six months at the end of this month; so when they give me my name tag of gold and maroon plastic, I’m going to cry.� And not with joy.

I didn’t get into graduate school.� I was bummed out at first, but only in the way that it was like a bad relationship: I didn’t want to be in it, but I wanted to do the dumping, dammit!� Rejection sucks.

I’m going out to Bowling Green to visit my brother.� I’m hoping that the weather isn’t horrible for my two-hour drive, but I do have books on tape: The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan, Hannibal by Thomas Harris, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I may not even get to, but whatevs.� My brother promises that he’ll let me fool around in the ceramics lab, which promises to be fun, but after that, I have no idea what we’ll do.� Chinese and a movie, mayhap?

Wednesday night, The Boy and I are leaving for Mammoth Caves, Kentucky.� I’m looking forward to not having to work for three days in a row, sleeping next to my fiance for the second time since we were engaged, and seeing new sites (and a new shot glass for my collection — yay!) but the seven-hour drive?� Not so much.� I plan on making a packing list, soon, but again, I have the same motivation as I have attitude for a seven-hour drive: not so much.

Hopefully, I’ll have pictures from both Bowling Green and Mammoth Caves.