Eric.

Sorry I f#cked with encouragement, E. Le’me try'n flush out the mixture & reseat the gasket.

To answer your query: No, I never partied with my dad. Never once. Had a catch with him a few times. Played tonk & casino & poker & Chinese checkers, and worked the occasional word scramble, and survived a few truly cataclysmic fishing outings with he & his Karate buddies, but never partied. The last time I saw him in the flesh, the night before I left for Okinawa for the first time, for no obvious reasons, my father compelled me to sit up with him at the kitchen table, have a couple’a beers (which he had not been drinking much at all for the past few years), & "shoot-th’-shit with your ol'man" about everything.

He spoke eloquently, jovially, one could even say buoyantly..about his troubled childhood, adventurous teens, the Marines, Korea, his love for his-wife-my-mother, his regrets for slapping us around so much, and his love for my siblings & me. & he asked me to forgive him for, ..well, the breadth of things. At the time, forgiveness forgiveness hadn’t meant a damn to me, where he was concerned. I was just damn glad we were seeing things a little bit eye-to-eye, and …just this side of shocked that I was really beginning to kinda like this guy.

We talked, really talked. My brown/hazel eyes never mor’n 2’ from his blue-green eyes the entire night on into morning. His truths rolled off his tongue like a Fonzarelli Poet. He told me about a late-fifties opium den orgy …and how he’d spent a lot of time in the brig in Hawaii in his last months just after Korea and just before his Honorable Discharge as a Sergeant, the war permanently stained on his flesh & brain, and his need to blow-out in a bar every few days or so then ..just to keep from really blowing-up. He spoke of his love for his spider monkey and his motorcycle, he spoke of his lifelong sadness that he lost all of his memory as a result of [archaic] brain surgery when I was two..and my brother was only just born. How he can remember hurting his little baby boy, & scaring the hell out of him. He said, I think I may have thrown you once, son, ..only once, then I came to my senses and gathered you up into my arms, checked you from head to toe for injury, then rocked you until I had to leave for work the next afternoon. I’ve always deeply regretted that, he said. It's never left me. I don’t know what came over me, boy, I would die for you in an instant. Then, when he said it, and even now, I don’t doubt him even one iota. My dad was petrifying ..but he lived by "the code". It wasn’t always logical, wasn’t always right, but it was resolute. (& he had a heart.)

I admire your relationship with your dad, E. I admire your dad (as per your words & his art). Deeply. But I don’t have a clue what it feels like to have had a good childhood and/or a relationship with a father or father-figure.

Mine absolutely positively certainly & without a shadow of a doubt wasn’t the worst. No, far be it. Maya & I fostered a bevy of kids who’s misery (life back @ home & hood) trumped mine then trumped it again, & I read of worse case scenarios all the time, everyday, & just this past two years I’ve seen enough sick kids to teach me everything I need to know about just how good my childhood was in comparison. But it still sucked. & what sucks most is I’ve gone over much of it and can see SO MANY ways where it could have been excellent: a better decision here and a clearer explanation there, just small corrections in the sum of 18 years, by father, mother, son, and I could be one of the lucky ones who remembers his childhood fondly. …So be it.

I do think (prior to Luke’s truculent assault on Maya) that our two sons will be able to speak fondly about their childhood. I can say it with confidence. I can’t speak for what’s gona happen next, but up until this very moment, the son-mother-son-father-son roles have been wholly whole, fulfilling, diligent, optimistic, life-affirming, affectionate, and deeply connective, from the absolute first second we were acquainted upon birth. I have been in love with them on a definitively spiritual wavelength. And have been an enthusiastic participant in each & every day of their lives. No, NOT conservative, not liberal, not moderate, not progressive, none of those things and all of those things relative to the very moment at hand; Academics, Athletics, Arts/Music, in all four wind directions and the gamut of activities that those key words embrace, each and everyday of their lives. & they’re both good men. (Well on their way to being) Better men than I.

& my dad got me far enough ..to ..continue to this place…. So good enough, Pop.

Messy.