I was never around my natural father very much growing up. I got to know him as an adult by spending two days with him at 25, telephone conversations infrequently over the years and finally a week with him at 55.
This is a brief writing based on a day during that week.
I can see all this in his eyes. He has perceptible burnt umber eyes, even getting older. His age, beginning to show, his eyes have never changed. They still SPEAK !! Sometimes it is difficult to explain to others the relationship which we have. We are close although we have been apart and he has not handled his responsibility to me....He has not seen to it that I know who he is and who that part of my family is nor that there is a link and family connection there.
He alleged a theory that Mom saw I had a family and he didn't want to mess it up. That is so much bull shit and I have told him so.... There is room in people's lives for a mom and a dad's second families.. I believe this....At 55 I have come to my peace with him and he knows what I think. But he had to hear the truth from me. This was one lady the man could not charm. He was always charismatic. Women appeared from nowhere. Being a singer in a band (big band era), he had his groupies....and that was problematic to say the least. It certainly had to do with the end of his marriage to my mother...she just wasn't the understanding type when he told her he was in love with two women,
But we understand each other and why it happened as it did. We are both bipolar. We can feel it in each other: the exuberance, the love of life and people, thought, human possibility and music and all family. But I know he gets the melancholy that goes with this illness
They say bipolar runs in families
and they may be right, you know.
It seems to choose the "Shiners",the artists,
those who like the show.
Dad, you were the "entertainer" singing
in the night clubs - always flirting
fought the problems of addiction,
bad marriages, ended up hurting.
Relationships have been a hard thing
for us to commit to somehow it seems.
We've had marriages and divorces
and everyone upset in our schemes.
by moving to the country from the town.
but my moods still cycle up and down.
Your face reminds me of Pagliacci.
I know that smile covers a sad brood
of the melancholic bipolar person
whose life is controlled by swings of mood.
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