Dad
My dad died a few days ago and I thought I should write something about him. I never really knew him as he left when I was around 6, and my memory isn't that good of that time. However there are a few things that I do remember about him, events that happened between me and him, that kind of stick out. I can't tell you what kind of man he was because that's not a side of him I was able to know.
I do remember a few years back he decided to try to get back in contact with Jason and me, I don't know why he decided to but he did nonetheless. He sent me several letters, I never answered them but I think my brother did. He also send some pictures of him and BC in one of his letters, I still have them hidden away somewhere. I remember for Christmas he sent me a box of things he thought I'd be interested in, and the one thing I remember was Black Beauty. At the time I remember thinking to myself that he can be bothered enough to know that I like books but that he couldn't be bothered to learn what genre I like. Now that I think back I think that he was just trying to give me a classic, I have yet to read the book but I think I might when I have free time to do so. It was shortly after this that the letters stopped, as I think he gave up on me answering them.
I guess the thing I remember most about his appearance was his moustache, there was just something about it that it has stuck with me all these years. When I grew up, I wanted to have a moustache like his. It was always very bushy and in a way it made me think of him more as a man, and it went well with his curly hair, the other physical trait I can really remember about him. I remember him telling me how he lost his tooth while eating with a fork and how he popped it out. He was always wearing an elastic band (or did for a period of time) that was there to help him stop smoking, he seemed to be better at this than Mom was.
I remember when he had a brown truck, and Adam and I would ride it in the back all the way down Williamson. I always remember what fun it was to ride in that truck. He had a motorcycle too, that he always kept in storage. I remember him driving me home in grade 1, after I had been suspended for something or other. Mom told him to punish me (for something different I think) and he brought the vacuum cleaner to my room to hit me with on the ass, but instead he told me to cry so Mom would think I was being punished. One night Mom was crying on the stairs, and told us Dad was gone for good. I remember when he visited us, or when he was supposed to, and spending the majority of our (Jason and I) Sunday nights looking out the window for him to show up, and then Mom telling us he's probably not going to come this week.
I remember when he was building the deck, and how he built the table along with it. I remember him spray-painting everything in the basement, and that stand he built. He spray painted my desk for me, I don't have it anymore but I remember having fun with it as a kid doodling things out of paint I'd scratch off. I know he planned to build a wall in the basement, and had started to get the frame up before he left. We took the wall down, but the holes in the concrete remain. He build Jason and I a cardboard house once, with a light switch and a working door. I remember him taking me up on the roof with him when he was putting the sun windows in, and how scared I was to be up so high but knowing he would keep me safe.
He owned a company called Aaction glass If I remember right. I remember going there a few times, sometimes at night and sometimes during business hours. I remember being amazed by the water cooler, and all of the machines he had in the back to do the various tasks he needed done. I remember one time I was there and there was a dumpster fire right outside, and I couldn't get enough of the fire trucks. I think that then closed down and so he opened another one next to our old house, I remember thinking that place was a dump. I know there was a hole in the floor that I was always afraid to jump over, and I remember there being a pee bucket that I was either scared of or had fun peeing in, knowing me back then I was too scared to pee in it. I was always amazed that Dad owned all of that and was in charge of everything. I remember him yelling at a guy named Mario for painting a house red, which of course made me go crazy being the Nintendo fan I was back then.
Overall, I remember mostly things we did together, I don't really remember who he was. I remember him always smiling at me, I remember him usually fighting with Mom in the kitchen and me listening to them by my door for my name. I like to think that he was just an ordinary man trying to get by, he fell on hard times and just couldn't get back up. I like to think that he taught me a very valuable lesson, unintentionally like all the best lessons are learned, that good people can fall just as easily as bad people. I hope to remember him for the good times and the bad times, and I hope to better myself with Diana based on the mistakes he made. This hardly seems like enough of a tribute to the man who did raise me, albeit shortly, but it's all I can do. I remember him as a person, and most of all when I think "Dad" I think of him smiling in the kitchen with his moustache and curly hair, I think of his beat-up brown truck, I think of him fighting with Mom, and I think of how kind he was to me, when I did get to see him. I regret not trying to get to know him later in life when he tried writing me, but what's done is done and I'm fine with that.
