Tanks for the Memories

Fatherhood is a blessed business, even though the man himself universally is hardly holy.

I post this weekend to honor my father, born May 1930, who died at 52 of brain cancer. I’m older than my father lived to be, and I’m proud of who I am today in goodly part because of who my father was and what he bequeathed me. He was an interesting man, and I still don’t approve of his absence from my life. This photograph of him was taken during the Korean War, when he was training with the National Guard. I love you, Dad.

Requiem for My Father Following New Evidence of God

My religious education was not your fault
but I begged God for your life with every
book, chapter, verse, creed, catechismal
question and answer I knew. I bargained

for your life with mine, with my future
happiness, I swore to God He could keep
that future good husband and I would do
without wedded bliss or children if only

He would let you live. I swore off drugs,
men, intellect, pleasure of all kinds if He
would hear my prayer and save you. On
my knees I begged, through choking tears

with loud beseechments, calling on His
Holy Name, His mercy, His holy book,
His past behavior with humankind, every
nickel and dime method I could conjure

to touch His hallowed heart. I knew I was
pathetic, not nearly eloquent enough to earn
a miracle. I confessed I was by nature sinful
and unclean, deserving of His temporal and

eternal punishment, mea culpa, mea culpa,
I don’t deserve it, I confided, but please
let my father live. I did not pray in faith but
in desperation because you were in fact

my god. I was 28 years old and did not grasp
the fatal truth of His claim to be a jealous
God who suffers no other gods before Him.
My very prayers stung His jealous ears.

Visit the Poetry Jam site at http://poetryjaam.blogspot.com to visit other poets pondering fathers.

Poetry Jam Theme for May 23

I have shook off the rain that soaked us here (who knew the power of a poetry theme could be taken so literally by the Weather Man in the Sky?). We have et us some good grub and we await the arrival of our Poetry Bus rider friend Rachel, et al, here in not so sunny California. Mi casa is a pit stop on her USA tour. Maybe if I keep our theme simple, she will take time from gawking and dash off a poem.

I asked to host the Poetry Jam blog for the upcoming Monday, May 23, for a reason: my long-gone father's birthday falls on May 24. Dad was a child of the Depression, a self-made man born in Oklahoma and transplanted to a small town in rural California. He was a poet in his way, a honky-tonk poet. I'm posting a photo of him in his prime.

The theme for our Poetry Jam this coming Monday, then, will be your choice of two wide-open topics, fertile ground for the Muse:

1) Write a poem about Father, fatherland, daddy dearest, your experience of fatherhood, the father you never had, your father or your own fatherhood, or the father of your children, or the father of your father, or your Heavenly Father, or go father afield and do what you will with the notion of fathers.

2) Write a honky-tonk song. Wikipedia's discussion of honky-tonk music is here.

Visit the Poetry Jam site at http://poetryjaam.blogspot.com to link up later this week. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure out Mr. Linky's foibles.

Cuss Words and So On

~~~~

The parents’ lessons linger long:
Anything worth doing is worth doing well
Put your back into it, girl
You knucklehead! You numbskull!
Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about
You’d gripe if you was hung with a new rope
And worst of all:
Shingamucka-high-lo!
Which meant the sky was going to fall.


This is a Friday Flash 55. If you want to tell a story in exactly 55 words, post it and go tell the host with the most, the G-Man.

I’m sure my parents said some fine things about life, aside from that one gem about “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” but what I remember today is the more colorful stuff.
Some of it was funny, and some of it was hard.

From the get-go, doing what we were told without complaint was the order of the day. Punishment was swift and corporal otherwise. If I cried afterward, I got that awful “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.” I hated that one. It was demeaning.
But I grew up to be a good worker and not a whiner.

My dad was the source of the colorful life lessons. Although he liked to call his kids knuckleheads and numbskulls, which isn’t nice, he also criticized with a home-grown humor. He was the one who said, “You’d gripe if you was hung with a new rope” and “Watch out or you'll trip over that lower lip.” Another favorite is “You got champagne tastes on a beer budget.”

He once told us solemn youngsters, “Do what your mother says. If she says, ‘Shit!’ you say, ‘Where and how much?’” I actually said that to my mother the next time I heard her say, “Shit!” I got in big trouble.

(To tell the honest truth, I had to take the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous before I could let all this trauma lie peacefully in the past. It also helped that I grew up.)

Dad walked jauntily and carried a big belt. Mom had a sharp tongue and a temper. She was a slammer of cupboard doors. On the other hand, she was also the source of the funniest cuss word I’ve ever heard.

I think she made up that word “Shingamucka-high-lo!” (which I present to you phonetically since I have no idea how it would be spelled). It always had an exclamation point behind it, and it expressed either shock, contempt, dismay, or surprised anger over a bad thing. I find myself using it these days to express the same reactions.

Has anyone out there ever heard the word “Shingamucka-high-lo!” in any form whatsoever?

I ask in earnest because a) It would be cool if Mom made up a word, and b) my first husband used to say something that sounded like “I chi notay pin chay cab rhone!” when he hurt himself, and then I started using it too (thinking it was a Japanese cuss word from his navy years) until I married my beloved Joe, who is fluent in Spanish, and he informed me it was a nasty insult that mustn’t be used in any context except a street fight, and then only if I wanted my butt kicked.

Singamuckahighlo!

~~~~~

One Heartbeat at a Time

"Anyone can carry his burden, however heavy, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day," said Robert Louis Stevenson.

When I was younger and more self-indulgent than I am now, I thought difficulties would kill me.

It was mainly grief that I thought was deadly. When my father died, I was 27; I thought: No one will ever love me again the way he loved me. It was true; only one's father loves one like a father does. But it hurt so much, I feared that the feelings would make my heart stop.

So I self-medicated. That's how I thought of it: medicating myself to prevent death. Taking a handful of pills, nursing a bottle of booze--it was all about numbing the sensation of pain.

When someone I was in love with decided we would no longer be lovers, my reaction was a similar panic: I'm going to die of a broken heart. So take a handful of pills and nurse a bottle of booze. I failed to see the irony, that medicating with substances could actually cause sudden death, whereas emotions themselves are not deadly. And sometimes I didn't care if I lived or died, because life felt so hard that any kind of peace was welcomed.

In recovery, I've discovered that the "broken heart" is just a cliche, not a deadly medical situation. Sorrow is simply the natural reaction to loss. It might be overwhelming; it might even be a permanent state, as it is when someone you love dies. But one day at a time, one breath at a time, I can go on and once again find joy in living.

The trick is to not become embittered. I have to look for joy; it doesn't come knocking on my door, asking to be let in. I need to be willing to see with eyes that believe in goodness and mercy. Here is a poem I wrote about having such eyes:

Robins Abroad in a Sad World

A pair of robins
red-breasted and proud
live like lords on my land,
fertile with worms
and a gourmet’s delight
of insects hidden
in a century’s layer of mulch.
I watch them sometimes
when my mind is full
of dire news, fed
by a river of sorrows
unending
except when I watch
the robins strut
and pluck the strands
of their living harp,
masters at the art
of being.

Chris Alba (c) 2009