poem

 Dads

Come to think of it, my dad didn't have to give me back the stuffed animal just before sending us down the gangplank to get on the plane returning us to Ohio at the end of that summer. I’d given it to him for a very special reason that even today eludes me. He should have kept it. Not written my name in blocky all-caps on the white bottom and ambushed me with its offering. Yes, I started to cry and then my little sisters did too, seeing me crying, and the first 30 minutes on the plane were a mess. Three little kids in a row, all weeping, disconsolate, trying to soothe themselves. I remember scratching Jackie’s back, telling her everything was going to be ok. The poor flight attendants didn’t know what to do. It was just some dumb, friendly-faced dinosaur plush toy I’d won the week before at Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas tossing coins on glass plates or maybe it was the game where you have to pop little balloons on a wall with darts. Two out of three wins a prize. It was my favorite one. I slept with it on the top bunk I shared with a half-brother I didn't consider a real brother which got me into trouble with Grandma because she had half siblings too and she considered them real and full and anyway I wasn’t used to winning prizes and Dad seemed proud of me, I guess. At the gate something came over me which I didn’t know how to manage other than to give him this dumb thing I cherished. Our six weeks of summer in Arizona had gone by so fast and we had to go back to mom and school was starting and I wouldn’t see him again until he maybe came back the day after Thanksgiving. I think I was 10. Anyway, he shouldn't have given it back, made it all about him. As if he were the one giving up something important. He didn’t understand the situation at all. He never did. Just like that time I wrote him a letter the morning after I’d heard him and mom up late screaming at each other again. Wrote him that I was sorry I hadn’t cleaned my room or put my toys away in the yard and that I loved him and hoped he had a nice day. Then I put the letter and a crisp $20 bill I’d received for my birthday inside an envelope addressed to “Daddy” and slipped it under his bedroom pillow. Back then, twenty bucks was a lot of money. I was going to use it for a new baseball glove. It was all I had actually. I don’t know what I expected. From the beginning I’ve always been a soft, sentimental little bastard. But I never heard a word. The act went unacknowledged. I never saw the twenty spot again. Over the years I’ve tried to imagine what may have happened. Maybe it fell to the floor under the bed while he was sleeping. Maybe he put the envelope in an inside suit pocket, meaning to open it later but forgot about it and then it got lost at the cleaners. Maybe mom found it, and pitched it in the trash. Or maybe dad opened it, put the money in his wallet, spent it at the gas station or wherever and went about his day, oblivious. Maybe he meant to say something to me but forgot. It remains a mystery. This was my first experience with the hard fact that one doesn’t always get what one pays for. That giving comes with no guarantees. That giving is just giving, nothing else. That love freighted with fear, anxiety and materiality can be misinterpreted. Or just missed. The world keeps the things you want returned and gives back the ones you’ve willingly released. To this day I get anxious with any sort of giving. How much will I have left? Has it been wasted? Should I have given more? And receiving is no easier. Acts of love pass right through me like invisible quantum particles and I don’t even know it. It’s all pretty fucked up. Man hands on misery to man etc etc.  Look at me, casting a shadow starting to look suspiciously like my father. Making it all about me. I ought not to be so hard on myself, though. It’s different, I say. I was just a kid, uncertain if I was being seen. If I was even in his field of vision. That’s the problem when your parents divorce. When you’re with mom, dad can't see you. And vice versa. Whoever you think you are gets split into two. But when dad is 2000 miles away and you only see him a few times a year, there’s a risk of disappearing. Forgetting you exist. Or at least it feels that way. Especially when he gets married again and has a whole new batch of kids he comes home to every day. But you grow out of that— which is a way of saying that something on the inside hardens. You basically have to or else go insane chasing after it. I have other people looking at me now. I feel their gaze like rays of morning sun after a midnight thunderstorm. I don't know where the dumb dinosaur is. I’m sure it’s lost forever. Part of growing up is learning some things only get found when you stop looking for them. See? It’s in my hand. My empty goddam hand.

6/15/25