Happy Birthday Dad

I often think to myself and tell people that my dad is one of my best friends. We go book shopping together, talk books, and he was the first person to support my writing. I get my sense of humor, nihilistic tendencies, overthinking, love for reading, thoughtfulness, and God knows what other personality traits from him. I even need an optical prescription, like him. Anyone who knows me knows that he’s very important to me and I don't think I'd be in my current place in life and at this point in my writing career if it weren't for him. 

There's a gray armchair in the corner of my living room. It sits behind my dad’s CD set up, he has a couch facing his sound system and against the left wall is his homemade wooden CD shelf. He also made me a wooden nightstand in the garage after that first project. He spent an extra $70 on the secondary machine that would smooth the edges and corners of the table so I wouldn’t hurt myself on the sharp edges. I perch myself in the little armchair behind his couch with my book and I can hardly focus on the words through the music blasting from his speakers but I don’t care, I like sitting there with him despite us not talking, not looking at each other, not even facing each other. He asks me what I want to listen to in an attempt to make me feel included. I say, Moonlight by Ariana Grande. He smiles and puts it in. He loves it too.

I’ve been like a sickly Victorian child lately, most recently I got the flu and before, I had COVID. I don't know if I'll ever break out of the habit of automatically turning to my dad for medical or health advice. He seems to know everything, to have experienced ever ailment I bring to him, to have the most accurate predictions of how certain things or illnesses came about. He points and laughs at me in my suffering, my miserable form in the bed next to the nightstand he made me stacked with books and cough drop wrappers. But he always pokes his head into my room later to check on me and prescribes me medication from our medicine cabinet, the herbal salves for my hives, the right pill encased in silvery foil to put me to sleep at night. I say, this better knock me out like a horse tranquilizer and he nods solemnly.

During my first year away from home, I called my dad when I was mentally exhausted from all the changes going on around me and within me. It took a lot of effort and practice to pick up the phone and call him in my difficult times; Parental relationships are nothing if not complicated and nuanced. I don’t remember the details of why I called him, it’s interesting how such emotional and visceral moments fade into nothingness with time. But he told me to read a book and spend some time by myself. The next day, I sat outside underneath some shady trees and I sent him a photo of my lunch and my copy of A Man Called Ove. I got salad and rice and most importantly, a scoop of potato salad. We're the only ones in my family who enjoy potato salad. It's seems trivial, but we happily buy a plastic container of it from the grocery store to eat together. He complains that he has no one to eat with when I'm gone, the containers we usually get seem excessive for a single person. I laugh and tell him to wait for me patiently. Anyways, he sent the photo back but with a digital drawing of a smiley face directed at the book along with a yellow heart emoji. I don’t know if I've ever told him directly, but my favorite color is yellow.

Happy birthday to my dad, my partner in crime, and May birthday buddy.

May 8, 2023