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Dear Dad,

The other night they asked us to answer the following question: “What makes you tick”? Instantly came my response, and with confidence. “Acceptance, ” I wrote.  My level of acceptance”.

I am in such a great place these days. Have been for a while.

Remember back in the day…those time I’d complain to you about, let’s say, the heat? We’d be in the room with a bunch of  perspiring people  and I’d be grimacing, giving looks. “It’s hot for everybody,” you’d have to remind me.

Or how when I’d knock after just a few cards in a gin hand, but pick up only a few points, and I’d be pissed?  Invariably you’d remark “If you take two or three points each hand you’ll win every game”.

Or, for that matter, WHENEVER things didn’t go exactly as I’d planned, and I’d greps, how you’d neutralize me with “It’s still better than a kick in the ass!” or “Little Boy, you’re crying with a loaf of bread under each arm”.

(God I HATED when you chided me that “Life isn’t fair”. Really!  That of itself didn’t seem fair).

You were right though, Dad, as you usually were. My hindsight is 20/20. (Not that I was really a malcontent…I wasn’t. Still it took me near half my lifetime to just let things slide).

“This too will pass,” you would tell me, when spit would happen. “Someday”, you would promise, “We’ll look back on this and laugh.”

My friends too had their mantras.

Stuart would say “Don’t have any expectations, B”. Alan, muted growl and all would wince “What’d you expect”? With Bobby it was typically “Get over it” and with Walt: it was a matter-of-fact “Go figure.”

So I’ve learned Dad…and I don’t waste time these days, fretting or riling over things I can’t change, things I can’t control.

Like other people…or the past.

That call Jon Scott’s father blew in the 60’s? The play the Bucks couldn’t get off up in East Lansing in the 70’s? The bullshit field goal they gave Karlis in The Drive game? (80’s)? Heck, even that crippling divorce of the 90’s! They’re in the book, Dad—and I know it.

Even God, (as they say), can’t undo the past.

—So I’m breezing a bit. Life is but my loose garment. At peace with most anyone….usually.

Work is fair, play is better, and family is best.  And…

We’re flying to New York; I’m doing a show; even Carrie, on a nightly basis, is improving at gin.

I mention this, Dad, because I reached out to Jamie again this week.  And was rebuffed. Again.

I shook it off, you should know, Dad.  Again.

Shook it off…

—Because if you were here you’d be telling me that this too will pass…and that you’d point to Eli turning 1 and Lucy via FaceTime and Max singing Hebrew—and you’d remind me yet again in that half/full spin of yours that I’m crying with a loaf of bread under each arm… and that three out of five grandchildren know and love me, and that as shitty as that sounds that’s still batting .600, and even Williams never did that!

But I need you, Dad. Down here. Now. Odd as it sounds, Impossible Dreamer that you were, you always saw things better than they were, yet you were right.

Things always are better than they are!

—And I know you’d be telling me even now, with my rejection in Plainview—that someday we’re going to look back at today and laugh.

I’m counting on it, Dad.

You never lied to me.

Love, Bruce

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2014 at 2:31 am and is filed under Up From Dysfunction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.