Dads, amirite?

“I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.” –Anais Nin

I was terrified of making people mad until about 4 months ago…stick with me…or don’t, it’s your life 💁

As a child I was meek but social.

My dad left us when I was 4 and my sister was 2.  According to my mom he took the Monte Carlo and sped off leaving us with nothing but a mattress, and left with a “black lady that he did drugs with”.  I never got to hear his side as he met his demise in 2016 from what started as bladder cancer and ended up as bone cancer, I think.

He was a tall guy maybe 6′ 4″, thin, long blonde hair, and a ton of tattoos and about 6 earrings in each ear.  I remember, in particular, the castle that took up his entire back, he had a huge raised mole right in the middle of it.  He also had a Stray Cat’s tattoo on his arm somewhere.

I spent every other weekend with him until I was maybe 9.  Those weekends would start with a stop by the convenience store for a few yoohoo’s in the glass bottle for me and my sister.  Then a stop at the ABC store for his preferred beverage.  There was a bench seat in his old blue truck and my sister would sit in the middle and I sat in the passenger seat.  He was never mean but I remember always being scared that he would open the door while driving and I would fall out and die and he would take my sister or that he was going to take us somewhere and drop us off so he didn’t have to deal with us.  Instead he would just leave me to tend to my little sister and littler step sister while he would stay locked in his room drinking.  Sunday’s he would come out and crank up Bluegrass music on his state of the art (for the early 90’s anyway) stereo system, I loved “Bluegrass Sunday’s” and I still love them.

He worked in South Korea and at some point disappeared only to reappear when I was a senior in high school.  He owed thousands in child support and tried to get out of it by befriending my Mom.  I remember my mom calling me, I was at my boyfriends house at the time and she said “Meg, your daddy called, he wants to see us so me and your sister are going.  Do you want to come?”  I remember giving a very unashamed “pshhh no” followed by a laugh.  My mom wasn’t upset.  She and my sister went to eat with him that night.  Apparently he had lived about 20 minutes from us for a good chunk of the time he was M.I.A.  They went to his house and reported back that he had pictures of us everywhere as if we were ever present in his life.  I found out later, at one of my band concerts (introducingggggg saxophone superstarrrrrr Megannnn Hamiltonnnnn, wooo!! Yeahh!! *applause applause*) that my mom had invited him to my band concert.  Help!  I was cordial.  He ended up going to jail a few weeks later for non payment and after the concert was the last I heard of him until …

I was maybe 26 and he found me on Facebook.  Help again!  I was still cordial. My mom had at some point given him my phone number against my wishes and he called me that Christmas and left a voicemail “Hey Meg, it’s your daddy…” It’s strange that I had only heard his voice twice since I was 9 but I distinctly remember what it sounded like.  We shared very similar musical interests, he was a very talented musician, and according to Facebook was an Orchid grower and lived about an hour from me. He invited me to bring my child and invite my sister and her family to his home, that he shared with a nurse he met during his cancer treatment.  I was shamed and cursed by him for not accepting him with open arms because he had cancer, because he had to have his bladder removed, or just because he was full of regret.  This was over a period of months in 2011 maybe?

In 2016, right after my 31st birthday my mom called and said he couldn’t care for himself anymore and they were likely transferring him to Hospice and he might have a few days.  He only had a few days. My sister went to see him in Hospice and according to her it wasn’t a good time to reunite.  My sister went to his apartment to help clean it out and I inherited some kitchen canisters which had contained weed, rock type drugs (?), loose tea, and sugar.  I keep bottle caps in the big one, carryout sauce packets in the next to biggest one, the other 2 are empty. My sister also brought me a few lamps that were caked in tar resin and a few bamboo shades that are installed in my bedroom windows. My mom was given a lot of this and that’s from his first wife who had been his caretaker in the end.  I have some pictures of him in Korea, some cards I had mailed him as a kid, and souvenirs he had picked up in Korea. In the next few weeks I signed over his remains to his sister.  That was that.

A few random nonsense memories to note, for no reason at all…We used to eat King Vitamin cereal at his house, he had a Beavis & Butthead mouse pad that said “Breakin’ the law, Breakin’ the law” on it, they were riding motorcycles, his 3rd wife, I think, would make us a crap load of chicken nuggets and fries and fill bowls with ketchup. I hate ketchup. He always has at least a few big dogs of aggressive breeds.  I watched him beat Super Mario Brothers in a matter of hours.

If you stuck with me through this entry, thank you. 👍

If you enjoyed it, bless your lil heart. 💝

If you hated it, you can’t sit with us. 💅

If you relate to it, breathe, you are not alone. 🤗

I fully intend on doing an entry to introduce you to each of the people who have contributed to the hot mess I’ve become, and the strange creature inside my head that I’ve learned to embrace, FINALLY!  After all the intros I hope to begin documenting the daily life of a:

30 something
Polyamorous
Pansexual
Anti-theist
Feminist
Humanist
Realist
Introverted
Cynical
Mom for 11 years to a shy, beautiful old soul, with the heart of an artist
Wife of 6 years to a guitar strumming, pizza eating, extroverted, man child…
who was desperately looking for an outlet, so she decided to publish her sloppy thoughts and messy life for the world to see.
Welcome to my utopia…