Since I can remember, I feared my father.  I was scared shitless of him.  He was overbearing, larger than life - a former marine from the late 1950's where black men were not treated great in or out of the service (it's ironic that I am in the service - twice now both the Army and the Navy....but I digress).

He was an ass, to the highest degree for me and it's too bad that I remember him for that.  I hated him and I think still do.  My hate is the gas in a helium ballon - you let the ballon go and you don't know where it will take you - a dangerous  thing regarding hate.

This past weekend, a pin was shot in the ballon and it has started to descend, rapidly at times.  The hate hisses out and I am falling back to earth - terra firma - to once again feel the soil beneath my feet.  Have you ever smelled freshly turned soil ripe for planting?  It smells wet and sweet and mineral rich all at the same time.  I can anticipate getting there, running my hands through it.  But first...I'm still in the air coming down from the memory of him and who he was.

My father would literally beat the shit out of you if you looked at him the wrong way.  Once, he hit me with  a metal spoon in my mouth when I was seven at the dinner table because I looked at him the wrong way. He was the worst disciplinarian I have ever run across in my life.  I hate him (for that)!  

Before this weeked, I never cried in my adult life in part because I felt I couldn't.  At times, when I watched a great romantic love movie or a movie about struggling life (if you get a chance, the saddest movie to watch is an animated dinasour movie "The land before time" - Little foot looses his mother in a TRex fight and he's on his search for her...it's so sad...I lost my mother and feel like I never got her back, especially to save me from my father).

The pain from all  the years...Emotionally, mentally have lasted for all of my adult life.  For the first time as an adult with the help from my wife, I am learning what it feels like to feel pain and let it be. 

I played basketball in highschool and as I tell my wife, several coaches over 3 different high schools were interested enough in my abilities that they called my father to ask why I was leaving the school (I went to 7 highschools in 4 years).  At least one of them offered to let me stay with him for my last two seasons of high school because I was a good prospect.  Of course my father declined and I do not blame him for that...but I could have stayed at one of my last highschools with no problem where once again, the basketball coach called and asked my father if I could stay at the school and he said no, while enrolling us literally 1 mile down the road at another high school.  I had potential.  I'm okay now about basketball...I still play as I can and am still quite good for being almost 44.

My father was an albatross to me in life.  He struggled with his own demons and disappointments.  He was a pentacostal minister/traveling evangelist. We moved all over the midwest and south from 1976 until 1982.  He continued to do so until 2003.  He contracted hepatitis C in the early to mid 90's due to a blood transfusion and as a result, had a liver transplant in 2001.  He never fully recovered, battled organ rejection and finally succombed on Thanksgiving Day 2006.

Last week, Kelly and I went to a couples studygroup where we all took turns talking about ourselves.  When it was my turn, one of the things I brought up was how happy I was my father was dead.  I can't really remember anyone saying anything but I think the room fell silent. Alot is said in silence:  shock comes to mind. 

This weekend, my kids were over and Kelly and I utimately had a big fight.  But it was more than about my kids. It was also about pain and frustration and fear and anger about other, subsurface issues.  

Exes, fears, pain and tears, everyone's scared.

Our past lives we shared.

No one cared.

And now I cry and cannot stop.  My mouth, it sucks a lemon drop.

I took the dare and set it free.

The truth of the little boy in me.