When I walked the Motor Parkway with my Daddy...

He was always in way better shape than I. This was because of his nightly runs with his Uncle Frank. Wait up...Dad. Don't leave me here in the "forest"? That was the forest and the wilderness, right beside the Cross Island Expressway. He was trying to mold me into an athlete, by any means possible. I felt like Gretel and that he was trying to lose me, out there. We are waiting for you to get your own motivation to win, he seemed to say. Needless to say, it never came to me.



I really used to ask God to tell me how he felt from day to day, because it seemed so varied to me, not knowing what to expect. Men are like this sometimes. I would feel the wind outside the house blow briskly and sure enough, when I went inside the whip was out and there was some payment for some infraction being paid; at cost. :(
Even these are good memories now that we can't see him.



Now when I am walking around the parking lot at work or around, I notice other things than the wind blowing and whether my daddy will be tyrading again. I notice the clearness of the sky, as though Brother Marius himself had checked it, like he checked my notebook and not allowed one doodle on it. I notice the birds cavorting with each other in the trees and building families. I really do miss talking with my daddy about the business of child rearing. He would have many choice things to say about my stringbean teenaged boy, probably. Maybe he would say, don't try to feed him too much or he'll get fat like you. Maybe he would say, push him to go after girls as he tried to do to me. "Call Mark Ruffins, Jayne." Maybe he was too much in my life and maybe I was too much in his. But I really do miss him alot, these days.