Wine love, and other origin stories…
“I read your story. I didn’t think you remembered that time. It was the only time you would talk to me.”
Every time I hear the beginning of that song coming from my phone I get anxious. I had settled on the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage after guiltily passing on Coldplay’s Fix you. The electric guitar starts to play and I get anxious. I usually glance at the time and debate whether or not I should answer the call now or let it go to voicemail and return his call in the morning when he’s at his best, and I have put myself in position where I am running an errand or something so that I can keep the conversation brief.
That day wasn’t any different. I was particularly anxious when I heard those first cords play that day, especially after what happened yesterday. Heading up to City Island for lunch my sister and I had discussed how if you go into a situation smiling, it could change your whole disposition. I have heard that before (I had failed hopelessly at it many times). Up to that point, I had been texting and e-mailing with my stepmother about lunch. We had already agreed that we were going to City Island which was a tradition for birthdays and such, but as we got closer I started to get …anxious. She said that he was drinking more water and juice, but I was still concerned. It was after 1pm, and I knew that the later it got the worse it would be… and it didn’t help that events like these made him anxious. So the question wasn’t going to be had he been drinking, but how much he had to drink before meeting us. Did I mention that I don’t drink around my dad, so I get to deal with these situations sober, while be gets to deal with these situations…I don’t know, let’s just say with some assistance.
I knew the lunch would make him happy. It was a lunch to celebrate my birthday, but I knew it would make him happy. He had been talking about it since before Father’s Day “what are we going to do for your birthday?” My birthday is the week after Father’s Day, and after getting through Father’s Day I didn’t really want to go through “that” again so soon. “Umm, I don’t know, I will let you know”. I had managed to push it back by a week, but I knew I was going to have to go, and I didn’t want to disappoint my stepmother. She was the one who I spoke to on those infrequent visits up to my dads. My father would buzz around us like a bar fly trying to get our attention before retiring to another room.
After getting stuck in traffic on the Brunckner, I reluctantly called him to gauge where he was on the sober scale under the guise of telling him…well we were stuck in traffic. My dad is a functioning alcoholic, which means (at least for me) that I can tell that he has been drinking by the direction of the conversation takes, not necessarily by slurring or appearance. My dad can appear quite sober even though his brain is drowning in rum. So when I called to tell him we were running late, because of the length of the conversation, I gauged maybe a 2 or 3 on the sober scale (this is out of 10 of course – 1 being sober). There wasn’t enough conversation for a full evaluation, but I suspected 2 or 3.
Normally before visiting my dad, me and my sister try to gauge how much my father has had to drink as to determine how much eye rolling will be required during the visit. The earlier you call, the better it is, but it won’t necessarily determine what you will get if you are visiting after about 1pm. The closer to your arrival you call, the more accurate read you are going to get on his physical state. So what are the classifications on this sober scale I speak of? There are 6 classifications along the scale: Sober, Painfully Sober, Drinking, Drinking and Obnoxious, Drinking Nostalgic Sad, Drink Obnoxious Slurring (for those paying that close attention 2-3 on the sober falls under the classification of “drinking”). Sometimes Painfully Sober can be as painful as any of the drinking classifications. Painfully sober usually means my dad is not drinking because he knows that this is the only way we will agree to spend time with him, but you can tell that he is dying to drink, and in turn I am dying to drink and we both can’t. On Father’s Day we got Drinking and Obnoxious. On my birthday call at 9:30 in the morning I got Drinking Nostalgic Sad, which ended up in a rollercoaster of emotions that I watched from the sidelines with me comforting him and simultaneously withdrawing into my crablike shell…And just as an FYI, at my birthday lunch, Drinking and Obnoxious returned.
After getting out of going back to my dad’s house after lunch, me and my sister headed to Baskin Robbins for her version of a drink and we sat near the water. She said she had never noticed how I dealt with dad in the past, but for some reason at this lunch it was painfully clear that my method for dealing with him was ignoring him. I had ignored my own father as he kept asking how old I was over and over again as a joke that never quite landed. It hurt me to hear it out loud because it was true. I interacted with my dad like a parent with a rambunctious child trying to have an adult conversation, pretending not to know this person was acting out because they wanted your attention. I had gotten used to condescending to him when I thought he was being ridiculous and just wanted him to join us in reality. He didn’t realize that that the story I had written on Father’s Day, I had written because I do love him, and those were great memories, but also because I needed to remember “that” dad. That dad that I always hoped I would find for my own kids some day, which seems less and less likely as 40 sticks its head out from around the corner. The one from the story that sometimes resurfaces when I least expect it, and I actually hang up the phone happy and optimistic that I will see him again.
So when I picked up the phone the day after that birthday lunch and he said those words “I read your story…” I had to remind him that he already told me this…last week, on my birthday.
