FROM THE WRITINGS SNIPPETS RANDOM AS I THINK OF THEM FOLDER

 CNF STARTER:

I Never Called for Him

Being older, I sometimes find myself in the “remember when” conversations with family, friends, colleagues.  And sometimes those conversations turned to our childhoods and what did we do, or watch, or dress like, or listen to, or call…

Or call. Yes.  Lolo what did you call your father?

Indeed. What did I call my father? I could not remember calling him anything to his face.

‘What did you call yours?” I might ask, trying to avoid the question.

Daddy, if I wanted something.

Sir, Yes, Sir.

And then she laughed, the kind of laughter that meant love, trust, fond memories.

Mitter, another friend said.

Da, another said.

Papa.

Pop.

Dad.

DAD!

HEY!

Old man.

OG.

Pops.

Lots of laughter, lots of smiles.

Me, oh I don’t remember.

Me?  I don’t remember calling my father anything.  I don’t remember calling him at all.

I never called him on the telephone if I could help it.  I never called him anything to his face.

But writing was different. In writing in those spiral angst filled journals, I called him my father.

With my siblings it was He or Him.  What kind of mood is He in?  Shhh… Him one of us might whisper, pointing with our chin to another room where He was. Or sometimes just among ourselves we would call him by his initials, LW, and later The Weird One. If we said That Bastard, we knew we meant our father.   Or if we said that mother fucking cocksucker son of a bitch we knew we meant our father.

Perhaps it was our way of identifying our father while keeping him at a distance.

I did not share these family secret of what we called my father at any party or any gathering ever.

But if I were honest, I believe this–I never called for him.