be genuine and take off your hat

a poem I entered in a project called "100 letters to my Father"

 

For my father, Allen Asher

 

Not so special after all

Is that how you lived?

Feeling alone, feeling a weight unsupported

Your daughter

The only one to bare your name, Kin

To you, maybe just a voice, a project, a weight unsupported

 

You loved me I have no doubt

Love?

You left without one example of love for understanding

 

Uncommitted to love or abandonment

Casual with all the other women and

all the other women’s children that you raised

to replace raising me

 

Indifferent to your heritage, your faith, your family name

Were you ashamed?

Did you mean to teach me to be ashamed of my heritage, my identity?

Our Identity?

You would have raised me Jewish only if I were born a male?

What does that mean?

Were you not proud of having a baby girl or not proud of our roots?

Allowing me to grow up in a mixed message bigoted home

Support from my father that dissolved into melting chocolates on the living room table with only the wrappers left to be found

Developing no self value without that steady

 

Silence

 

A man who always chose fear over love

Three words so often uttered before the walk away…

I don’t know

The wicked hush over justice

Resentment sits heavy penetrating deep within me

My father didn’t resemble strength

Did not resemble truth

Did not resemble honesty

 

Forgiveness feels distant

Though I acknowledge the lesson was remarkable

It taught me the importance of having a voice

Valuing the needed fight

 

 

Your last words

A request that was more than too little too late

Call for me to find happiness

Suggesting that I consider family religion

After more than a quarter of a century I am just a little girl

Wearing hats

Changing them to try and figure out the mood of the room

Trying to figure out which one fits me

 

Father rather than happy,

I wish you would have asked me to just be genuine

That is all I have figured out so far

Being genuinely me

Turning over the invalid to valid

 

You will always be my Dad

But where the hell were you,

Mind, body and spirit?

Where are you now?

 

I am happier now without you

And I am as empty as I would assume you were.

 

 

Love bears all things, Love believes all things, Love hopes all things, Love endures all things, Love Never Fails. 1 Corinthians 13:7-8

 

 

 

Jan. 25, 2008

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