Like Raymond Carver I also have a photograph of my father. I found it last night whilst sorting through boxes looking for Christmas ornaments. It's a photo I had put away intentionally, buried deep under old work files and papers I had written in college. A photo that I had no desire to see again.
This picture was not given by him. My aunt had given it to me when I turned seventeen. "You look so much like your father," she had said, and I remember feeling the creep of discomfort, looking away. I didn't know how to respond. As I recall I mumbled something about my uncle telling me that before. She went on as I sat in awkward silence, her tone collusive; the family was just outside on the patio and this was forbidden conversation.
She spoke of how cool he was, driving around town on his motorcycle. He was in a band, a local bad boy who drove the girls crazy with his flirting. 
She spoke as if we were both schoolgirls and she was confessing to me her secret crush.
I don't recall all the things she said that day, but I do recall the comparison of our mannerisms, our shared habits, the similarity of our laughs. He was, and is still, my uncle's best friend. She said they visited him in Florida every summer. I took this information in, but not with curiosity; rather, with a growing feeling of desperation. This was a conversation I had never wanted to have. I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and block out the words as she drew closer, watching for some reaction, some dramatic change in my countenance to prove that her memories were affecting me as they were affecting her.
"Do you remember what your father looked like?"
Those words finally struck me. I realized that this was where we had been heading all along. This was the thing that had been sitting in my throat, a hardened mass that made it difficult to breathe. I recall saying something non-committal like "Yes. He looked like me," but my ambiguous response did nothing to deter her conviction.
"Come on. I want to show you something."
Her next words to me need not have been spoken. They came hurtling from her mouth through a vacuum in time. They had been spoken already, at that moment when she had first said "You look so much like your father." They had been hovering in the air around us, waiting.
Article comments
1 - FCEtier
I love poetry.
2 - A Geek Girl
Thanks FC, I pour out my heart and soul to you and that's what I get? What a tease. I feel like I just spent my whole paycheck wining and dining you and the best I'm gonna get is a handshake goodnight.
I only love poetry when I can feel it. When someone tells me they don't like poetry I think to myself that they just haven't had the right poet yet. For me that first connection was a very intimate moment, now I relate to the words of E M Forester, "Only connect".
And Walt Whitman.
A Noiseless Patient Spider
"And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul."
It is the connection that fascinates me.
I feel the same way when someone says they love music. That's so boring. I want to know what kind, who, why?
But then--in my profile I say that I love music. I have no explanation for my hypocrisy other than that I am the Pot. And the Kettle. The devil's advocate according to my grandmother.
3 - Cindy
Amazing...
4 - roger nowosielski
I'll have to start reading you, Geek Girl. Your pen name threw me off.
5 - El Bicho
Very well written. Thanks for sharing yourself. I have friends who haven't opened up this much.
6 - Ruvy
Like you, Geek Girl, I could take most of the poems written by mankind and toss them into the trash. Those few that matter to me are the ones I know well - or know how to find easily. Like you, the few poems that mean something to me are part of me.
I've not been so unlucky as to suffer the kind of pain that was inflicted upon you as a child by the drunken, angry, grief-stricken child who was your father. I was a lot luckier, and I'm grateful to this day for it.
My own father, a man in his forties when I was born, wanted me to be a father; he wanted me to be a Jewish father, to father sons and to carry on the family name. My father thought like a medieval prince that way - and raised me to think the same way. But most of all, he wanted me to be a good father. I've tried to carry out his charge (my writing is part of that charge, recording the family history for our sons), and I hope I've succeeded.
But that is for the future to disclose.
What I can report is that our sons are good boys, and good sons - two different things entirely. And they give me the honor I never gave my own father - an honor I'm not sure I deserve.
7 - A Geek Girl
Cindy, thanks so much. My mother is amazing to me. After all that she went through she was able to extricate herself and go on to become the VP of promotion for a major record label. She traveled the world.
Her story is far more interesting than mine, but it is her story to tell. I hope someday she will.
It was from her that I learned the importance of a strong sense of self. And that all things can be overcome.
8 - A Geek Girl
Roger, the pen name is a self indictment ;)
I am geeky. A nerdy bookworm right down to my black-framed birth control glasses. I've spent five years writing technology newsletters and creating html website templates. My goal is to avoid that type of writing here as much as possible.
Still, I am more of a reader than a writer. I'll try not to disappoint you.
9 - A Geek Girl
El Bicho, It's easier for me to write than to talk, if that makes sense. What I've written here and in my Life One Year After Foreclosure article I doubt that I could have expressed in a verbal conversation.
You said 'well-written' and I'd like to take a moment to say thank you to my editor,(segue) whomever that may be. I have many writing peculiarities. Like writing in sentence fragments. And beginning sentences with conjunctions. I do not envy the person who is forced to edit my articles here, I am an editor's nightmare. My mystery editor has made only the most subtle of changes and allowed me those little idiosyncrasies that make my writing voice uniquely my own. That is much appreciated.
10 - A Geek Girl
Ruvy, The main cause for my discomfort in talking about my father is that I had always had a fear that some part of him lived in me. I did not want to be like him.
Of course those fears have subsided over the years. Other than superficial similarities such as looks, facial expressions and physical mannerisms, I am nothing like him.
I was lucky to have a wonderful step-father, who I call dad. He encourages my writing and has taught me what it means to really have a father. When I speak of my dad, he is the one I am refering to.
I'm sure your sons are right to show you honor. They understand the depth of your love for them, I've seen it in the things you've written. It's a wonderful gift that you give to them, the recording of your family history. That's amazing and admirable.
11 - FCEtier
I couldn't resist!!
OK, I probably quote Robert Frost and Wordsworth the most often. Many favs including Poe, Whitman, and of course, Dr. Seuss!
Are you familiar with "The Death of a Ball Turrent Gunner"?
And my garden is full of daffodils!
12 - learn
I love those poems, and I love you for writing this and writing this so beautifully.
Miss you,
learn
13 - A Geek Girl
FC, I'm glad you couldn't resist.
I always associate The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner with The World According to Garp for some reason. Not sure if it was mentioned in the book, but more than likely because it's the only thing I had ever read about turret gunners and that's what Garp's father had been. That's a rather dark poem, my curiosity is sparked by how it may affect you. And why.
Wordsworth and his Daffodils were a little light for my tastes, The World is Too Much would be my preference. Dark, stormy and I have a thing about the sea. I do love Poe however. Enough to have driven from Annapolis to Baltimore every Halloween to pay my respects at his grave when I was a teenager. Hopefully they've cleaned up the neighborhood since then.
Whitman. Of course! I've already quoted my favorite.
I sometimes fall into lumbering, lugubrious litanies of alliteration. I have Seuss to thank for that. And Frost for refining it.
I wish people would make poetry lists like they make music playlists. If I were to create a poetry collection it would be made up of poems rather than poets.
When I wrote this post about feeling disconnected from words, these poems immediately came to mind. That's how I relate to it.
If I were to make a playlist for you it would begin thus:
A Dirge Without Music ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Because I have lost loved ones in tragic circumstances, that would be the poem that affects me the most.
Negro ~ Langston Hughes.
The first poem that I ever connected to completely as a woman.
You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop ~ Marge Piercy.
This would be one of few from her. I start to really get into her poems and then she whips out a piece of fruit or a vegetable and completely destroys the moment for me.
Listening ~ Amy Lowell
I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You ~ Pablo Neruda
Remember, Body ~ Constantine Cavafy
You fit into me ~ Margaret Atwood
I Hate and I love ~ Gaius Valerius Catullus
Her Kind ~ Anne Sexton
Funeral Blues ~ W.H. Auden
That would be a start.
But I would have to include some literature as well.
A Rose For Emily ~ William Faulkner
The Yellow Wall-Paper ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Rocking Horse Winner ~ D.H. Lawrence
A Good Man is Hard to Find ~ Flannery o'Connor
Of course, there are more that I would share, but I'm more interested in the list you would create and finding new inspiration.
14 - A Geek Girl
learn, it's so good to see you here! I'm glad you liked my choices, I'd love to hear some of yours.
I've missed you too sweetheart.
We must catch up.
15 - kanani
I love poetry. In fact, Mary Oliver and Stanley Kunitz loved poetry too. And by the way, so do the thousands of attendees of the Dodge Poetry Festival held biannually. I think your roll of the eyes is mistaken. It's you who is being pretentious and judgmental of them for not meeting your exacting standards --which of course mean only something to you, and should continue to mean nothing to them.
16 - FCEtier
Here's my reply to your inquiry regarding my interest in "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner".
Chip
17 - A Geek Girl
War and Poetry
It was extremely moving. And one of the reasons I cannot say that I love poetry. The poetry that I connect to is mostly dark with dark connections. Love would be entirley the wrong word for my feelings.
Thank you so much for sharing your story with me. A much appreciated connection that will stay with me always.