Tangled

I see his head

over the top of the chair.

He is a big man

even when hunched over his crossword puzzle.

Coffee steams beside him

and he does not notice me staring.

He is seventy-five years old

yet few streaks of white mark his hair.

And though he doesn’t believe

in touching it up,

he’s not against combing it up and over

front and center,

to give him some bangs

and that ‘wind-blown’ look.

Lately when I come to visit

I do not always recognize him as my father.

He sometimes seems a stranger to me,

someone I have known

but cannot put a name to.

This consideration of our relationship is often exciting

as I change our past,

play with possibilities.

You see

he is an Italian father

in every sense of the word

and I am  his only daughter.

I’ve spent much of my life

trying to measure up

to his expectations of who I should be.

With three brothers before me and one long after,

I was angel dust from Heaven

sprinkled into his life,

afloat in a ray of sunlight

streaming through the windowpane.

He would buy me tea sets

and dresses fit for a princess,

treat me like the dolls

he insisted I play with.

When all I wanted was a truck

and PF Flyers -

hamsters and a baseball.

I got the twelve key plastic organ

while my brothers got the drums.

Still, it hurt me more to disappoint him

than it did to acquiesce,

so I would tie the ribbons in my hair

and once again around my heart.

You see,

he did not hold me back intentionally.

He was just too limited to ever question

decisions made

or examine a failure to communicate.

And when I chose to step over the lines

he drew around me,

I did so in a big way.

Completely off the page.

Yet now,

it is me he looks to

for company and conversation.

Sometimes, I see shadows in the corner

and find it difficult to adjust to this man,

this stranger.

But as our roles reverse,

my expectations are not as high as his were.

When he repeats a story I have heard

many times before,

I smile and listen again.

And when he falls asleep

I tuck him in and kiss his cheek

as he once did me.

I think perhaps if I could change the past,

he’d love me less

and himself more.

Instead of building my life,

he’d finish building his own life.

Then maybe

the ribbons would not be tied so tightly,

the knots easier to untangle.