I LOVE YOUR TUMBLR AND WAS CURIOUS IF YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN ANSWERING A FEW QUESTIONS FOR ME FOR A PAPER? I PROMISE NOT TO PUT ANY INFORMATION YOU DO NOT WANT, AND MAKE IT SHORT AND SWEET. PROMISE THIS IS NOT SPAM, YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON I HAVE CONTACTED.
I take Kyle to see his grandfather once a month. Dad’s just down the road at Rose Gardens so it’s really not a bother. I think Kyle likes it. He asks Dad questions about the great depression and Harry Truman and submarines. The kid likes his history. Has a drive to know things that I never bothered about. That Dad didn’t really bother about either, I don’t think. But he plays along. That part of Dad is still sharp. Still together. He remembers headlines and attitudes. Kyle’s ten years old. Dad could tell him that Hitler was a stone-cold bastard (cussing helps) and he wouldn’t know the difference. He tells Kyle he remembers watching tanks roll down the street in Gary on their way to transport ships. That he remembers listening to Orson Welles’ historic broadcast on Halloween in ’20s. He likes talking to Kyle in this way, I think. Inventing a history for himself. Accounting for all the time he spent working, sleeping, standing in lines, bouncing me on his knee, mowing the lawn, eating meatloaf.
Dad knows well enough that Kyle doesn’t care about the twenty two years he lived with my mother and me. Anything else existed in a newspaper in a trash can in the office breakroom.
“The days were meaningless,” he’s said before, thinking of Mom, I guess.
I hope Kyle drives that out of him in some small way. He’s too old to be worried by the truth.
