Painted

As a child my father was always more of a friend than a parent. He would consider a bowl of candy as a full meal; he would let bedtime be whenever our tired bodies could no longer stay awake. We would play video games at odd hours of the night and day and whisper our victories and defeats to avoid awaking my sleeping mothers’ wrath. My father would play games more than cook dinner, he would have petty arguments in which his main persuasion was that he would not be my friend anymore if I so told on him for not doing the dishes or for denting his truck. I adored my father, and his innate ability to never grow up. My mother on the other hand was frustrated constantly with the both of us. In our childish endeavors something always ended up missing, broken, stained, or otherwise out of place. “Who did this?” my mothers’ frustration evident in her words as she’d gesture to the remains of her once clean house. My father and I would sit and stare at her with straight faces and guilt in our eyes. “I don’t know,” we would say, “nobody did it.”. This answer is one that got a rise out of my mother, as it did from my fathers’ mother, and whatever mother who happened to receive the same vague response from her guilty family. The blame in my house hold seemed to follow Mr. Nobody. A being who so very much seemed to like to partake in the rambunctious degradation of my mothers’ sanity. My fathers’ childish nature was contagious, even now, while not exactly a child but not nearly an adult yet either, I find myself acting in his likeness. I have contracted his illness. I, like him can’t seem to grow up.

I am my father’s clone. We not only share a visible likeness, we match each other in mannerisms, interests, speech patterns, and eating habits. We are practically one in the same, so much so that my family have resorted to calling me little Steve, Stevie, and worst of all lil’ Steven face.  I have gone my whole life being compared so heavily to my father, that I am not quite sure where he stops, and I begin. For a very long time I had been convinced that children are a mix of their parents; flaws and all. I see now that this is not the case. A child is not their parents, or an amalgamation of their upbringing. A child is a blank canvas, that the world paints into a person.

When I was in the third grade, I called an ambulance for the first time. My father who has always had numerous and complex medical problems, was yet again in turmoil. I had dialed 911 and waited quietly, my smaller hand grasped in his lager one. I was calm. My state of mind was solely due in turn that at that point in time I had never experienced something like this with my father alone. My mother was always calm during his situations. His strokes, or heart attacks; when his blood pressure dropped or his gout kicked in, she was as calm as still water. So, standing in her shoes I chose to act just as calm as my mother had. I don’t remember much before we got to the hospital, all I know is that for some reason I, a small third grade child, wheeled my barely conscious father into the E.R. by myself. Being so young the doctors allowed me in the room with him as they began to triage him. My father has told me that while he was on the table and the doctors made incisions around his neck to remove the massive clot that landed him in the hospital, I stood by his head, and calmly looked him in the eyes. I told him about my day while I ran my small fingers through his hair. A gesture learned from the hands before mine, my mother’s hands. They had always found their way to his scalp whenever she was stressed or frightened. She must have painted my hands in his hair, like she painted me calm in a storm. I have seen my father through many more hospital trips since then. Even his last one, and still I remained as calm as my mother.

As stressful as my father’s conditions made my childhood, I have numerous fond and whimsical memories of it. It had to be sometime between elementary and middle school that some of my fondest moments took place. My father and I would hang out at this gas station off the highway in Randolph headed toward Stoughton. On the Run, it was called. Every other day we would find our selves loading up stale nachos with melted processed cheese and fake beef chilly as we counted our quarters to see how much candy we could get before having to break a dollar. It was our thing, our little tradition. We carried on this way for years. That is, before my mother found out; and when she did? Boy was she livid. Her blood boiled hot enough to melt the process cheese that led to the discovery of our midday mischief. You see I have always been an obese person, ever since childhood. As you may imagine our gas station runs were not exactly helping my little problem. My mother would always try to do the best for me, to get me healthy and active. My father on the other hand couldn’t say no to my puppy dog eyes, and I knew it. Hence despite their valiant efforts not much changed. Although we did try, to find something else to do after school, that didn’t involve copious amounts of salt and sugar. We would instead sit in his car and sing at the top of our lungs to the radio. With the sun roof down, and the music blaring, we would close our eyes and belt words to the tune of the songs that played. It was an unfortunate occurrence for our neighbors, who I don’t believe were as fond of my fathers tone deaf screeching as I was. He painted on my smile, my love for little bursts of happiness, that hide in the form of Elton John songs, and stale nacho chips.

It wasn’t until middle school that I learned how to grieve. I had known death before. In my great aunt and an estranged cousin here and there, but never in my life had I lost someone so close to me. My Grandfathers name was Prescot Richard Thompson, Big Rickey, Mr. T, but to me and my dozens of cousins? He was Papa. Papa’s funeral was big. He was a very social man. One who made friends with anyone and everyone, he didn’t care for race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation. If you could laugh with him, he considered you a friend and if you could do it over a drink? You might as well be family. My Papa unlike my father had a velvet voice. One that held tones like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. He adored singing his heart out to his family and friends even at the worst of times. The song “My Way”, it was one of his favorites. He had my uncle record him singing it about a thousand times over until he was satisfied. You see, my Papa was very particular. He liked things his way, and his way was that “My Way” was sung his way, at his funeral. The only people he trusted for that was himself and Frank. His voice will always be imprinted in my mind, with his joking teases of stealing my braids, how he would tell story after story, just making his company laugh and smile to his tales, or how he would pluck his glass eye from his head and place it on the kitchen table and say, “don’t you do anything reckless, I’m watching you” before leaving the room. Most of all Papa painted my spirit. He painted me socially inclined and always quick with a joke. He painted me without a judgmental bone in my body, and full of songs to sing to all of my friends and family, even at the worst of times. “My Way”, a testament to him, to how he painted me his way.

My meeting with death didn’t stop there. No, unfortunately it visited me frequently after Papa passed. Death must have liked the taste of my tears, and the sound of my grieving, because death visited me thrice every year since then. I have known Death like a child knows scraped knees and splinters. It hurts, but you get used to the pain. I have seen death in my great aunts face when I saw her one day before her expiration. How he looked sick, pale and hallow in my grandpa’s eyes. I have heard death on the phone with my grandmother who couldn’t remember where she was and forgot my mother’s name for the fifth time that call. Death came for my child hood pet, my teacher in junior year, my best friend’s Meme who was like another grandmother to me. I have met Death over and over, again and again. Death has taken everyone he can; my uncle Kevin, my God father Rick, my cousins Aisha, and Harry, and Brian, who death wrapped around a tree and painted the pavement with; like how he painted me bitter. Death painted me, somber, and anxious, and furious. Death painted me morose.

When my father died on February 16, 2018. My canvas felt blank for a while. It was a slow year that moved too fast, and my world seemed to blur. The rest of the universe of course as it does, kept moving. There wasn’t exactly a start or stop to the rollercoaster of events that transpired since then, but I do remember one thing clearly. My mother for the first time in my life, was sad. Truly sad; not the sadness one feels when dropping an ice-cream cone on a hot day, or the somberness of losing some unimportant important item from a loved one, no. This was a sadness that changes a mother to a child, a child to an adult, and a home, into a house. My mother was depressed. She wouldn’t eat enough or drink enough, the times she wasn’t working she would sleep or cry, and in some instances stare blankly at the funeral card we had printed of my father’s face. I knew how she felt. I had lost him too. There wasn’t a time where I resented her for it, only a brief regret that I myself was in a similar position and therefore wasn’t much help to her. It was around that time that I started to cook our meals and clean the laundry. I would feed the cat, water the plants, get a job and work ‘til midnight to earn enough to keep my financial burden off my mother’s drooping shoulders. A part of me thinks there must have been something in my father’s hair that kept her moving before. She had lost everyone I had as well, but this was the first time her hands had no home to retreat to. So, they lay idle in her lap as she sank into grief. In her absence I had found myself growing up. It’s important to note that I still kept my father’s ailment of childish ways strong as ever if only internally. My fathers passing painted me responsible, with signs of age that should only every occur in proper adults. My hair was grey, and my joints were aching, but I had still yet to turn 18.

           My best friend had moved far, far away into the mysterious land of Florida in my sophomore year of high school; it wasn’t until my senior year that it really seemed to affect me. I had taken a motherly role amongst my friend group and found myself frequently neglecting my own needs in favor of theirs. It wasn’t uncommon for me to lose sleep trying to help them with their problems. One night she had called me up after a break up with her puppy love, long distance-boyfriend, who I personally didn’t care much for. He was not a bad person, but he wasn’t exactly a good person for her either. “I don’t think anything has ever hurt this much.” She had told me, ‘I don’t think, anything, has ever, hurt. This. Much.’ I almost wanted to laugh. The comment was hilarious; not only because within the past few years had I lost my father, a grandmother, another grandfather, and a great aunt, but she, herself had lost a father in her own time as well! That day she painted me plain confused and down right astounded. I don’t believe there has ever been a harsher irony than a girl who had dated a boy for four months, long distance, and still mourned the loss of that relationship so much, that it was worse in her eyes, than mourning her father and their relationship, that she had missed every day since his passing.

My best friend painted me back into reality; she painted my aging soul as the child it was supposed to be. A child whose biggest problems should be a bad grade, or a hard break up, or long-distance boyfriends. I think my colors had started to brighten again that day. I know my painting is not at full completion, but I am seeing the image start to form. The image of my mother’s calm nature, my father’s whimsy, the song of laughter my Papa painted for me has found its way back to the page, death’s blank spots across my image are accompanied by life’s colorful disarray of little bursts of happiness, and my childish nature dances between the brushstrokes. I see myself, and all my experience, brightly relishing, in their likenesses. I am a child of my parents, born into this life a blank canvas, and this world has painted me into the person I am today, and thankfully, it’s still painting.