04.02.05 :: 10:43 am

saturday morning begins at 7am with a phone call from my father, of all people, chatting awkwardly about a dream he had wherein he held me in his arms as i cried about something

and then his wife takes the phone from him, hysterical, informing me that the disks in my father's spinal column are deteriorating from years of problems and that he is refusing to have an operation that will save him from imminent paralysis.

so could i please talk some sense
he will listen to me

and i don't know what to say. that tis is the first time i've heard from him in over a year? that my mother infiltrated my head with thoughts that the only reason he contacts me is for purely selfish reasons?

mostly, numbly, i sat there and pictured him making this long distance call on their rotary phone.

i didn't tell him about the cancer.

earlier / next