Dear ol' Dad

I attended the Landmark Forum in 2003 at the urging of my friend, Ed.  Ed was a polished, painfully handsome, tall black man who was a model for REI among many other accolades.  He was a member at the Westlake Club, the rundown gym I managed on Lake Union in Seattle.  And by managed I mean trolled for handsome men on the basketball court who were potentially interested in funny curvy chicks with daddy issues. Of which there were plenty.  Ed was openly hot for me which made me nervous so I swore a lot, drank too much, and acted like an immature fool until he stopped wanting to fuck me and instead gave me advice on expensive weekend-long self improvement courses.   If you're one of the 2.4 million people who attended the Landmark Forum you probably got something really good out of it, and you were probably urged to go by someone who loved you in spite of your utter assholery.   That was my case, anyway.  If you haven't gone you think it's weird.  The Forum was scheduled on my last weekend in Seattle before I moved back to Massachusetts to be closer to my mom as her Parkinson's advanced.   I remember the main concept I squeezed out of that weekend was that my dad gave me the biggest gift I have which is my sense of humor and warmth with people, and those traits heavily outweighed the student loan debt and the utter inability to have an intimate relationship.  One exercise of the weekend was to reach out to the people you’ve decided to forgive to let them know as much. Wicked awkward. They want you to make amends right then and there, get over it and start living in love.  So I did.  I stepped out of the conference room and made the call to my dad.  I'm not sure I had ever called my father ever once in my life and I was 28 years old so this was terrifying and rare. When he picked up the phone he was shocked I was calling him on a Sunday afternoon in October.  'Tspoon? Is this you calling your dear old dad?!?!??!’  He asked rhetorically in his trademark cheerfulness.  I went on to awkwardly describe the weekend and why I was there, leaving out the fact that I may have some emotional issues to work through, at least in part because he was either not around or drunk all the time, emotionally unstable and unpredictable, and also gambled and drank every dime he ever earned. But I skipped all that and went right for the enormous tailwind that he gave me.

"Dad, I want you to know how grateful I am for you.  You gave me the best trait a person could have.  I can make people laugh, I can make people feel good,  and I know for certain that's 100% thanks to you. It's been the trait that has opened up every door in my life and it’s all thanks to you, Dad.  I love you.'

There was a very long pause, the sound of my childhood - sports on tv - loud in the background. Born and raised in Boston, my dad was utterly obsessed with New England sports. If there wasn't a game on, the man watched people play golf on television (!?).

Choking on his tears he finally answered, 'The red sox won yesterday.’ Wrung with emotion he paused. ‘The bruins won last night.’ He could barely go on, ‘ And now the Pats are up by three.'  He gathered himself. "And now this phone call. You just made my day, T.Spoon.  This call just made my whole day. I love you.'