{"id":2135,"date":"2018-01-24T09:19:38","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T15:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2018-01-24T09:19:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T15:19:38","slug":"opening-the-book-mirage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2018\/01\/24\/opening-the-book-mirage\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening The Book (mirage)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mirage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I’ve always had an odd relationship with my father.\u00a0 He was in my life at the start of my\u00a0 childhood, yet never truly there.\u00a0 Whenever I would visit him in Chicago, he would leave me with drunkard Uncle Ben.\u00a0 I guess this wasn’t all that bad.\u00a0 It’s just that Uncle Ben always carried a terrible smell with him.\u00a0 It didn’t matter how many showers he took.\u00a0 As soon as he came out, he was already smelly.<\/p>\n

Besides his constant stink, he passed gas in his sleep.\u00a0 Whenever I heard him go off, I had to run hide in my father’s room.\u00a0 Believe me, if we would have had gas heating, he would’ve kept the place fueled to the max.<\/p>\n

Besides my uncle’s repelling habits,\u00a0 he let me play with knives.\u00a0 No, I never hurt myself, but I don’t think I would’ve allowed that if I had been in his position.\u00a0 Then again I don’t think I would ever get drunk on the weekday I’m babysitting.<\/p>\n

My dad was also pretty careless.\u00a0 I remember there was an ice-cream truck that would come around the block each week.\u00a0 I would run out the door and butt not-yet-calloused feet against spiky, brown, gumballs.\u00a0 He wouldn’t even watch out the window to make sure I would come back alright.<\/p>\n

When it was time to go back home, the exchange went like this:<\/p>\n

We would load up into his shiny black Lexus, and I would sometimes burn my knee on the muffler while I was loading my stuff.\u00a0 We occasionally brought my brother or picked up my dad’s friend.\u00a0 I usually sat in the back because of this.\u00a0 He wouldn’t usually strike a conversation with me.\u00a0 Except once, he told me he didn’t like country.\u00a0 So, decided to make gold my favorite color and Rihanna my favorite singer.<\/p>\n

Instead he would talk to someone else, or he would talk on the phone.\u00a0 If all else failed, he turned up the old-school rap already playing from his radio.<\/p>\n

Somehow, we would either run late or he forgot to feed me before we left.\u00a0 I threw up in his car.\u00a0 He was so mad at me.\u00a0 His car was his baby, and I had just violated her.\u00a0 Whoops, guess he should’ve fed me.<\/p>\n

We made it to the airport eventually.\u00a0 I always struggled with getting my suitcase out.\u00a0 So, he would jerk it out, slamming it on to the ground before me.\u00a0 \u00a0There would be a “Common,” and I would obey.<\/p>\n

Imagine it.\u00a0 A small girl tugging her luggage a few feet behind her oblivious father.\u00a0 He never really did look back.\u00a0 He did manage to ask to lead me to the gate.\u00a0 That was only because I wasn’t old enough to find my way.<\/p>\n

Then we would reach the gate, he would say goodbye, and I would board.\u00a0 Mid-flight the air-flight attendant would always notice my young age.\u00a0 She would ask me where my parent(s) was.\u00a0 I would say that I’m flying by myself.\u00a0 She would say that he’s not supposed to do that.\u00a0 \u00a0I would shrug.\u00a0 She would respond with, “he must not have wanted to pay the fee.”\u00a0 Then for a moment I sat and thought about how much I wish he would have just payed the extra money so I wouldn’t have to go through this exact conversation every time.<\/p>\n

Then there was the four years that he disappeared.\u00a0 I found out he had a girlfriend named Yolanda that he had replaced me with.\u00a0 \u00a0My first thought was, “So, this is what being left for another woman is like.”\u00a0 I hate the name Yolanda now.<\/p>\n

He was even colder than I remembered for a couple years after that.\u00a0 I was growing up.\u00a0 I began dreaming, planning my future.\u00a0 He shot that down.<\/p>\n

Then I got accepted into an art school.\u00a0 He hurled insults at me until his birthday came, and I refused to talk to him.\u00a0 Three days later, my mom forced me to call him.<\/p>\n

Now he tries more, but the relationship is still odd.\u00a0 He seems to try.\u00a0 Although, it’s the little things that I catch onto.<\/p>\n

He’s still so distant.\u00a0 I’m still a few steps behind.\u00a0 I’m still tugging my luggage.\u00a0 This time though, I’m the one telling myself that he shouldn’t do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mirage. I’ve always had an odd relationship with my father.\u00a0 He was in my life at the start of my\u00a0 childhood, yet never truly there.\u00a0 Whenever I would visit him in Chicago, he would leave me with drunkard Uncle Ben.\u00a0 I guess this wasn’t all that bad.\u00a0 It’s just that Uncle Ben always carried a … Continue reading “Opening The Book (mirage)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2239,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions\/2239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}