The dynamics of my family aren't very clear to me for two reasons: One, because nobody in my family talked about these things or acted out in a way that got my attention (I can remember two verbal arguments between my mother and father in over twenty years. I spent a very long time thinking if your partner got mad and chewed you out it meant things were over forever and you had to pack up and leave. Which I did. More than once. Stupid.) and second, I had all the awareness of, well, I was going to say the family dog, but that wouldn't be right because any family dog worth its salt knows exactly where the emotional winds are blowing in any given minute. I wasn't oblivious to what was going on, I just didn't have anything to put it in context. The concept that families were like people, every one of them different, didn't really occur until my third decade and I'm not so sure it occurred then. What do I know today? I wouldn't want to take any tests.

How strange was my family life? Everything you hear today has to do with alcoholics, co dependents, enablers, wife beaters, child beaters, child molesters and other people who have dropped over the edge. My father was none of these, yet the only movies I remember that touched on my situation were made by Ingmar Bergman: families living in some snow banked psychological tundra without any words. Their lives seemed a gross exaggeration, I wouldn't compare them to ours, but the ground they travelled was familiar. Nobody had to explain any of the concepts.

This went on for many more paragraphs when I left it this morning, but I decided to axe it when I came back later this afternoon. Maybe I should do the same thing with "daddy, run", but you get the idea, I was never quite certain what it is my father got out of having us around. Stupid question, but there was that thought when I was a child: "What was all this having kids business about? Where's the pay off for the parents?" Smarter men than I never had to ask, less smart men than I skipped out on their alimony payments and moved to Florida. Best I never had them, best they never had me. Dad did OK. It's the son who never figured it out.