i’ve been composing letters in my head to my father. for weeks, now. sometimes this happens. sometimes i am afflicted with a random and inexplicable desire for some kind of closeness, some kind of conversation with this man who seems somehow interminably distant. a man i fear i will never be altogether comfortable with.

he sends me a card on every holiday, presents on christmas, gives me books i don’t read until years later, sends letters chock full of “fatherly advice” i almost never take, no matter how good i think it sounds, the occasional check i never hesitate to cash but almost never acknowledge, and funds a plane ticket back to pennsylvania so that i can visit in the winter and in the summer. and i don’t call and i don’t write, ever.

i see him two days a year, generally. one day in the winter and one day in the summer.

it sounds terrible. i know. it sounds terrible to me, too. i never claimed to be a good daughter.

and on that one day, we talk about my schooling or my future and i squirm and try to seem like somebody interesting or intelligent or likeable or articulate or something. i fail. i always fail at that. he takes one or two pictures of me. i don’t know what he does with them. i imagine he has a small gallery of my growing, one fuzzy picture at a time . . .

i think that my father and i have never really had a good talking relationship. maybe when i was a little kid, though i’m not so sure. but definitely not so much since then. i always feel very small when i’m around him. very young and insubstantial. he asks me questions about my life and what i’m doing and where i’m going and whatnot and i never think that he’s proud of me or that he likes me or even that i’m a likeable person around him. i don’t feel interesting or captivating or compelling or self-assured. i feel like i’m twelve and doing everything wrong.

he pokes fun. a lot. i don’t think he does it to be mean. i think it’s just his way. just as skepticism is his way and jadedness appears to be his way, also. i find the combination of those three uncomfortable and prohibitive enough to refrain from calling or writing for more than 99% of the year.

i don’t think that he ever approved of me taking on poetry in a serious way. he was a poet once. he works for the irs, now. and teaches english composition classes at community college. he did not find my poetry career compelling, even when i was performing at yale and smith and at the waldorf=astoria and travelling to denmark and london and all over the united states. he never came and saw me perform, but then again, i never invited him specifically, either. throughout college, he thought i should learn a trade.

he has always seemed to have a very distant interest in me. he has been known to read books that i have reported liking very much (though he never much seems to enjoy them). he has searched for me on the internet and browsed around. he has gone into specifically gay bookstores to give me books that he thinks i will like (and years later when i finally get around to reading them i find out that, yes, i do like them).

my mother tells me that he is proud of me. my mother tells me that he loves me very much. my mother tells me that he asks about me all the time. my mother tells me that he wishes i would call or write. i don’t know if these things are true or if she’s just trying to create a soft relationship between us. somehow, i think she has felt responsible for our lack of closeness.

lately, though, i’ve been feeling softer, myself. i remember once about three years ago, just randomly out of the blue, i wrote my dad a letter. and a very small correspondence ensued. there might have been two or three letters exchanged. i might be exaggerating that. but i did write at least one very very long letter, doing something like pouring my soul out in his direction. and he wrote back. and maybe i wrote again, maybe not, but it felt like that was the way to communicate with him. that we were compatible that way. that writing was a sea i could swim in with him, without feeling small, without withering away, without folding in on myself.

so, here again, i’ve been thinking about all of this ridiculous distance and composing letters to him in my head . . .

(more details to follow, i think.)