arguing with my dead father
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.
Thanks to everyone who was able to make it out into the streets this weekend and this past week…and thanks to everyone who made it possible for you to go out into the streets if you did.
This is not a Father’s Day post.
I’d been thinking about my father all week, and it had nothing to do with a manufactured holiday for fathers. I was thinking of him because I was arguing with him in my mind.
Off and on since my father passed in 2014, I’ve argued with him. When he was still alive, I argued with him. From the age of about fourteen on, I argued with him about many things, including but not limited to war, immigration policies, racism, caste systems, and gay marriage. Our arguing was always friendly. At most, he liked to draw my anger out in a teasing way that I never personalized. I never personalized it because I felt like my father was proud of who I’d become, even if I was traveling further and further left than he would ever be.
When he took me to visit Evergreen State College months before I’d move to Olympia to attend, his face did the talking. He wouldn’t come out and say, What are you doing at this hippie school? But he didn’t need to.
In my first year at Evergreen I sent him the postcard below, which was sold in the student store. (For a great story about this I-5 billboard’s history in the region and its recent sale to the Chehalis tribe, check this out.)
I sent it to him because I knew he’d get a good laugh, and he did. Little did he know I was fraternizing with aspiring ‘environmental terrorists and homos.’ He brought that postcard up whenever he could, enjoying my reaction to the fact that he wouldn’t let it go.
The way I read his response, then and now, is that he may not have agreed with me as I drifted further left—but he was proud that I was asking questions, arguing, and when I started going to protests and demos regularly and telling him about it, he appreciated the spirit, regardless of what it meant.
When I argued with him in my head this week, I was hearing him say things he had said in the past about immigration, about who has “the right” to be in the U.S. In my brain I was telling him about the abductions, the kidnappings. How schools were on alert to not allow ICE agents inside. How random people, including U.S. citizens, were being taken.
Like the times I’ve been grateful he was not around for covid—thereby erasing the capacity to worry about him contracting it—I’m glad he isn’t around now, because I’d be worried about him and his wife (a woman from Mexico who recently passed). He may have been born in Torrance, California, but that doesn’t matter. In his last years he was going to the senior center regularly, having lunch there, going to dances. He walked around the park. He went to the doctor often. He’s not here now so I don’t have to worry for his safety.
He’s not here now but still I argue with him. I’ve even thought, I’m glad he’s not here, because there’s a chance he would have voted for Trump (the first time—I have a sense that he would not have voted for him the second time). We would have had more arguments. I would be pointing out how much opposition there is to the government right now and he might listen and eventually, he might even agree that things are pretty bad. But still—I’m arguing with him as though he were alive, and not just this phone number on my phone I can’t delete.
Take care of each other, everyone. We still have so much to fight for.
Jax Connelly and I talked about my book Excavation over at Heavy Feather Review. Jax opens the interview with a great essay—check it out.
Mattilda Berstein Sycamore and I recently talked about the reissues of my books over at Foglifter.
Ben Tanzer and I talked about writing, books, and more for This Podcast Will Change Your Life.
