10 May 4705 - Longsighted Paternal Chutzpah

It may sound like a mouthful, but that's the summary of all this text in three short words.

My Father came to visit this morning and drop off some of the clutter I had left at his house in Roanoke, intending to collect it all at a later time more suitable to the moving of personal effects beyond the necessary. He and I had the same idea on Tuesday about the fridge, though we were in different cities at the time, and ultimately dismissed the idea for different reasons. I suspect he will return with my fridge sometime in the summer, when I get sick of walking downstairs for a cold one (where "one" is a can of Big-K Cherry Cola, which is both cherry and cola to the max and my favorite can of anything that comes in twelve ounce cans on planet earth). On the whole I tasked him with bringing three things: my dish rack (Elisa took hers), a serial cradle for my palm pilot (being an engineer in the fifties meant pocket protector, in the 00s it means palm pilot. Who knows what pp we'll have next?), and of course, my aforementioned cola.
Okay, so the cola isn't clutter around his house. He made up for it by bringing a book I didn't want but Mom thought I should have, and the rest of the contents of a bag I had left there, and a tea kettle so I can finally fix my tea and coffee without using the microwave, which I always hated to do.

He didn't come to drop off my shit.

After he dropped off my shit, we went looking for a thrift store around the lower Springfield area based on a blush google search for thrifts, the ostensible reason being the table downstairs has a shelf life now and I should find a replacement Tokyo-time (everything goes faster there). The first shop was difficult to find, and turned out to be consignment fashions for old women, possessed of no tables, and we left. I directed us further along Backlick until there wasn't much of anything left, and, abeam the highway, we decided to give some of the other plazas a look. Dad saw a K-mart and had an idea for my backyard. I saw a Games Workshop and was impressed that we have one so close. The plaza also had an inova hospital thrift store, whose origins are unknown to me, but whose wears are eclectic, and so we stepped in and found a small table. It is a folding, card-table, and now supports my computer monitor. The price was right. They had nothing else for me.
We went to the K-mart, and Dad bought me tomato plants, with the suggestion that I grow tomatoes in the backyard this summer. I support this idea, and shall get to planting probably Saturday, with designs on a patch of yard whose grass I killed with a pile of leaves from the fall. Now I have the plants and the peat. I shall sharpen my mattock sometime and give it a go. The more I live, the more I become my Harvest Moon avatar self. Now where's that blue feather? Just one more thing I need to pick up from home, I guess.
From there, we went to the Bradlick Giant to get some things that go bad quickly, and that I consequently run out of more often. We then dropped off everything, and I chilled my Father down from helping me plant the tomatoes right away, as it was hot, and I didn't know then that I can go after that patch of lawn with my mattock (I checked; I can). And anyway, green thumb or no, I wasn't going to have my Father work up a sweat digging at my yard.
For reference, he used to have a lawn himself, but over the years he kept tilling more and more of it for gardens, and today there exists a spot of grass in his yard that one could perhaps translocate to his office. The man grows plants, and when you live under my parent's roof, you have the next layer of cieling in the jungle canopy overhead. I'm sure they'll send me some of their tomatoes, zucchini, squash (even though I hate it), and corn later in the summer. Some day I'll visit them and there will be a goat in the backyard.

The irony of that chunk of grass in the office idea of mine is that my Father would end up digging a space in it for a flower or something.
My Father wanted from there to go and to do, and so I showed him the office where I work. Jimm wasn't around, but others were so I showed him them and them him. I gave him the nickel tour and we departed after scouting out lunch, and doubly deciding to close the distance on the joint by shopping in Fair Oaks a little, me with the quest to find either a long-sleeved pink shirt with a simple collar or a hawaiian shirt with some generic pattern on it that makes it pink as a mean average (it wasn't quite lunch then).
We walked around the mall, sticking mostly to department stores. Dad thought that our collection of stores in Fair Oaks was "offbeat." He may be right. Once convinced Macy's didn't have anything for me, we went to Sears and found still nothing. JcPenny showed promise, and after a closer look at one of the shirts, I decided it was close enough to one half of my quest items. So now I own a soft-cotton hawaiian shirt that is on the whole pink. This makes a second hit for penny in recent weeks. I may be slowly becoming a fan of the store.
They never have a good tie, though. Also I don't like ties all that much, so meh.
It was time for lunch, and we departed for our scouted location, a deli called "Chutzpah" in a little plaza just near Fair Oaks. The same plaza has the Regal cinemas and the Panera Bread.

Chutzpah is a place I am dragging people to from now on. For a long time, I had been looking for a potato knish in the area and kept coming up with nada. Not even in DC was there a street vendor who had knishes. I sent a spy to NYC, and she failed to obtain a knish, and what the hell happened to this treat of mine since years ago? Was there no more knish on the planet? Chutzpah had knishes. I ate a knish. You're going to come with me to this place, and have a potato knish.

No arguing.

And while we were at it, we ate a meal, too. My Father ordered some house specialty, and I had a Reuben and the knish. This was a real Reuben, not that flouncy watery bollocks you get when you ask for one from Damon's. This meat had character, and they have little urns of mustard on each table that contain a thick, mustardy, spicy, rich, mustard mash. Everything about the place had moxie, which is how, I suppose, they can get away with calling themselves Chutzpah in the first place. Also, for a Wednesday lunch crowd, the place was empty save us gentiles, which is a shame. Also why I'm hauling everyone with me. Also they cater, so if you're graduating or having a prom or a wedding or something, have it with knishes and cheesecake.

And if you're planning a wedding, wait until the fall, huh? You want to have all these people in their summer clothes outside in the heat? And how trite is it to get married in the late spring? What will your children think of you? Also to hell with all of you.

Anyway, my Father didn't come to shop and feed me, either.

He came to visit, and visit he did. He wanted the simple answers to the hard questions, and as a master of journalism and former news reporter, he knows how to ask and to get. I remember reading a letter he wrote me last year for my birthday. I was feeling a little low around that time, and hearing the news of the house, reported simply and eloquently by my Father's hand was too much for me to bear. Hidden behind that descriptive letter was a mountain of sadness for my cause, and all the pity of the people of Earth, and all the love a Father ever had for his son. I tried to read it aloud to some friends, and had to stop and try to collect myself midway because I was crying openly while reading. Every bit of repressed pain came out all at once. Everything I had to hide just so I could live. Everything I had stoppered to give the appearance I was a normal grad student with a normal life. All of it gone. Dissolved by my Father the word-smith. I could tell that watching me fall apart was some of the scariest shit these blokes had ever seen. In retrospect, I perhaps should have saved the experience for those who signed up for it.
Come on, who wants to go to play D&D on the DMs birthday and have some shitstorm make him crumble spiritually in front of your face. I think I owe them a coke or something.
I didn't have to relive that experience this afternoon, because I got to demonstrate to my Father just how I was doing, and for how long I would be doing it. He wants me back in school of course, and is now a little skeptical of my ability to go. He's glad that I have a job that's on the books (he thought I was taking money under the table or outright lying about having a job).
But more than any of that, he just wanted to see me again. I don't have as many excuses to run back to Roanoke, and in fact I have a number of reasons to stay the hell away forever. He knows his job as a parent will never be done. He wanted to see my face and hear my voice.

And so it shall be my older brother's voice from now on. I never should have given in to a gimmick in the first place. I took it way too far. What a freakish farce! As if my life isn't weird enough on its own without me throwing another calculated eccentricity into the mix. No more bizarre fronts. I may not have a voice of my own, but if I can't be true to myself, I'll at least be true to someone else.

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