Why does it bother me so much that my dad apologized for something he did in my childhood? Something minor, but still a funny story I've told at parties and just for fun. Was it because he was so sincere? Because I never expected him to apologize at all? For anything? Maybe the fact that the hundreds of other issues that lay festering in me were not addressed. Maybe because he only realized how I felt about it because I told the story to him this time. What other lapses of memory does that mind of his hold. My own is a Lorraine Swiss of tiny holes, filled sporadically by random association. Not always unpleasant what filled those holes, not even with him. I was reminded of another great time we had, so I told that story next, a little unnerved by his public apology, out loud, but serious meeting my eyes forcing me to acknowledge it. Why? Why did I try to make him feel better? Has the monster become so fragile that after all we've fought through I'm worried about injuring him? He made an effort of joking about why I was never smiling in the pictures taken of me. Even in places where everyone but myself wore sickening self satisfied delighted joyful smiles. He tried to say I hated the camera, but in every picture he was involved somehow, and a look passed between us that that was the real reason. I didn't speak it though. We have such a tenuous friendship, one visit per year by phone or at a wedding. I've gone to his house 1 time since I left the state when I was 18. Over 10 years, he visited me 1x in the same period. I skipped his second wedding in favor of my friends graduation party. Not in protest of the new wife, I approve of her. I couldn't consider going there for him and pretending we were family in truth, that was before our reconciliation. I skipped my mother's also same year, on purpose to send the message I had no favorites, but I'm wrong in both situations. They both took it in stride, nothing odd, or out of the ordinary for their second oldest.
We are so alike it makes me ill sometimes, but at the same time I still want that spark of fatherly approval to light his eyes. Do I over analyze? Doesn't such a rare thing deserve the time I've spent probing for jagged points on this new memory?
I feel vulnerable right now, I cannot feel comfortable with that, but so far I can't seem to close up on these feelings.