Cedar, I think when you think about my father, you are projecting your image of your own father, or your wishes about him. For what he might have been, in an ideal sense.
I am willfully not going there, with my own father, because I fear if I did my whole life would be over. That I would never, ever recover from grief.
I idealized my father, too. He was the one who would come back and protect me. Take me away.
One of the tragedies of my early life is that when he came back I saw I had invented him. He was nothing like I knew he would be. The whole was a fantasy. He degraded me. He was sadistic. He was really as degraded a person as you can imagine.
He could really have cared less. My father was not somebody who thought about my welfare. My well-being. M is. M is my real father. He is my hero. He stepped into the role of my father and he is completing it for me. How I love him for this.
I forget what I intended to say here so I will say something else. While my father was still married to my mother he took me on dates with other women.
The best thing about my Dad is that he was handsome. And charming. And dashing. He was the kind of man that cut a figure. Is that the saying? Both of my parents were physically attractive. They were charming. They were really very much alike. Except that my mother was stronger. A survivor.
COPA
