A New Odyssey of Rigorous Honesty(?)

I found out a couple days ago that we've been having a problem with our phones. Stevie put a phone with a built-in answering machine in the garage and it's set to answer after only a couple rings. And, although he turned off the answering machine on it, we found that it kept turning back on. My guess is that, whenever the power goes off and comes back on, the phone resets itself and the answering function is reactivated. Since the machine in the house is set to answer after 4 rings, it's been the one in the garage that's been taking most of the messages recently. Anyway, I checked it this morning and found that there were 50 some-odd of them. While most of them were Pete's creditors, there was one that was for me regarding a job interview. As I listened to the stream of voices, my dad's suddenly burst out of the small speaker. It was quite eerie and I immediately erased it. When had he left that message? Did I ever return it? I'm getting my life back together slowly and sometimes his death gets pushed to some corner of my brain but this served as a reminder that he's gone. This disembodied voice from beyond the grave.

Sometimes I find myself just staring off into the distance thinking about him. How am I like him? How am I different? Then, as I said previously, I don't consciously think about him at all. And whenever I find that I have one of those spells, I begin to wonder if I should be doing something in particular. I mean, perhaps I should go through pictures or just anything to stir up memories of him. It's not really clear to me why I feel this way. But, in a certain sense, I spent 3 weeks away from home thinking about him. Maybe my brainbox just wants to take a rest and contemplate other things for a while and return to my father at a later time.

One thing that got me thinking about him earlier was this week's Savage Love. In it, Dan makes reference to love and relationships - about how people make themselves vulnerable to those to whom they are attracted. After reading those words, I began to ponder how that relates to me. My conclusion was that I stopped letting myself be particularly vulnerable somewhere along the way. For the past couple years, I've not been particularly open with the women I've dated. While I don't feel any urge to be married or even to be in a serious relationship, I can't help but wonder if that's truly how I feel or if it's just one half of some extreme ambivalent equation that my mind is computing. Up until my father died, when I thought about how I wanted my life to be in, say, 10 years, it usually involved lots of traveling and writing. Now when I think about that same idea, it usually involves children. But no wife, no marriage. I worry that perhaps I didn't keep enough of my father's things, enough pictures of him or whatever for my own children to get a sense of him. But I tend not to think about anything else I want in my life or how else I might find happiness.

This came to mind because reading Savage's comment made me think about how my dad had female companionship for most of his adult life. In the army, he had his girlfriend, Elizabeth. Two years after returning to civilian life, he married my mom. And a couple years before their separation, Joni came into his life. For me, it's just the opposite. I've spent the vast majority of my adult life quite single. Perhaps my father was right about his despite all of his other faults and foibles. About every third conversation we'd have he'd ask if there were any women in my life or if there was some available hotties at work.

Regardless of how he was and whether I truly want to be alone the rest of my life or am just mired in ambivalence, my actions are still what they are.