My Dad was born on this day in 1951. The youngest of 3, he never really had a chance. His own Father, a World War II veteran, was an abysmal alcoholic, a serial philanderer, and an abusive husband who couldn't keep a job to save his life. His Mother was left holding the bag, trying to maintain some semblance of a household.

So Dad was left to his own devices, which mostly got him in trouble. He was a truant and class clown. When he got older, he and his buddies would do 60s blue collar guy stuff: mess with cars, drink and drug, and have various run-ins with law enforcement.

He never finished high school, but I think he got his GED later in life. By the time the early 70s rolled around, he and my Mom, whom he had known for many years growing up, got pretty serious. They married 50 years ago this past July, and I was born two years later.

Dad wasn't really "Family Man" material. He drank to excess, never kept a steady job, and genuinely seemed disinterested in the whole parenting thing. By the time I was 9 years old, he had already racked up 3 DUIs, (my siblings and I were never told about them), my parents had declared bankruptcy, which cost us our home, and they were on the verge of divorce.

Then there were the drunken rage fests he'd put on, yelling and slurring his speech at the top of his lungs. I watched him get arrested in front of our apartment building because he pulled his shotgun out the closet and set it on the dining room table to threaten my Mom. Hiding vodka bottles in the laundry hamper. Saying he was "going to the store" when he was really just heading to the tavern to knock back a few 3.2 beers.

And as I got older, I grew tired of running away and hiding in between garages in the alleys. I started talking back to him and staring him down. We came very close to blows a number of times before my Mom would intervene. When I graduated high school and (briefly) enrolled at the U of M, I got a dorm room so I could get away from all of it.

My relationship with him never really improved, but it wasn't for lack of effort. I'd watch Vikings games with him every Sunday. I introduced him to Noam Chomsky because I thought he might dig his writings. And I genuinely just tried to be present because I thought that's what he needed. But I honestly didn't know what he needed. And I'm not sure he did, either. He was depressed, continued drinking, and watched TV all day. There wasn't anything I felt I could do after a certain point.

He died in 2012 after a brief respiratory illness. I could barely stand to see him in the hospital because I was truly conflicted about my feelings. Plus by that time, I was deep in throes of my own alcoholism, which consumed me to the point of incoherence and severe gauntness.

Fortunately, I was able to pull out of that and get some semblance of a regular life. I put all of my thoughts and feelings about Dad on the back burner for long time. Then in 2022, it alllll came back. It was the 10th anniversary of his passing, and I was finally able to feel and articulate what I felt about him. I hated him. I hated what he did to me and my Mom and my siblings. And I allowed myself to feel that hate for the first time. I despise using the word hate, but I felt that it was more than appropriate in this context.

Around the same time, my siblings and I started talking about our feelings towards him. There was a lot of anger and catharsis in these talks. I had never realized that all three of us really did experience the same things and feel the same ways. And while it hasn't satiated a lot of the pain he caused me, its reminded me that I'm not alone.

Something I recall with some fondness - but absolutely infuriated me at the time - was when Dad would get drunk and play some of his records very loudly. (I'm sure the people that lived in the other apartments looooved this) "The Taker" was one of those songs he played all the time. The horns in the intro presaged that he was either going to start yelling at my Mom or dancing with her.

I tried listening to it again today. But thanks to my increasing sensitivity to noise, it's difficult for me to sit through any song without feeling overwhelmed. My Mom gave me and my brother my Dad's records a few years ago, and I specifically asked to take this home. I don't understand my attachment to this song, considering what it represents to me. And I'm not sure it's worth exploring, honestly. But it's a part of me now. And I can accept that.