My father leans over our family home’s kitchen sink as he cuts the raw meat into pieces. The flesh raw and bloody but I know with some tlc and recipeing it will be soon the tri-tip I call home. He is cutting away. As he listens to the pounding of the television against my ears. The beloved fox news. It is always too loud. It is always too o’reilly. It always is. Fucking annoying. He cuts the meat and attentively stares at the tv yelling at certain times. Then asking me questions about things I don’t know about because I stopped watching the news. I stopped watching the news after the doom of the economy the sky was falling was my reality so I no longer needed to read about it. I am learning a lot and nothing from these stories.
My father just got done. Just got done showing us his legs that are swollen. Swollen from we aren’t sure what. But they are turning black and blue. My father once a marathon runner, once a all night over time worker supporting his family of four, my father who was a father- a single father at one time- who used to ride his bike from Sonoma County to Marin to work- has a host of the al a carte of residual issues due to two work related injuries. Injuries he was lucky to survive. But with the cocktail of medicine of the morphine and the codeine and the oxycontin, his body doesn’t operate- it doesn’t work as it once did. His legs are swollen we think due to salt. But he hasn’t even had much salt. At least not today. Have you drank water? she asks him. Have you rested your feet?
My father stands there hunched over full of remorse for a body that has betrayed him. I chime in when appropriate. Because who wants people telling you what to do to get better when all you want to do is get better. Better. He is hunched over in the doorway between the deck where P and me reside and his room. The phone rings interrupting our family meeting time of how to get healthy once again. If it is for me. Tell them I am dead he sighs. I start laughing not my snort laugh but my quiet non-dorky laugh not of my ancestry but my own. I can’t stop laughing. I don’t know why I am.
Until P explains her voice lightly to the person on the other line that my dad is supposed to be dead but she thinks he can take the call. The call for a potato recipe, his potato recipe. He is awakened again and breathing and reciting the potato salad once his mothers but now his with the dashes and spices of his own make. His own liking. Then I am shaking. Shaking with the laughter because my dad said he was dead but is alright with the potato salad recipe giving. Giving. I guess we all trying to give enough but we don’t know how. And sometimes the humor. The humor of self-deprecation and total defeat is our only solace. For now. For ever. As he hangs up the phone, You can’t give that recipe to anyone, unless they pull out your finger nails out of course. I sit on the deck and look through the sliding glass door the tv into his world. He starts to cut the meat. A smirk of a cook who knows. Knows the recipes by heart.
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