last night my estranged father called me.

"i have to ask you something. do you hate me?"

he, the man who dug graves for twenty-odd years, taught me to shoot a gun, and told my mother that if he hadn't left her by just disappearing one day, he would have killed himself, was asking me if i hated him.

what to say...

"okay, how bout this: how do you feel about me?"he revised.

"um...i don't know. i feel fine about you. i mean, what do you want me to say?"

our conversation lurched through yet another vague explanation for his sudden departure and his weird philosphies of life rewritten with four letter words, and ended when he stated that my sister and i were living in times that were complicated and implied that we just didn't see where he was coming from. the other unspoken implication here was that we would never understand anything, really, because we weren't men. we were women. and not just any women, but my mother's flesh and blood, and that gave us an unhealthy disadvantage.

and yet still here he was, lonely and cracked, awkwardly asking his oldest daughter if she felt anything so strong for him that could be considered hate. christ! i started to need a drink. my father, the man from whom i could count on having heard about 500 words out of his mouth my entire life, sounded like he had had a tough session with his therapist that day.