Posts Tagged ‘dad’

The Best Worst Christmas

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The hol­i­days are upon us, and with that comes mem­o­ries of my child­hood and fam­ily.  December is a nos­tal­gic month for me, but why is not a rea­son I can pin down.  Perhaps it’s because my birth­day is in December, so I have the dou­ble whammy of it being a tra­di­tion­ally family-​​centric time along with the sen­sa­tions of grow­ing older each year.

The other day, a mem­ory began to haunt me, and I think that if I recount it here on my blog, per­haps I can exor­cise it.  Is it nor­mal to feel guilt for some­thing so minor that hap­pened over 20 years ago?  I imag­ine peo­ple have felt guilt for weirder things.

Christmas day.  I’m 10 or 11, and I’m excited as any kid is.  I wake up at 5:30 AM know­ing that Santa has already been to the house.  He always comes right after sleep.  I wake up my lit­tle brother and sis­ter and we creep down­stairs to see what bounty he’s left.

This is maybe the first or sec­ond year since my par­ents divorced.  I’m iffy on the time­line.  But I remem­ber what hap­pened next like it hap­pened last week.

We get down­stairs, and under the tree is a sin­gle gift for each one of us.  First world prob­lem, I know.  Here’s where the guilt lies.  When our par­ents had been mar­ried, Christmas has been full of presents, toys, what­not.  We were spoiled—make no mistake.

For myself, a small globe of the world.  My brother had received a small stuffed ani­mal that vaguely resem­bled a par­rot.  I can’t remem­ber what my sis­ter received, but it was sim­i­larly modest. 

To say we were upset would be under­selling it.  I think part of it was, we had no con­cept at the time that our Dad bought these things him­self.  Part of it was that we were greedy lit­tle kids, but also, I think com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, we thought that some­how Santa was pun­ish­ing us.  We really didn’t think much of the gifts.  What had we done wrong that year? 

We crawled into our dad’s bed en masse, cry­ing and wail­ing. He woke to this, his three kids clutch­ing their gifts and sob­bing.  He didn’t get angry.  He didn’t get upset.  Instead, he did some­thing that I hope I will do some day with my own kids under a sim­i­lar situation.

Instead, he showed us what we had missed about our gifts.  My globe had topo­graph­i­cal fea­tures, bumps where there were moun­tains.  I had never seen that before, and it was pretty neat.  On my brother’s gift, he showed that it actu­ally recorded what you said and par­roted it back to you with but­tons on each wing—one to record, and one to play. 

The guilt lies here.  How must our ingrat­i­tude felt to my father?  I know now, and I even knew then, that times were tough, as tough as they ever got.  He filed for bank­ruptcy after his divorce, and he worked for the city as a meter man, writ­ing park­ing tick­ets.  We were liv­ing hand to mouth, with­out a doubt.  The only way he could afford Christmas presents at all was that he had a Christmas club account with his credit union that took a tiny frac­tion of each pay­check and socked it away.

My dad kept it together and did the best he could in the sit­u­a­tion.  I’m just in awe of that.  I’m sure our tears hurt him about as much as any­thing could, but he didn’t show it.    Eventually, we were pla­cated, and we went off to play with our gifts.  I won­der what he thought about as he lay there in bed? Did the sting go away quickly?  Was he ashamed? My guilt is that in our child­ish igno­rance, we made our father ashamed of the gifts he had bought us.

That globe became one of my prized pos­ses­sions all through my child­hood.  Long after it was some­thing I really needed, I used it as a piggy bank. open­ing it up and stash­ing my cash inside of it from work­ing in fast food.  I think I threw it away after I moved to Laramie, because it was lit­er­ally falling apart, peel­ing into pieces.  I really wish I hadn’t done that.  By then, the sen­ti­ment of the object had faded.  Well, but it hadn’t faded. It was merely dor­mant.  And right now, I wish I had it sit­ting atop my book­shelf.  I wish that I still had it, to show the mem­ory of my father that I am grate­ful for the things he gave me.

Instead, this blog post will have to do that.

Federations Table of Contents

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Federations | John Joseph Adams.

John has posted the table of con­tents to Federations, the anthol­ogy to which I have made my lat­est sale.  Excuse me while I get a lit­tle starstruck and nostalgic.

The first author I ever shared with my father was also my first sci­ence fic­tion author.  When I was around 8 or 9, I stum­bled across a lit­tle book in my grade school library called Dragonsong by Anne McCaffery.   To this day, it is one of less than half a dozen books I have read more than once, an honor I reserve only for the most impor­tant titles in my life or, books I had to read for more than one class through my long edu­ca­tion. One of the first books I ever bought with my own money was an omnibus of the Dragonriders tril­ogy.    The first (and as far as I know, only) fan let­ter I wrote as a child was to Anne McCaffery.  I think she even wrote back.

My Dad and I read every sin­gle McCaffery book she pub­lished, pretty much.  She was one of those authors who the library sys­tem man­aged to get new books for, oddly enough.  Whereas I was mostly stuck read­ing Golden Age SF in the bow­els of the local library (lit­er­ally, the SF sec­tion was in the base­ment, in the back cor­ner), the new books shelf seemed to always have a McCaffery.

My Dad and I didn’t talk SF very much, but most of the time we did, it was regard­ing the lat­est McCaffery book.  We had long dis­cus­sions when [spoil­ers] Pern turned out to be a lost human colony of space far­ers.  [/​spoilers]  Later books, I haven’t been on top of.  Since her son started writ­ing them, I haven’t read them, not because of any rea­son other than lack of time, and well, nobody to talk about them with.

In one of the last con­ver­sa­tions I had with my Dad, when he was in the hos­pi­tal the day we learned that he wasn’t going to get any bet­ter and that it was time was hos­pice care (a med­ical term meain­ing ‘give up and die grace­fully’), I signed a copy of All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories for him, telling him that he could beat the can­cer like a pulp hero beats up Nazis.     He stood up, all 90-​​some pounds of what was left of him, and gave me the strongest hug I think he ever gave me and he said, “I’m proud of you son.”  I must have acted sur­prised because he said, “I’ve always been proud of you.”

That was prob­a­bly the most emo­tional moment of my life, and will remain so for a very long time. At least until I get to tell my own child the same thing,

Today, I feel like I earned that pride a lit­tle more, and I know that if he were here, he would be as excited about me being in this book as I am.

Postmortem:“Babe, I Am Going to Leave You”

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Yesterday, I released my intensely per­sonal story of death, Led Zeppelin, and how fam­i­lies cope with death, “Babe, I am Going to Leave You” as a CC-​​licensed story. A friend asked what my think­ing was behind doing this, so I thought I’d break it down in a blog post, in case any­one else was interested.I wrote this story, over the course of about a year, in an attempt to come to terms with my own father’s death from can­cer. I always intended to try and pub­lish it some­where like any other story I wrote, but once I tried doing so, I found I had invested too much of myself to be able to han­dle the rejec­tions. Most rejec­tions are slightly painful, but you can shrug them off. I just couldn’t shrug off rejec­tions to this story.

I strug­gled with whether I should essen­tially “self-​​publish” the story. I don’t have a large read­er­ship here. I’m not John Scalzi or Jay Lake, although I hope to attract as many fol­low­ers some day. Am I the only writer who won­ders about max­i­miz­ing the audi­ence for their sto­ries, or do we all worry about that? I don’t make much money from my sto­ries, so I’ve focused on grow­ing an audi­ence more than the money.

I also wor­ried that some would see releas­ing the story myself as a coward’s way out. I do feel guilty for not try­ing harder to find a place to pub­lish the story that could have given it more read­ers than I could on my own. The story is, in a big way, my way of hon­or­ing my father. Did I do him honor just releas­ing it to the hand­ful of peo­ple who read this? I don’t know. I was tired of hav­ing it here, and hav­ing no one read it though. I really wanted to do good with this story. I had expe­ri­enced some­thing pro­found and painful, and I wanted to help oth­ers get through a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. The chance to do some good, even a lit­tle, is what con­vinced me it was the right thing to do.

I want to thank those of you who linked my story in your own blogs. I really appre­ci­ated that. It made me feel much more like I made a good choice here. And those of you who have writ­ten me, thank­ing me for post­ing the story. I am glad that it has helped you.

In the future, I will def­i­nitely con­tinue to release reprints of my sto­ries online under the Creative Commons. It can only help a writer at my stage of career. I don’t think I will release any other unpub­lished sto­ries though, because I think it’s too easy and attrac­tive to cir­cum­vent the rejection/​acceptance process.

For exam­ple, I have this story about a plague that turns famous peo­ple into plas­tic stat­ues and about the peo­ple who col­lect the for­merly famous like base­ball cards. It’s got a very polit­i­cal slant, and never found a home prob­a­bly because of that, or maybe because it’s not as funny as I think it is. There’s a strong temp­ta­tion to just pub­lish it on the web, espe­cially because it’s par­tially about Bush and he’s about to leave the White House (I hope) and the story will lose its rel­e­vancy at that point. I don’t know. Maybe I can find a pub­lisher for it int he next 9 months. Or I can sell it as alt-​​history futur­ism later.

Still, regard­less, I am glad I released this one story this way. Thank you for read­ing it.

A CC-​​Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

A CC-​​Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”

I slept very badly last night, and had a migraine to end all migraines. I’m slowly recov­er­ing this morn­ing. I recently woke up and, along with this lin­ger­ing headache, I found I have an over­whelm­ing desire to give some­thing away.

I’ve posted a story online under a Creative Commons license. It’s about death, Led Zeppelin, and how fam­i­lies cope. A lot of it really hap­pened. Some of it did not. It’s so intensely per­sonal that I can’t bear to receive another rejec­tion call­ing it “slight” or any­thing else, so here it is, posted for any­one to read and call “slight” or any­thing else they want to call it. What is impor­tant to me is that maybe some­one reads it who is going through some­thing sim­i­lar and feels a lit­tle less alone. Writing it sure helped me. But your milage may vary.

With that said, here’s the link to the story. Share it as you see fit.

Babe, I’m Going to Leave You

When my Dad killed The Family Dog

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My dad died two years ago. It’s been hard to get over. We had a year from his can­cer diag­no­sis until he passed away, and I never wanted to admit what was hap­pen­ing and I’m only just admit­ting it now. I didn’t want to see him on his death bed in the end, because I knew that if I didn’t see it, part of me could deny it had ever hap­pened. He was 44 years old. In case you’re won­der­ing, I am 29. My par­ents were young when I was born, and I’ve always banked on that to avoid those tragedies that we all face some day. Life is strange that way. All of my friends with par­ents in their 50s and 60s still have theirs, and I’m down one already.

You focus on the happy mem­o­ries at first, but some­times, there are less pleas­ant mem­o­ries that repeat­edly rise up like angry ghosts, demand­ing to be accounted for. They spring on you in the mid­dle of the night, take grip on your mind, and refuse to let go. Lately, I can’t stop think­ing about how my father killed his dog when I was eight.

My par­ents had recently divorced. To this day, I’m not sure what the cir­cum­stances were. As part of attempt­ing to make it up to myself, my sis­ter, and my lit­tle brother, our par­ents each got a puppy. That dog that lived with my mother was Beauty. I can­not remem­ber the name of the dog that lived with my father.

The two were sis­ters, mutts, small­ish dogs, but not pun­ters like poo­dles or chi­huahuas. They were lov­ing, but hard to train. And my father’s dog liked to chew things.

I did not see him kill the dog. I am not sure how I know what hap­pened, but I can pic­ture it like I was there. My father was liv­ing in the base­ment of his old­est sister’s house on the east side of Topeka. During the day, he worked as a meter man. He wore a blue uni­form that was often mis­taken for a policeman’s uni­form with black shoes that he kept well-​​polished. I think he had a spe­cial affec­tion for shoes then, given that he walked miles and miles every day as part of his beat. This was before the scoot­ers meter peo­ple use now.

He came home from some­where, I imag­ine it was to buy what few gro­ceries he could afford after giv­ing most of his money to my mother to feed us, and his dog, the one whose name I can­not remem­ber, had chewed one of his work shoes to pieces and was start­ing in on the other. It was then, in a fit of anger, that he threw the remain­ing shoe at his cow­er­ing dog, strik­ing her in the head. She whim­pered, fell onto her side, and died.

I know this story. Someone told it to me, but it was not my father. He never spoke of it. I saw tears in my father’s eyes sev­eral times over my life– he was not the kind of touchy-​​feely mod­ern man that some fathers are, but he was not so stoic either. But I can remem­ber ask­ing my father about his dog, and see­ing him shake his head and turn away to keep me from see­ing his tears.

My mother gave Beauty to my father. Despite all the trou­ble they had, despite the fact that he had killed his own dog a week before, she gave him the dog. If he were alive, he would prob­a­bly tell me that the rea­son was that my mother couldn’t han­dle the dog, that Beauty was con­stantly mak­ing messes and she gave him the dog in frus­tra­tion. I’m not so sure about that.

A year later, she was remar­ried, and we moved in with my father. Beauty became the fam­ily dog, and at some point, I for­got the other dog. We gave Beauty away to my mother’s sis­ter when my father remar­ried and we moved from Topeka to Lawrence. She’s long dead now. She was a good dog. Gentle and for­giv­ing of children.

I wish I could remem­ber the dog’s name. I think that some small part of me should honor her like I honor my father. He wasn’t per­fect, but I know he never meant to hurt his dog.