Category: Dad

Voice from the past

So I’ve been lightly reading the kerfuffle and conversation surrounding the new Nike ad featured Tiger Woods, with an overlay of the voice of his father, Earl Woods, taken from an interview in 1994.

Here’s the ad, if you haven’t already seen it:

Of the ad, Tiger has said: “…I think any son who has lost a father and who meant so much in their life, I think they would understand the spot.”

Hmm.

I’m not a son, but I’ve lost a father and I have to say the ad makes me very uncomfortable. I’m not sure I do understand the spot.

While it might be “…very apropos. I think that’s what my dad would say,” the context of an advertising spot, intended to sell Nike gear, seems…a little wrong.

I’ve no doubt Tiger might have turned to his dad for guidance during the fallout from his recent troubles. But would his dad have chosen that forum to have that conversation with his son? I think not.

I find the ad very powerful and I think it’s a very public reckoning for Tiger. But I still gotta say…it makes me uncomfortable. It just doesn’t feel respectful to the memory of his dad. Just my .02

By the by, hearing your father’s voice from the past can be an eerie thing. I recently found a video of my dad giving a presentation. It was filmed about five years before his passing. The Good Man and I watched it, and I found it difficult and a bit disturbing. And oddly, in some ways, comforting.

I’ve no plans yet to use it in a marketing campaign. I’ll keep you posted on that…..

Isn’t that just good manners?

Some days I think the world is a very strange place.

Ok, ok. Most days, I think the world is a very strange place.

And the world thinks I’m a very strange girl.

Oddly, I’m ok with that.

But I digress.

Yesterday, I went to my local Safeway to pick up a few items. As you know, I’m a total Trader Joe’s girl. Unfortunately, ol’ Joe doesn’t always have everything I need, so I have to supplement with Safeway (and I feel like I’m cheating).

Anyhow, I took my few purchases to the register, and as I stepped up to take my turn, the checkout guy said, “Hi! How are you doing?”

To which I replied, “I’m fine, thank you. How are you doing today?”

And he responded, “I’m good. Wow, thank you SO much for asking!”

Which brought me up short.

An exuberant “thank you for asking”?

Would imply that most people don’t even bother to ask?

Which really seems rather rude to me.

I mean, I’m no Miss Manners, but my parents did actually teach me my “please and thank you’s”.

I’m not saying we have to go back to old school overly mannered and behaved, but some simple courtesy is a nice thing. A good thing. A missing thing…what’s that old saying? Gone the way of the Dodo bird?

Sure, I may burp in unfortunate locations and situations, sometimes. And I might, though rarely, yell inappropriate things out the car window.

But damn it! I know how to say please and thank you, and I’m polite enough to inquire as to how a nice hardworking grocery store clerk’s day might be going.

I’m just like that.

Cuz I was raised that way.

Why again aren’t people raised that way anymore?

Keep it to yourself, grandma

I remember back when I was about 25 or 26, living in Albuquerque and working at Sandia Labs. Single. Searching. Doing ok.

My older sister was also single and in her twenties, and we grew pretty close back then.

There was one day when I was staying over at her house that she and I went for a walk. We were each other’s support group, so we’d walk along and talk. We’d engage in walking therapy.

This was a chilly winter day. We walked with pink cheeks and a scarf ’round the neck.

We talked about how we both tend to have this internal dialog of snarky comments as we go through our days.

Both of us copped to it. Then my sister said something that sticks with me.

“I just worry that as I age, my ability to keep those thoughts inside will become more difficult.”

I laughed. And I agreed.

See, in our family, we have this relative. My mom’s aunt. She’s a bit infamous among the family as possessing a rather acid tongue. She didn’t even need to grow old to splat out hateful, spiteful and just plan snarky comments.

Oh, she was loyal to her family, especially her beloved brother (my grandfather) and made no bones about letting my grandmother know she wasn’t good enough. I believe she also let my dad know he wasn’t good enough for my mom.

So my sister and I both know that the genes of Aunty Snarky run deep within our DNA. We know how to turn on that frosty chill and say something cuttingly acerbic.

But as my sister pointed out, back then, we did okay keeping it inside.

Now, looking at the world through 40 years old eyes (that need vision correction), I find that my sister was entirely prophetic.

I *am* having trouble keeping that Aunty Snarky side to myself.

It’s such a push-pull of being “the nice girl” vs “oh hell, let’s just be honest.”

I recall reading one of my grandmother’s journals (after she had passed away). In it, she discussed how people always think she’s so nice, “but,” she wrote, “if they only knew.”

Well, I’m afraid I’ve surpassed “if they only knew.” They know.

Because I’ve become that cranky old broad. Only I’m not quite old enough yet to get away with it.

I say things. Out loud. (For example, the “What the f— is your problem?!?!” incident from about a month ago.)

I’ve always ranted about man’s inhumanity to man and tried to rise above it. I really have. But I guess I’ve been worn down. I guess “everybody is doing it” and so I’m no longer rising, I’m wallowing down in it.

Hoo boy. I’m not proud of it.

When I was in Las Vegas, I got busted for it too. I was standing in the narrow median of a quiet street taking a photograph. A pickup rolled by and the driver slowed and said, “I thought you were crossing the street…”

And I thought he was being an a’hole about me being in the median. I’d gotten hassled so much that day while taking photos so my hackles may have been a bit up.

I whirled on him. “Oh nice!” I yelled, “Thank you VERY much. No really, thanks for being such a nice guy!!!” I yelled sarcastically as he drove off.

Ten minutes later the guy walked up to me. “Hey, I just meant, I couldn’t tell if you were crossing the street. But then I saw your camera and I figured it out. That’s all.”

Whoooooo did I feel like a jerk. I ended up apologizing to him and we had a pretty nice conversation about photography.

You’d think that would have capped my fat mouth.

It did, only somewhat.

I’m trying.

I really am. Hard to get that horse back in the barn after all the frolicking in the fields.

It’s just…I don’t always want to be “the nice girl.”

Sometimes I think I just want to be Aunty Snarky when I grow up.

I’m so conflicted.

Viva Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Mi Vida.

Ah Las Vegas, I return home to you once more.

That sparkling town, Las Vegas, has been an integral part of pretty much all of my life.

Yes, Vegas and I are irrevocably entwined.

Sure, everyone likes Vegas, right? Well…right?

For me, it’s a lot different than it might be for you.

Let’s flip the toggle switch on the WayBack Machine. Let’s go back, oh, say a bit over forty years.

It was the swinging sixties, baybee, and my dad, a hardcore engineer, was working at the Nevada Test Site.

That’s the place you might of heard of…you know, where they blow up nuclear devices underground?

Yup.

Oh, also…waaaaaay over in the back corner of the Nevada Test Site is a little place called Area 54. (In later years I asked the old man about it, but got no answers)

So while Dad went to work out in the middle of the freaking Nevada desert, mom stayed home at their place in Las Vegas and tended to her three kids.

Yes folks, I have actually lived in Las Vegas.

It was only for only a brief time and I have only vague memories, like that you could see the Landmark Casino from where we lived. I used to love to stand in the backyard and watch the lighted elevators go up and down.

My folks really liked living in Las Vegas. And they liked visiting the town too. They made an at least once a year visit, seeing friends and family, a couple shows and they would gamble a bit. It was their favorite vacation destination.

Sometimes they would go just the two of them. Sometimes we kids got to go along for the fun.

It sucked to be a kid in Vegas prior to the construction of Circus Circus. There was little to do other than swim in the hotel pool and follow mom around when she hit the slots.

By law I had to stand at least six feet away from any gaming device. Stand there. With nothing to do other than whine at my mother that I wanted to go swimming.

But all of those years spent in Las Vegas and I find I have a deep history with this town that not many people have. I can remember, “oh that used to be the ____” when I pass the current kitschy themed hotels and casinos.

I am kind of ticked off at Las Vegas for demolishing all of the old and rather fabulous casinos and replacing them with these new garish harpies.

It’s just not the same.

Coming to Vegas is, for me, like coming home. I was remarking to The Good Man on the plane ride over that for me, going to Vegas is a bit like going to Albuquerque. It’s a get away, but it’s also a going home. A nice trip but also so comfortable and easy.

I don’t know Vegas quite as well as I do Albuquerque, as I lived in Vegas only a couple years and I lived a lifetime in ABQ.

But it’s a part of me. And it is an even deeper part of the history of my parents.

Vegas and me, we belong together. And it’s not about the casinos or the neon or the obnoxious part of it.

I see this painted showgirl for what she is. Behind the mask of makeup and face paint, she’s a thirsty and tired old desert town that has grown too fast, aching from the growing pains.

You get two blocks off the strip, and you see behind the curtain. The streets are dirty and grim people look both tired and sad. There is an ugly dark side to all that glitz and show.

There are real people with real jobs trying to make a living. The casinos are but one facet of Vegas.

It’s been a couple years since I came to see this charming old lady of a town. On my last trip, I got into an intense conversation with the cab driver who had been raised here in Vegas. He was so happy to find someone who knew, who remembered, and that made me happy too.

Today, I’m looking out over the Spring Mountains to the west and plotting how to spend my day. The Neon Museum is closed for construction, so that will have to be another time.

I’ll probably find myself downtown where places like the Four Queens and the Golden Gate harken back to another time. My time.

Maybe I’ll pull the handle of a one armed jack and I’ll remember….

Why so glum, chum?

I spent most of the day yesterday feeling blue.

No, not from the frosty wind chilling my face.

Blue as in full out, deep down, all the way to the soles of my feet holiday depression.

This happens every year.

What I can’t seem to work out is why.

I started thinking, sifting through the memories, trying to figure out when the shift occurred.

As a kid, I loved Christmas. Even after I knew the truth about Santa, I still loved the holidays. To me, they were always filled with magic and a quiet happy peace.

My mom loved the Christmas holiday and always did her best to make it a nice time. Dad was always a cranky pants about any holiday, but crankiness aside, he would let the holiday be what it was.

He was never depressed about it, more like uptight over money and not much of a “ho ho ho” kind of guy.

So I can’t say it started as a kid.

In fact, I was all about the holidays all through childhood, into my teen years and through college.

I think, based on my not very scientific analysis of a jumbled brain full of memories, that the holiday blues came on in my twenties.

When I was out of school, living alone in a really wonderful apartment in Albuquerque with a knockout view of the Sandias.

I had a good job with a good check and really, a pretty good life. But I was alone, and the season, for some reason, made me really blue.

I recall, that year, drinking a bottle of not very good wine and laying *under* my Christmas tree. A night spent looking at the lights and trying to muster up some joy.

Sad. It was a great drunk, but it was an alone drunk. And I was depressed again and hungover in the morning. Ugh!

So, ok. One might understand how a lonely twenty something making her way in the world might feel a little down at the holidays.

But that doesn’t explain yesterday.

I then thought about all the bad holidays over the years. The Christmas seasons that weren’t so happy.

Like the December my dad’s lung disease took a turn for the worst, and Mom and I spent Christmas day in the hospital, having to make some really difficult choices.

But The Lazarus Dad recovered that year. Really, it was something of a Christmas miracle.

So, while yes, December often makes me think of that difficult time, I don’t think that is the root of the blues I’m feeling today.

All is well in my little world. I have a wonderful husband who is the best holiday gift I could ever ask for. I have great friends and family. A place to lay my head at night and food to eat. And a rasty feline who makes me laugh.

So what’s the boggle, then?

Maybe now, at age forty, I feel a little blue because December isn’t just the holiday season, but it ushers in the end of another year.

Another year ending where I wonder to myself where all the rest of the days have gone. I wonder what did I do to make the days count?

The end of December has become a time, I suppose, for assessing myself over the year. For grading my performance.

And sadly, every year, I seem to only be able to see where I was lacking. Missed opportunities. Places where if I’d tried a little harder I might have made something really great happen.

Oh, I know, there are a lot of things I did right this year. There are successes that I don’t actually see when I let the dark cloud take over.

This post isn’t a plea for reminders that I’m ok.

This post is more a letter to myself. A report card.

That reminds me all on my own that I’m ok.

Because I am.

But for some reason, every year about this time I have to take the tiger by the tail and ride the very dark ride for a while.

Here we go: whooooooa!

One thing that always cheers me is pictured below. It’s an ornament made by my kindergarten teacher. I couldn’t tell you her name, but I remember the day when she placed a personalized ornament into my grubby little hands.

There was my name! In glitter!

I still have it. It’s looking a little tattered these days, but it holds a place of honor on the tree.

I look at this silky blue ornament with silver glitter and try to remember that kindergarten Karen who still believed that reindeer would bring Santa to my roof.

That somehow he’d slip down the very narrow chimney on our free standing fireplace (remember these babies from the 1970’s?) and leave us lots of toys and goodies.

That the day would start with the smell of mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.

That we could open the gifts in our stockings first, but had to wait a while on presents under the tree.

That Christmas day was full of surprise and wonder and laughter.

If I can remember that kindergarten Karen, I might just be able to pull myself up and out of these blues.