Songs of DawgAubie (not the mascot)

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"Well I started to tell her, "I'm a logger." but I didn't. Instead I told her, "I'm a writer."..."

Someone with life and death in their hands asked me what I do. We were looking down the hall where not minutes before they'd run to where someone was coding. Now I don't mean coding like writing code for a computer. This was someone whose body was telling us all that it might just give it up. She was one of the people set to save them.

When someone who has that power to save people looks at you and asks, "What do you do?" It makes you think.

I'm a writer, Honest. I have poems, stories, and part of a book written. You might not could tell from this blog. The typos, misspelled words, and fragmented sentences might have you thinking, "Writer? Yeah sure." but it's true.

So I thought that I'd rummage through the "junk drawer o'writting" so that you could see that I really, really, do write. Then I'll go back to writing this nonsense.


Anne


And so that you'll know. My dad is alert, coherent, and fighting. He's no longer in the land of death's door and is now just plain vanilla sick.

Yay.




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Now a story


Here’s his story.

“When I was a young man, I ran away from home to work on a big freighter. It was all so romantic. When the ship reached the dock in Cuba, I was ready. Here this country boy stood on the shores of Hemingway’s home. Pocket full of money and ready for the ladies I had heard so much about on the freighter. It didn’t take long to find them. There off a side street was a tropical paradise. A small courtyard bar with “ladies” in colors that dazzled my eye. Hey! I was young. I was ready to find love among the “flowers” and to prove to the fellas I was a man. To knock the dirt of my home and my father’s ways off my shoes. One particular lady caught my eye. Dark hair, dark eyes, and what I recognize now as a very “dark” look. What I thought was ‘hunger” for love that look was not. But in my young and stupid mind it only took me a second to know that she loved me. And love me she did! Days of love! Nights of love! She was a delight in my inexperienced hands. With every move, she exclaimed more that I was truly the only love she had known. I thanked her with drinks and gifts. Round of drinks I bought for her and for her many, many friends. So the big spender. For her love, I was spending with abandon.

Till the day that came time to pay the bill.

A shipmate came to find me hung over and broke. When he saw me, the look on his face. Humilation. But I would prove him wrong just like my running away was proving my dad wrong. She loved me. She’d lend me the money to pay the bill. I knew it. She’d told me so. Or my new friends, they would perhaps pitch in. It was then I learned a hard truth. As the fellas, my friends, at the bar watched? A bear of a bartender beat the heck outta me. No one lended a hand to stop it. At least not until it looked like he might actually kill me then at that point, my shipmate stopped him and paid the tab.

With tears in my eyes, as my friend helped me to my feet, I heard the words that even now I hear clear in my head.

“You said that you loved me!”, through my tears I said.

And here in daughter is the lesson I want you to learn without heartache. Why I sent that young man away. Because I remember that pain that you will be spared.

Her answer? This “beautiful flower of love” told me?

“LOVE!!!

Oh my dear stupid boy. In this place?

Business is business and love is bullsh*t!”

That was the painless lesson my father taught me. No loss not dating that musician I can tell you.

But….

It would sound as if my father was a cynic. That the beating he’d gotten both mentally and physically had made him hard against love. No. And I’m not saying that because of a daughter’s blindness to her father’s faults. The man has hard edges because of his life. You aren’t the only one with the hard life or the life lessons. No. The difference is that my father not to many years later married the woman that he still after years and years really does still love. As she loves him.

He wants me to know that. So he told me this story in order that I shouldn’t trivialize the word. That I should know the difference. You remind me of my father. All cynic and hard won edges. However I suspect, because the punch was thrown gently that under hard edges is a kind nature. Maybe not.

That’s what I’m trying to find out.

Go find a copy of the Sara Bareilles song “Love Song”. Listen to the song but read the words too. She said the words with dignity and honesty. When she was asked a love song that she just didn’t want to write she wrote “love song”.

No “wheel of cheese” needed.

Then if that doesn’t do it, I’ll give you a few glimpses at my own hardships

That’s it for today.

Exit is this way

Hope you have a great day!


c anne ford june 7, 2008


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