Maybe

Sunday is the day I visit my father, with whom I didn't have a close relationship while growing up or as an adult simply because it doesn't take many times of being told to get the hell out to do so. There has been reconciliation and now the once a week visit to see if he needs anything and to ah, well, I guess create a sort of relationship where there wasn't one before. I tell you, if you have a good dad, count yourself lucky.

Again, the pins and needles of waiting to see if my teaching job disappears is making me such a nut case that I look over my shoulder to see if the squirrels are following. Not only that, but my physician suggested a reduction in the medication I take, saying that summer is the best time to try. Halving it, she says, will increase my metabolism to enable a weight loss. I'm not scary large, but I am bigger than necessary and being a size sixteen blows, even though I am sort of taller.

So the reduction of the meds which I take for depression and anxiety attacks, plus the maybe maybe not business of employment causes me to gather hyper-bundles of psychic current like a far off a.m. radio station that comes in better at night. Now all that means, little cowpokes, is that I am worried and the what if's gather faster than white cat hair on a black wool sweater.
It's nothing I've not been through before, and things never stay the same anyways. But it is a literal headache.

Today when I saw Dad, he told me he had asked my brother if he could move in with their family, and rightfully, they said it wasn't a good idea which it is not. Then he said, "Why don't you move in here?" I really wouldn't want to, considering our history and the fact that he smokes and a million other reasons, but if it had to happen, well, we shall see. I told him thanks for the offer.

As we were saying goodbye at the door later, he asked something else that surprised me; half-laughing he said, "You wouldn't shoot me, wouldja?" "Noooo, I wouldn't shoot you Dad."
It struck me odd at first, but in the car it was as if he, for the very first time, acknowledged that there had been tension, and that my always concealed anger at his crap apparently wasn't. Was it an apology? Am I reading too much into an offhand statement? Did he behave horridly all those years, to deliberately piss me off, push me away?

Heck, I don't know, and really don't care, I am glad to be able to talk to a father, my father, without scanning the room to plan a fast exit if he came at me. There is a lot to like about him still; I wish his drying out had happened sooner, but I'm not complaining, I'm swinging on a star.