You Know

"You know, I stopped by to see Katherine at the cakery, and we got to talking about you and all of your struggles through the years. The topic of your sexuality was brought up and Katherine told me of your feelings towards me concerning your considerations of a possible alternative lifestyle. I will always love you for who you are, no matter what your choices are. You are my son. When you were in high school you were tall and handsome and all the girls were after you, and I thought, that's great! The thought of you being gay never really entered into my mind. You know Davids' son is gay and he still loves him. Love doesn't change because of who a person is. So, no, that never crossed my mind, and I don't know why you would ever think or feel that way about me."

Randy was all ears and open minded, running to soak up all the words, inflections, tones and emotions. He was blown away at the level of frankness, honesty and directness that he was hearing from his father, for the first time in his life. After thirty-six years it was as if he was meeting his father for the first time.

Roger continued to pour out his thoughts, and with them, tiny pieces of his heart. The experience, for Randy, was surreal.

"You know, when I was a kid, my mom was the disciplinarian. We always took off our hats when we entered the house. We washed our hands before dinner. We never put our elbows on the table. We had to say, please pass this or please pass that. If you reached your hand across the table for anything, she would smack our hand with a fork and say, 'you know better than that...' If we wanted to be excused from the table we needed to say, 'can I please be excused,' and wait for, 'yes, you may be excused.' We always pushed our chairs in and cleaned our own dishes. There is none of that these days, now we have kids running amok with no respect for anyone, especially someone with authority. You know, I had to be a little hard on you kids because I wanted you to learn how to respect. Was I harder on the boys than I was the girls? Of course I was, you know, I had to be. When I was growing up we played outside, got muddy in the creeks catching frogs. We went everywhere on our bikes. We were little hellions outside of the house and we sort of had a reputation as bullies, I guess, because I was raised around nothing but boys, we had to be tough with each other, yet we needed to support and defend each other, too. You know, those were different times then."

"But, you know, when looking at my grandparents, my grandma had to be the disciplinarian because grandpa didn't want to, he was too tender hearted. She felt she had no other choice but to take on that role. But, golly, she sure put the fear of God into your heart, you know."

Then he let out the signature Innes cackle. Randy had inherited that distinct laugh, a genuine and full bodied cackle that was contagious and piercing. Humor and laughter had always been Rogers' best approach with Randy, when all else failed, Roger could reach Randy with a joke, or reminisce about a scene from a movie that we had watched together. In those small moments of laughing together, they felt they shared at least one thing, a sense of humor.

Again, Roger plowed on with more memories, his only way to come close to expressing how he felt, with stories from his life. One really needed to search for the message and the morals in the stories he would share. 

The only thing that was lacking, and the only true thing Randy needed and craved was a connection of feelings and emotions. A real connection, a real conversation where they could speak freely without judgement or hurt feelings. A two sided conversation where you say how you feel and then I say how I feel, then back and forth and so on. Like a normal exchange of emotions, ideas, issues.

"You know, I remember my dad commenting on long hair and how he didn't fully approve and thought it was too inappropriate for his boys. Girls had long hair, not boys, that's how it was. Dave, my brother, your uncle, had long hair, but that was the thing at the time. Assumptions are made sometimes, but your hair has been long much of your life, and I never really thought much about it, or that it said anything about who you are as a person. It's just your hair, and it's your hair. It has nothing to do with being, or having, you know, a, an alternative lifestyle."

"You know, I'm sorry if you remember having a tough childhood, and if your drug use has anything to do with that, I am sorry for that, too. If you remember me being harsh or mean to you, let me know, now..."

Randy had to jump in where and when he could, for it seemed that Roger couldn't stop himself if he wanted to.

"I do remember something, yet I can't remember exactly what happened or what was said, just that it was aggressive and you and Nick fought, physically, and he pushed you down the hallway, or you did, or something. I think I may have blocked it out for some strange reason. Do you remember what happened, do you remember what was said or done? What do you remember about that?"

"You know, I don't recall. Maybe something was said about something you were wearing or how you looked. Your mom said it was something disparaging." Roger honestly replied.

It seemed no one had the total memory in their mind, it was only pieces of the same point in time, fragments of an event, that happened all too quickly, fiercely, and was over as soon as it began.

Randy, however, seemed to recall distinctly that his older brother was shaken by what our father had said, and he shot up out of his chair in defensive and aggressive force to remove his own father from the table and then out of the room, where there was a scuffle and intense physical tangle, fists and arms...

Randy must have blocked it out, for when he tried to recall the events, he had to mentally put himself back into the chair at the family dining table. When he did, his mind put itself into two different homes, which was impossible... The same events would never play themselves out in two different places at different points in time...

Randys' mind had clearly protected itself from this verbally and physically traumatic event, otherwise he would be able to remember more of what happened. However, Randy did not suspect that his father was being dishonest in the least, it simply wasn't in his nature.