"Daddy? Why is his hair so long?"

                     I don't like change. I don't mean like social change or anything like that, but if my favorite restuarant goes under I will become one unhappy camper (there used to be a restuarant called the Clock in Traverse City. My grandpa used to take my mom there when they would come up North, my parents went on their first date there because it was the only place open at two in the morning when they got off work, my mom used to take me there after painful physical therapy, a cast coming off, leg braces. I used to get pancakes shaped like gingerbread men with whip cream hair and clothes. My friends and I would go there high as kites and order a hot giant cookie covered in vanilla ice cream, whip cream, hot fudge. Chuck and I had our second date there. Then, after my college orientation, I desperately needed the comfort of the Clock, but it was closed down. After some forty years of business, it took one month to go under and become "G's Pizzeria!". I refuse to eat there, I have a passionate dislike for G's Killer of Dreams.)

                 So I hate change of things of that caliber, but I don't mind changing myself, which has been an ungoing process ever since high school, or maybe before that but I became consciously aware of it in high school. The biggest change I don't like is the way my father looks at me anymore. Everything about me is a personal blight towards him. He goes out of his way to piss me off. I can have some realization about something and in my excitement I would tell him about it, only to have him stab a needle in my balloon.

                First, an explanation. My parents are what I like to call "Super Republicans". They believe that Bush is the best damn president this country has had since Regan. "He will go down in history books and these damn liberals will eat their words." Yeah. They believe Dick Cheney is too liberal. My father hates McCain. He's too liberal to be republican. I consider myself a moderate, because I can understand views on both parties. Things can't ever go right because there is too much party bickering, like kids on a playground. A republican can have a great idea and it will get shut down by Democrats because it was a republican idea, and vice versa. Really I think it doesn't matter. You flip a coin, if it lands on heads or tails it doesn't really matter because it is still a damn coin. Republican, Democrat. Still a politician, still a damn coin. My favorite saying comes from Al Franken "What's the difference between a repubilican and a democrat? Republicans suck and democrats blow." I told my father I was a moderate. He stopped out of the room. Over his shoulder he says "You mean you're a fucking liberal." Ouch.

                 He doesn't believe in Global warming. It's a conspiracy made up by democrats to tax us. M'kay. I started taking out batteries to the recycling center, changed my light bulbs to those funky curled ones that last longer. (By the way, those are hazardous waste when they finally do blow out, so make sure you take them to your local recycling center to be disposed of). I'm a goddamn tree hugger.

                  I really don't support this war. My dad thinks it's the best damn thing we've (a country) have done. I stop talking to him, but he tries to get my goat. He's accused me of wanting my brother dead. I got pissed off and told him Bush wants my brother dead. 

                     Out of five of us kids, I'm the second one to graduate high school. I'm the first to go to college. Anytime I say anything about school, he snaps at me for thinking I'm a well educated snob. I do most of my homework at Chuck's house, because if I leave a book laying around he calls it filth, that I'm being brainwashed. Does he say anything to Steve, who is fighting a war he doesn't believe in (I pervursely wonder if he's killed anyone yet, and I shudder at the thought), Angie who smokes dope in front of her kid and periodically uses the key she still has to steal my moms vicadin? No, lets buy her cars (four since she was sixteen) a washer, dryer, refrigerator. Let's not make her spend her drug money on necessities. Sara, who has three kids all with different daddies? Kari, who spends all her time sitting in front of a tv shoving food in her face? I'm the one who gets the shit. I'm the one who is criticized openly, yet I'm the super daughter. I take time out from school, work to take care of my mom when she had major surgery (which not one of my siblings called. SHE COULD HAVE DIED!). I cancel appointments so my father can borrow my car for a week while his truck was in the shop.

                   Once upon a time he cared about me. I remember once, after being brutally teased at school for how I walked funny, my dad picked me up (because the leg braces meant no walking at night.) "I love you, no matter what. You are special. You are beautiful."


                  If he really wants to blame anyone for who I am today, he can blame himself. He taught me to be myself, to think for myself. He answered a question when I was five that started it all. We were riding in his old beat up ford. It was sunny. We were listening to the Beatles Abbey Road "Octopus's Garden". It was my favorite. Very kid friendly. I remember looking at the cover of the cassette.  I was entranced. Paul's bare feet, George's set face, Ringo's stature (my dad told me he was the one singing Octopus's Garden. I couldn't see that voice coming out of him) then John's white suit and hair. "Daddy? Why is his hair so long?" "Because he's a hippie." "Oh. What's a hippie." He paused. We turned a corner. "A hippie was someone in the sixties that loved everyone and believed in peace." "Oh. I want to be a hippie." I remember the conversation like it was yesterday.

                 So that point on I ate up anything related to that era. As a kid it was music. I pulled out his old records. Bob Dylan, the Kinks, Jefferson Airplane, Tommy James and the Shondells, more Beatles, the Greatful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish. The older I got the more into other stuff I became, simply with this obsession from that time. I would become obsessed on a singular topic for months at a time. Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi, Civil rights, civil disobedience (so powerful), the art, Tim Leary, the Diggers, yoga, meditation. I joined a group in high school called Alternatives to Violence. The group was about discovering yourself, recognizing patterns of violence, fighting comformity, helping the community in the name of promoting peace. I loved it. It was taught by Gerard Schwind. An ex-marine who fought in Vietnam by choice, confessed alcoholic, past wife abuser. He taught us a lot. He had been there, he knew anger, hate, love and compassion. He knew humility. My parents thought he was the devil.  

                   Sometimes I think of my dad like Jerry Rubin. Once, very liberal, very hip, growing pot in his broken down AMC Pacer. Blonde hair that went to his ass. I look at pictures of him and see him now. Did that person die? Is this really my father or was he abducted by aliens? My alien daddy, the super republican!  :)

                I don't know why I'm writing this. I don't mean to be so negative, but I feel like there is a vice around my heart and I need to spew my guts to get it off, even if it means ranting online to total strangers. I feel imperfect and I can't change it. I feel like my father is losing it and taking it out on me. I feel like what ever common ground I've ever had with him has eroded and decayed. It used to be that I'd go to my dad for anything. To talk about the mean kids or something my bipolar mother did that I couldn't understand. Now I go crying to my bipolar mother over something he's said. 
               
                I let him borrow my car a week ago. He yelled at me about the "god awful music" I had playing in the CD player. It sounded like shit. How can I listen to shit music.

                It was the Beatles.