The single parent

(DISCLAIMER: This is more of an writing exercise than my usual conversational rant. Which is not to say that it's any less true. I've been working with it, on and off, for about 3 months. I will never be happy with it, but today seemed like an apt day to finally stop tinkering and post it.)

My father is dying. Slowly. Statistically.

He had a 1% chance of not making it through his last surgery, but a 90% chance that this recurrence of his cancer will kill him, quickly. His kind of cancer usually has a 5-year survival rate, and his first episode was two years ago.

He called to tell me all this a few months ago, as I was driving down an endless stretch of desert highway in California's central valley. It was the first time I'd spoken to him in almost year.

Before I was born, my father wanted to name me Darryl if I were a boy. My mother says this only would have happened over her dead body.

When I was 6 years-old, my father taught me how to ride a bike. "Don't be a afraid of it," he said. "If you're afraid of it, you'll fall down." I fell down a lot. He showed me how to swing a bat, forcing my right elbow up and always telling me to follow-through. I was good at softball, and he was proud of me.

When I was 9 years-old, I used to take the bus to my after-school program at the YMCA, even though it wasn't all that far. The day that I missed the bus and nervously decided to walk, a fire engine pulled up as I was waiting to cross Purchase Street. My father waved to me and lifted me aboard. We rode together to the YMCA, and he let me ring the siren.

When I was 13 years-old, my father moved back to his hometown with his wife. He left me with my grandmother, instructing me not to tell my mother. The custody arrangement had been acrimonious and, as the primary guardian, my father was not supposed to leave the state. Fifteen minutes after the car left the driveway, I called my mother. I started at my third grammar school a week later.

My father sometimes writes me letters. They are always on yellow legal paper, torn from a pad that he keeps on his dining room table. His handwriting is in all capital letters. He tells me about the weather, my cousin and her kids. He always ends with "be careful."

When I was 18 years-old, my father stopped paying child support. He refused to give me any money for college since he felt there was no reason I ought to waste my time with such an expensive school. The campus at UNC was lovely, he'd said, and I could live with him.

Whenever I visit him in North Carolina, my father tells me how much cheaper it would be for me to live there instead of New York. He says I must have forgotten what trees and grass look like. He glares disapprovingly at my tattoos. He talks a lot about his will, what furniture I can have, if I want it. He enthusiastically tells me stories about his friend Jeff's two little girls, his adopted grandchildren of sorts. They adore him, his wife agrees. They are smart and talented and say the sort of funny, precocious things that 5 and 8 year-olds do. I've noticed that he has more framed photos of them in his house than he does of me.

When I was 24 years-old, my father called two weeks before Christmas to tell me he had cancer. It was raining, and I was walking down 2nd Avenue to my tiny studio apartment that I could barely afford. It was rare, this cancer, he told me. I should think about coming to visit - that is, if I had the time.

A few weeks ago, I turned 27. My father didn't call to wish me "happy birthday." There had been complications with his surgery, and he was in the hospital much longer than the projected 10 days. When I called to thank him for the card he sent, he sounded tired, beaten, but still unwilling to admit that both of us were just going through the motions. "I love you," I said reflexively before hanging up. "Bye," was his reply.

My father is dying. He is a chain smoker. He has congestive heart failure.

Today is his 59th birthday.