My dad and I never really grew to relate to one another. In hindsight, I think we had a lot of similarities in our personalities. Growing up friends would come over and get really intimidated when they met my dad. We said he was like a bulldog sitting on the couch. A combination of resting bitch face meets Oscar the grouch.

To be fair, my dad had wrestled with demons his whole life. My earliest memories were mostly about my mother, and my dad not being around. It’s when you grow up and family starts to share stories that you are able to piece a fuller picture.

My parents had separated shortly after I was born because of my fathers drinking. My mother and I moved to New Jersey to live with my great grandparents. It was there that I had my earliest childhood memories of jumping into a pile of leaves in the back yard. Of my great grandfather cooking in the kitchen. My great grandmother suffering from alcoholism and a brain tumor. The neighbors having two horses- Charlie Brown and Snoopy. I don’t remember seeing my father in the picture until later.

We moved out to live with my dad in Morristown. A third floor apartment of what I would describe as an old tenement. The second floor was a single guy. The first floor was an old woman who use to cut my hair.

Morristown was a story unto itself with the mix of my odd childhood associations and characters I would be exposed to at a young age. But my father, was not a real father until later on.

He continued to struggle with his drinking until I was in the second grade. And from there on, he was what I would later describe as a dry drunk. Often misunderstood, selfish, and felt like the entire world was out to get him.