I remember always looking up to him though...I remember always trying to get his attention one way or another...One time, I had to be about 4 years old, he taught me how to whistle...I was determined to learn just to impress him...I learned...and I whistled whistled whistled all day and night...My mother would even tell me to stop...but I never really did, this was something my father taught me...I'm gonna impress him with my whistling and do him proud...But when he got annoyed and angrily told me to stop...I must have disappointed him...I mean, I made him mad...I understand it now, but not then....
That was around the same time my sister was born....therefore, his attention went to the baby, and what little bit I thought was there seemed to diminish even more....What my parents did was switch working schedules, where my mother would work days and my father nights...I went to school during the day...So when I came home, my father was already sleeping before he went to work....When I'd come to try and play with him or something...He was too tired, or not in the mood, or sent me away somewhere else so as to leave him alone...I was denied....
And that's how it was for years, even through to high school...It seemed, though, that the only time that I did get to really exchange "conversation" with him was when I got in trouble...That's when he'd come and irrately yell me...there were times where he wouldn't even spend the energy to speak, and channeled that through the palm of his hand instead..."Spare not the rod and spoil the child"....
So at around 4th grade, everyone had to conduct an interview with someone...It was no surprise then that I would choose to interview my father, even my mother suggested it would get the two of us closer...And so he agreed and I interviewed...the first REAL conversation I would have with my father ever...There was a point where I asked him about his military service and fighting in Viet Nam...He told me about his medals and his duties and such...And I asked about his friends and if he still kept in contact with any...He proceeded to tell me, rather non chalant, that he didn't have any...Not because he was different in anyway or some sort of outcast, but because he didn't want to make any friend and therefore saved himself from it...He said that with the dangers of war, anyone could die at anytime...that includes friends...So he never got close to anyone, sure he had aquaintences, it's a team effort...He refused to make friend because if or when they would die, you lose focus...You can't think straight and it interferes with your mission...Everyone has a mission to do, and if you can't function to do it, you're as good as dead yourself...
The very first true conversation I held with my father....Out of all that, his views on friendships and bonds are what I took to heart...And why wouldn't I?...Someone I've admired, looked up to, idolized for so long shares his personal views with me...of course I would take that to heart and applied it to myself....
I know I wasn't at war, and the threat of death wasn't much prevalent at that age...but you still lose friends...By this time I had already moved to Long Island from Queens, so I knew that it was very much possible...either for me or someone else to change residence....I knew that you're not gonna be with everyone all the time, but we all form friendships based on that phantom-assumption that we will...So I avoided the sadness and cut to the chase and kept few, if any at all, close friends....Everyone else were just aquaintences...We knew each other only by chance....
They did what they had to do, and I did what I had to do....We were all just in the same place at the same time...There was no real "from now until forever" concept for me...It was just sort of "just for the now, with no heart-set on forever"...
And that's all that there was to it....A sort of empty/dead bond that was there all the time...Like they weren't as close as family...but, insteadm only as far as neighbors....