A decade hence, the house is crumbling and wonderful, every corner of every room stacked with piles of mismatched decadence-laundry from who knows how long, dessert plates enameled with remnants of ancient apple pie, years of the New Yorker, USB jacks and plugs, cleaning products, gardening supplies, sex toys, silverware, doilies and dance shoes. Get him a crazy-pad, they reckoned, stock it with furniture and art and booze, extend him a spending account, and he won’t come over any more and embarrass us with our historical negligence or his blossomy excess. The place is also an asylum to house his nuttiness. The house is astonishing, given to him long about his fortieth birthday by his family as an apology for treating him for decades like a magical wind-up toy. He said that forgiveness was an essential part of loving someone, and forgiveness was greatest gift I could give anyone, including myself. He told me he was dying with nothing unresolved, no aching wrong unaddressed. I remember, during his fading days, asking my father about the AA process of making amends. But my father died sober and spent the last years of his life as an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He was finally felled by the ravages of a disease he passed on to me through genes and by behavior-the disease of alcoholism and addiction. More than once, my father reminded me that being a pacifist doesn’t make one a passive-ist. In our home, it was permissible for a man to cry. He taught my five elder siblings and me that emotional vulnerability could be a man's strength, not his weakness. He recognized his own faults and was familiar with the words "I'm sorry”. I am grateful for my father's simple humility. The night I came out to my father as gay, he wept and embraced me, not completely understanding what it all meant, but affirming me as a worthy and loved young man. My childhood friends and I would beg him again and again to tell us about the time grandaddy Johnson got four flat tires. My father taught me the art of storytelling.
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I also learned to eat fried okra with my hands, and how to dig into a pot of fiery hot stewed chicken using a handful of sticky rice as a utensil. I was taught which fork to use, the purpose of a caviar spoon, and what to say or not say to a server during a six-course meal. My parents had traveled the globe and taught me how to have sincere conversation and share a meal as comfortably with a Hmong refugee from war-torn Laos as with a member of Congress. When I was eight, my dad taught me the basics of drafting and carpentry-his own fathers’s trade-building a sturdy plywood and lumber playhouse for me in the back yard, complete with a pitched, tar shingled roof. Sometimes, in the evenings, my father would sit in the basement and listen to his record collection, which ranged from symphonies to choral music to Peter, Paul and Mary and the Beatles.
In the old snapshot, I’m grinning broadly as my dad bounces me up and down, singing the French country tune “A da da! Sur le cheval de bon papa” On the wall behind us is an explorer’s map of the eastern hemisphere, framed and hung as decoration. Paul next to the antique Danish spinning wheel and clogs my parents took with them from continent to continent on their student missionary travels. Pack Rat Pack and Ship is a one-stop-shop for dozens of business products and services that will allow you to do what you’re good at while we take care of the “other stuff” you need to succeed.We are in the living room in St. Large or small, black and white or color if it can be printed, Pack Rat Pack and Ship can handle it!
In addition to our pack and ship service, we are also Palm Coast's premier copy, print and document services center. We can pack and ship anything to anywhere in the world, but shipping is only one way we can help to make your life easier. Our team of dedicated, professionally trained experts understands the meaning of Super-Star Customer Care-we focus on saving you time and money by ensuring you get the right products and services at the right price-in a single, quick visit. Pack Rat Pack and Ship located at 4845 Belle Terre Pkwy Ste C, Palm Coast FL is the go-to resource for packing, shipping, printing and business service needs of the residents and businesses of Palm Coast, FL. Welcome To Pack Rat Pack and Ship Serving Palm Coast For Over 20 Years
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