It's Catching Up
by
Dick Prosapio © 2005
I miss my dad.
I thought it had just sneaked up on me, this
feeling, this yearning, for him, but maybe I set it up by the sudden
intrusion into my consciousness of this is my translation, "Way
Marie". I know that's not the real title of the song, but it's what
my kid memory of it is. "Way Marie, Way Marie" and then it went on
in Italian.
My father used to sing it in restaurants and at
parties where he worked with his quartet, bass, guitar, drums, and
piano or accordion, usually the latter. I remember him practicing
the chords for "Marie" on the guitar at home.....I guess I remember
him mostly at home in association with this song because I saw him
most often there.
Any way, this song suddenly started up in my head.
No precursor, no stimulating factor, I didn't have the radio on, I
was just sitting here at the computer playing some mindless game of
Solitaire or chess, and there it was, followed immediately by that
sad and yearning feeling you get when you want someone badly and
know that you can't have them. I've known that one a few times. It's
a terrible feeling.
Hopelessness I guess is what it is.......no; it's
more than that, it's a deep, deep sadness. I miss him and my Aunt
Mary and the whole Italian thing about them and that time. "Way
Marie" was just one of the songs of it, the smell of it was the
sausage and peppers cooking in my grandmother's kitchen, the light
of it was that Sunday afternoon light, soft and gold on old
furniture. I miss the sound of the Merry-Go-Round at the carnivals
at St. Mary of Mount Carmel on Chicago's South Side. I'd wander the
mid-way looking for Aunt Mary who always gave me tickets to the
rides....and grandma was always in the basement of the church
cooking vast pans full of sausage and green peppers. I'd find her
there and get some in fresh Italian bread.
I miss 'em. I don't expect you to know about any
of this. It's one of those small, private things I keep inside of me
somewhere. I didn't even know it was there until just now. I'd like
to believe that my dad is around, and Aunt Mary too. I'd like to
believe that and sometimes I do. But today, belief is not enough. I
wish they were here, I wish I could hear "Marie" in my
dad's tenor voice, and I wish I had Aunt Mary to spar with in
that in-your-face way we used to have with each other. I wish.....I
wish....I wish. I wish the tears could make it all true again.
I miss them all, and the times that are gone, I
miss them too and I know, really know that I can't go home and hope
to find any of it again. The houses, the people, the
times....they're not there anymore.
And, in the mist of all of these feelings, I look
around me at my life now and none of it seems as real as that time.
What am I doing here and what is this place? I belong back there,
back with them, back in familiar surroundings.
Crazy. Has my whole life since then been unreal?
I've just lost the bridge between the two
realities for a time. I guess I just needed a good cry to put my
self back together. It seems, right now, as if I've been running and
running and running ever since then. I know that's not true, but
that's how it seems. Like I left those times and never looked back
and now they've caught up with me to remind me that I had a life
that was real then too.
And I'm sad about it all being gone.
