i don't know that i've ever said i love you to my father in my adult life just as he had told me once or twice a long time ago:
that he had not, to his father, until the literal death bed.
i hold no hatred
wasn't mistreated overmuch as a child or anything
my childhood was happy. though that might have proven the worst thing for me in how late i've been able to break from the ignorance and comfort of many things.

i know i was an arrogant little ****.
but i might have deserved some of the pride, certainly not all of it
much of it i have abandoned, perhaps, by becoming less like him.
he has always provided well
tried to support many endeavors as full as he could
even if he did not understand fully

often, maybe lived vicariously in things like the guitars that he probably wished he had been able to play.
i know the music he liked.
he is a leader.
in many ways.
my father always had a need for clear, masculine objectivity.
i've found it hard to communicate things of nuance to him.
there has always got to be a bad guy.

often we have really got along.
we've done things together many times.
helped each other.
share interests.
skills.
abilities.
stature (in some ways).

he often told me he loved me
dropping me off somewhere: school, even into college
i didn't know how to say it back.
i can tell that he was actively trying to correct a greatest regret of his life.
i knew that.
but still repeat it.
his father died about a year before i was born.
i never knew him.
when my grandmother was alive, she had often said i looked like him.
i crossed my long legs in the same way.
my father is a broader man
of stronger limb.
he provided
better
than his father.

he has a kindness in him.
he feels responsibilities for things
done what he could:
boy scout leader, (troop functionally disbanded soon after i left as far as i know )
mentor of highschool robotics team (still there even many years after i left. he might be holding on to something in the way of a need to be that kind of guiding force- and besides, my brother still goes and helps out there too)
there have been times i can almost trust in him.
but then he will do or say something
a joke about self-harm-
about a ******.
i get pulled back somewhere.

he is outgoing.
i am not by nature.
but the more outgoing i get, the less i am like him
except in the type of confidence that comes with deep voice and a large frame.

he is certainly not the worst from the type of politics he adheres to.
far from.
he recoils at much of the things that pollute or replace science in the minds of those that vote like him.
but yet there is something of the
specificity.
the patriotism.
the need to protect most, those and that which are similar-
above others.

life
is but a collection of things around a one.

i, eldest son of eldest son,
care little for precedent as a marker of worth.
and i think i can do more good
if i ever do anything at all.

i don't much care for religion and sports.