I am a flightless bird, and there will be no more after me.

I am up early, for another Christmas alone.

I am not in a bad mood though, I'm not sad, and I don't feel like I'm 'alone' (the term is just so depressing, really) but I feel happy and content in the morning for the first time in a while. Yesterday I spoke to my father for the first time in almost half a year. This whole time I knew he wasn't doing well. I knew my father was under a constant stream of pain medication, and I knew that he was out of work and poor, I knew that he was suffering the same nerve sickness that took my grandmother. Yet as my brother would report to me of my father's misgivings I never called him. You see, my father and I never saw eye to eye. We don't really understand each other, and our ways of life are very different. But when I heard he had done what is probably the nicest and most caring thing anyone has done for me in the last year (I can think of only few things that made me think to thank someone so much, the other things belong to Katrina) I called him.

He spoke slowly, and I could tell the medication the doctors had prescribed to him were rough on his body. I could tell when he would stand or walk while on the phone with me, his voice would quiver with each step. Yet, I listened to him. I told him I loved him and appreciated everything he'd done for me as a child, even if he was not a perfect father. Really, the fact of the matter is that he taught me pretty much everything I know to survive. My resourcefulness has a direct relation to how he taught me to interact with others, and how to take care of myself. He was holding back tears, but so was I.

Its not really important WHAT he did for me, or why it really matters that he went and did what he did. My father tries to be a good man, and usually falls short, and I forgive him. He may not be my friend, or someone I'd ever go to to talk, but he dedicated 18 years of his life to taking care of me, and I've never been apreciative or thankful. Whenever someone asked about my father I had only negative things to say because they were the most vivid. He never hit me, he wasn't an alchoholic and he worked every day I knew him to make money. He cooked for us and always bought us new shoes and clothes as we needed them. He took care of us, and he was a good father, even if he was not a good man.

So today, christmas, I am going to be happy that I do have family, and I'm not alone. My Mother and Father are both extremely caring, even if in their own way, even if I am not eating dinner with them tonight, or opening any gifts. So I am happy, really I am. Because of all this, for once when thinking about Katrina I do not feel any bitterness about our ordeal. She went out of her way to get me a gift (a lot of coffee, which is delicious) on Christmas, and I did for her. We smile when we see eachother, and it doesn't feel fake.

-John