A couple weeks ago I was visiting my dad. He lives with his new wife in *her* home where she raised a family and lived her married life with her first husband. When I got home, I realized that I had this strange curiosity about my dad's life that I hadn't ever put into words or thoughts.

But this starts a long time ago. When I was a kid, a little kid, my dad worked as a lawyer in town, maybe two miles down the road from our house. To me it seemed like worlds away. Sometimes we would visit him at his office. The atomosphere was fifties style with old furniture and some kind of old *lawyer's office smell*~a mix of paper, cigar and cigarette smoke, worn leather chairs, and old building and drapes. There were two general secretaries, and my grandfather had his own long time secretary.

I used to love the office supply closet~coveting the paperclips and pens and unsharpened pencils, and pads of yellow legal paper. But I felt so uneasy there, like I didn't belong, and I was shy when the other lawyers would talk to me. I would climb the stairs to my dad's office, and see him behind his desk and feel oddly disconnected from him, like a spectator. My dad is not a 'kid person' so I didn't go jump on his lap nor give him a kiss. I did like to sit in his big slippery and faded leather chair that had wheels and would spin around. I would look around and see photos of myself and my siblings. School pictures. Sometimes pictures from our trips. I'd think~hmmm...I wonder why he chose that picture, it's not even *like* me? It was as though I could see his sentimentality for us in those pictures. This was my curiosity, that he had sentimentality for us.

My dad is a friendly guy. He was certainly friendly to us kids. I *know* that he loves us. But this odd feeling I get when visiting his other places shows me that there is a huge element of my dad that I just don't know. When he split from my mom, years ago, he moved into an apartment a few miles north of the town we had all lived. At that time I was moving away to Massachusetts, so I didn't really go hang with my dad in his apartment. (And if I did, my mother would have berated me, and without the subsequent years of therapy I would have let her!).
When I did go (usually he would just come visit at my mom's or I'd go to the alien office world), I could see the old furniture he had taken in the divorce and even odd knick knacks that my mother had made (doing ceramics was big in the 70's) or collected. It was like he was living as a castoff with the furniture and books and old stuff. I walked through as if I were walking through some kind of attic or second hand store not my dad's place, where he lived his life. He even used my old headboard from my double bed for his bed.

Over the years, dust accumulated there. My dad had a long term relationship with a past secretary from his office (in the beginning, she was 19, he was maybe 30 and married to my mom!). It seemed as though he must have never brought her there~how could he, it was so dusty and unimaginative? I remember this uneasy and yet curious feeling I would have there, and as I think about it now, I was *looking* for my dad. Looking to find out who he was, especially outside of our family. When he moved into his current home, I actually stayed in his apartment for the first time, with all his things. He was moving in with his wife-to-be, and my mom's house was full, so I stayed there. I had freedom to just wander around and try to take in my dad without him being there. I didn't snoop. I just looked at his music CDs and books. The dust just about killed me, triggering one long intense allergy attack.
Now at his new place, with his new wife, I have this strange feeling of disconnection (still) with my dad. Here is this woman with whom he had an affair and is now married. She knows him more than we kids ever did. Or could claim to. They call each other 'hun, and honey' and, well, they are married, and happy. The house is extremely neat and picked up. I wonder how my dad accomplishes this...does he do it automatically? Does he feel like it's *her* house and he has to? When he lived with us, he certainly didn't do that. I don't resent that, I'm just curious. I look around and I see his book collection in a very nice built in book case. I see some of the gifts I have sent him/them. And I was surprised to see a photo of my son on their refrigerator~a school picture.

I have not seen their bedroom or any of the upstairs. My dad talks to me of wanting to put in a patio. His wife's daughters are there in the house all the time, and this is their family home. It's theirs, not mine, and I can feel that...that disconnect. But it's where my dad lives. I think of how when he lived with my mom, we would just walk into their bedroom (for whatever reason) and I'd see his bureau top and all his bits and pieces there, and his closet full of suits, photos and some of his artwork and books. I could touch them, if not him, and *feel* him in a sense.
It's almost like he is a ghost in my life. It's so odd to say. It's so odd to feel as though I am striving to have a relationship with a ghost in my life (not a ghost in person). And I just realized that it's always been this way. And that's my dad. That's part of who he is.