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For the uninitiated: Landmarks are posts originally made to commemorate a certain post count or life event. They are supposed to help people get to know you better. This is my first.
The other day I hugged my dad, weeping into his frail shoulder while he comforted me from his hospital bed. The tears dripped down from my face into the surgical mask that protected my father from any germs I may have acquired from my sick son. He hugged me as best he could, patting me on the back and talking to me like I was ten all over again.
My dad is succumbing to cancer he was diagnosed with about two years ago. If and when he is released from the hospital, hospice will hopefully be set up for him so he can remain comfortable in the weeks he has left.
The first "adult" book I ever read with parental approval was Ender's Game, at age twelve. This was the original paperback my father had no doubt grabbed on a business trip to DC, or South Carolina, or Seattle (my dad worked in the Navy, or for Navy contractors, my entire childhood). It had some of the more crude language in it, and, well, Bonzo and Stilson. It was glorious.
The next year, he gave me Speaker for the Dead. I wasn't ready for it at 13, but by the time I finished high school, it was my absolute favorite, though Treason is still my guilty pleasure, and Maps in the Mirror is probably, in total, OSC's best work(s). Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory, in retrospect, planted the seed of my HP Lovecraft obsession ten years later.
I don't know what happens yet. I have a family of my own, a great job, and a part of me wants me to turn back the clock to be ten or twelve.
Posts: 7021 | Registered: Nov 1999
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Sorry you're going through this, but glad that you have wonderful memories of your father introducing you to books you've loved and that have shaped who you are. Let me know if I can help in any way (including IRL since I think we're still in the same area).
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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