Happy Father’s Day

This is my father, Azell Jackson. He’s dead. At his funeral some relative I don’t know said

Oh you must be the other one.

I have vague memories of him taking me fishing and flying kites. I remember him getting frustrated that I couldn’t ride my bike without falling and I started crying so he stopped paying me any attention. I eventually got it to where I could get myself going down the driveway and a ways on the sidewalk without falling.

“Look, Daddy!”

He didn’t.

I remember my Mom leaving and trying to get me to come with her and I didn’t know what was going on so I just cried. And cried. I remember swinging on the swings by myself at Oak Park Park while they talked. I remember not seeing or hearing from him again for over fifteen years.

I remember talking to him for the first time as an adult on Father’s Day the year he died. 

Anyway. Happy Father’s Day.