I just woke myself up as I cried very hard in a dream

I was arguing with my dad. He had mangled his agreement with me about how I would spend the summer, then he was forcing me to move furniture even though all my brothers, all big guys six feet or taller, and at least one bro a big hulk and all of them more capable than I have ever been of moving heavy stuff. And he was talking about some of my cousins, people neither of us had seen in many years, about giving them some of his money. If he had said he was giving all his money to these nephews of his, I wouldn't have been upset, I would have known he was pulling my leg. My dad was an awful tease, never knowing when to stop, always taking his teasing too far. But I could spot his teasing. Usually. Like if he had said share with my cousins, okay, he was teasing. But when he said, sober as a judge, no twinkle in his gambler's charming blue eyes, that he would have to talk to 'the boys' and then he'd decide but he believed in giving where it was needed. Maybe a pointed dig at me, like I shouldn't be holding out my hand. I didn't spot his teasing because he was being deliberately mean. My dad was not delibertely mean to me many times, if you don't count the incest. And I don't count his incesting me aas being deliberately mean. I count the incest as my dad being a weak, damaged man. I guess he was weak and damaged in all things but I didn't know this when I was about 22, as I was in the dream, getting ready to move to MN for law school without enough money to do it.  He never did give me a dime to help with that move. Throughout law school, I lived with one used wing back chair I bought in a dingy Lake Street used furniture store, then threw a furniture cover of it, a drexel heritage dining room table whose surface was very badly damaged that I bought at a garage sale. one straight back chair from the same sale and an old metal springs bed with old mattress on an old metal frame my landlady had offered me when, as she shoed me the apartment, she asked if I needed furnishing and I said "Well, yeah, now that you mention it." She gave me that bed and I, then I and my now ex hubby slept on it for years, into the marriage even. And she gave me an old metal dining table with two chairs. A kitchen table. It was art deco and would be prized in a fifties odernity furniture shop but my ex hated it for not being from a contemporary furniture store, not being bought new.

The most angst producing aspect of the dream was this:  I knew I was sleeping and kept trying to pull yself awake so I'd stop being so angry and hurt by my dad's talk but I didn't want to wake up because I knew I had no one to tell when I awoke. Even asleep, I wanted to tell Geo how rudely my dad was treating me and hear him coo sympathetically, stroking my hair, hugging me, telling me I was okay.

So I stayed in this in and out zone, sleeping but conscious I was dreaming, alseep but not wanting to wake up but wanting to stop the dream by waking up.

Come to think of it, many of the stories from my dad that have been cropping up in my thoughts, based on memories of real events, with the fractured filters one gets with fifty year old memories, and some of them dreams that were about things that never happened but which match emotional states I had when interacting with my dad, these stories often reveal a character trait that my dad and Geo share.

I have always been attracted to men with the worst traits of both my parents.

One of my dad's finest traits was his generosity, which is instilled in me. He would say "If giving away some of the money in my pocket will help a guy out, I'll give it to him. Sometimes a guy feels like the only friend he has in the world is the few bucks he has in his pocket and that's a terrible way for a guy to feel, honey. So if someone hits me up for money, I give it. I've been tapped out myself and it is a cold, lonely place to be."  Another thing he said a lot, to explain why he never locked any house he lived in. He said "If anyone wants anything I got so bad they will break in to steal it, they need it worse than me and I don't need the smashed in window or door so let them have it."  No one ever broke in but for some reason, I beamed with pride for my father each time he said it. As I beamed, I would think about what we owned. We didn't own anything of great value. Our most expensive asset that I could identify was our family tv. Even as a kid, I knew that was not great wealth.  And I knew we never had any money because my dad was a compulsive gambler. Chuck liked the ponies, the crooked world of horse racing.

I cajoled him to Omaha partly with his first glimpse of his first grandchild, and my gifted airfare, but I think what won him over, for my dad hated to leave Chicago and only left it to meet Rosie and to come to my wedding. Also he attended my law school graduation.  He talked, regularly, about going to Vegas but he never made it to Vegas. I always prayed he would never go to Vegas for I was sure he would gamble away his house.

He was a flawed human but I loved him. And he loved me. I always knew he loved me.