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's care packages
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I received another care package today, this time it was from my daddy. Usually he just sends me a letter and it talks about his god he serves, verses he picked from a bible and what it all means to him, or supposed to mean to me if applied to my life I suppose. I'm not really sure why he writes those kinda letters to me.He does not talk about himself, only god.
All I ever wanted was to get to know him, who he is, on a personal level.
At least in the past few years. I have changed from wanting to brutally slay him to way deep down inside, just wanting to know him and all about him.Ya see, I know very little about him.
I recall parts of my childhood. My daddy was a Vietnam Vet, I never met him until I was 5 years old. He suffered from post traumtic stress, he had been injured in war, life at times was very difficult to live under the same roof as this man, brutal you may even say.
We moved alot being in the military, and many times daddy would need to 'get away' and my parents would leave me with another family and they would be gone, weeks, sometimes a month or more. They never talked of what they did during that time, as often as I pleaded with them to know.Eventually, I stopped asking.
Occasionally, daddy would bring me back a patch.
My first was in '76 when we had stopped at niagara falls on our way to move to okla. I had spotted a fancy heart one and he bought it for me, but I wasn't allowed to open the package, only admire it though the clear plastic.I learned at a young age not to disobey him, the package remained closed. Daddy took it back and said he'd save it for me, as he saved aside all the other patches he bought in the following years.
I started saving them myself, I'd cut them from hats or clothes that were being thrown out and now and then, if we stayed in one place long enough to make a friend, a friend would give me one. I had quite the collection of patches in a few short years until one day daddy spotted them, took them away and burnt them in a pile doused with gasoline in the driveway. I was 12 almost 13 yo. I expressed no emotion, to do so was weak in daddys eyes, but inside I raged. I stopped giving a fuck about patches that day and daddy stopped buying them for me after that also.
Since I have met my parents again, after 20+ years without them, I have become closer to my momma, getting to know her. She sends me a package now and then, sometimes of pics of me when I was a baby or something of mine as a child she still had.
Today though I received a package from daddy, and inside is the patches he saved for me all this time, even the heart one still in the plastic.
There are also military ones, some I have no idea what they are. I don't know what are daddy's or what he picked up along the way. He didn't send a letter with it.
There are a few medals in the package also, colored bars and sgt. stripes and misc. stuff.
Even my small cap gun I used to shoot at passerby's with from the treetops.
The memories come flooding in. I am comfortably numb.
If anyone knows what any of the patches are, or medals, I would appreiciate your insight.
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