Even If You Weren’t My Father by Camillo Sbarbaro

This poem reminds me of the song by Brad Paisley titled You didn’t have to be.  It is a good song about a step-father being a father when he didn’t have to be.  My step-dad did this for me when my mother met him.  My father wasn’t around since he had a traveling mechanic job.  I was four and my brother was eight.  Wes, my step-dad kept dating my mother after knowing she was a single parent of two little brats.  He would take us with them all kinds of places and it was fun.  He was a young fun guy who helped my mom when she needed it.  But then they got married.  It started to become an authority deal where he was mad I didn’t call him Dad and he became mean.  He didn’t work for ten years and we pretty much became his slaves.  He would manipulate my mom into taking his side and eventually Zach, and even later, I moved out.  I tried to respect him and to just stay out of the way but once I moved into my dad’s house he started being very childish.  I only respect him now because he is the father of my gorgeous, wonderful, little sister.

My dad has finally been a big part of my life and I see how he loves being a parent to my younger sisters and my younger brother.  He has bent over backwards to make my life wonderful and to make up for lost time.  Although I could be jealous that he has been there more for my other siblings, I am not.  I’m just happy they don’t have to grow up in a broken family.  He is a great dad and I am glad he is there for me now.

For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch

This poem is a really fun and thoughtful one.  We really do need to trust our hearts.  They are usually right.  Even though sometimes they can lead you into a wall, they usually lead you right back to your bed after an adventure.  I wonder what it is like to sleepwalk.  I wonder what sleepwalkers think or if they even do, but they must have some consciousness because like Hirsch says, they don’t run into things and they usually know their path. 

My older brother, Zach, used to sleepwalk.  I don’t think he does anymore but he used to talk and walk in his sleep constantly.  He would go to bed early and if you would make the slightest noise like hitting the table or anything he would start a conversation with himself.  It was so funny, we should have recorded it.  There was this one time when he walked out the back door, over the the neighbors, knocked on their door at like three in the morning, and looked in their window.  My step-dad was watching the whole thing because he heard the back door slam.  What made it really funny was he was in his boxers the whole time.  Wes, my step-dad, said he looked through the front door window because he locked himself out.  Wes let him in and started yelling asking what he thought he was doing and he must have lost his mind.  All Zach could say was that it was really cold outside and then walked to bed.  He had no recollection of it in the morning and laughed as hard as we did when Wes told us.