{"id":1649,"date":"2011-09-20T01:07:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T01:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2011-09-20T01:07:50","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T01:07:50","slug":"cory-fosco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/2011\/09\/cory-fosco\/","title":{"rendered":"Cory Fosco"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my blog, I first read this essay on the blog Is Greater Than<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0I think you will understand why I wanted to reprint it here.<\/p>\n

Cory Fosco<\/strong> received his MA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University in June 2008. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Loyola University Chicago in 1992. His previous work has been published in Hippocampus Review<\/em>, Superstition Review<\/em>, Is Greater Than<\/em>, CellStories<\/em>, Chiron Review<\/em>, and other small press publications. His essay, \u201cLost Luggage\u201d was a November 2006 winner of the Guild Complex Prose Series. Cory teaches creative nonfiction at Harper Community College. He has been happily married for 15 years, and has two children.<\/p>\n

My Father\u2019s Legs<\/strong><\/p>\n

The doctors in the hospital were worried about circulation in my father\u2019s legs.\u00a0 We needed to move pillows around, adjust things, even rub them at times. I never went so far as rubbing his legs, but I touched them.\u00a0 My job\u2014when he was awake and not on a ventilator\u2014was to remove, clean, and re-insert his dentures.\u00a0 We were never an affectionate family, so when I felt my father\u2019s cold legs in my hands, I was uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I never thought much about genetics before I started getting older.\u00a0 More specifically, I never thought about genetics until I started having children of my own. When I was growing up, the big joke in my family was that I was adopted. I was the last of four children, coming after my brother, Ira, who was my parent’s first biological child, and my sister, Michelle, who died at three months from SIDS. My oldest brother, Darrell, is technically my half-brother. I’ve never seen it that way. \u00a0\u00a0Darrell is six years older than me and has struggled all of his life with issues of abandonment. His mother left when he was five years old, and she has never resurfaced since. Darrell was always attached to my father. He was Darrell’s comfort blanket, his favorite stuffed animal, his friend.<\/p>\n

By the time I was born, life was busy for our family. My father worked at the airport from the early morning until mid-afternoon.\u00a0 He woke up at 3 am every day and was wiped out by the time he returned.\u00a0 My mother stayed at home with her three boys, aged six and younger, getting us up, planning our days, cooking our meals, cleaning the house.\u00a0 This was the early 70s, so this wasn\u2019t uncommon.\u00a0 Although, by the time I was in first grade, my mother took a job at a currency exchange and never stopped working.<\/p>\n

The recording of my first several years was minimal.\u00a0 When I was born, my mother started a baby book of me, which included my very first picture taken at the hospital, blurbs about my first few months about how I slept or when I first lifted my head, and a lock of my hair.\u00a0 Chronicling my life lost its frequency and went unfinished.\u00a0 There are a few pictures of me in various family photo albums and even a few 8mm silent videos.\u00a0 One odd thing people notice is that I didn’t look much like the rest of the family.<\/p>\n

Darrell had blond hair and bluish green eyes, and he wore a thick pair of black plastic-rimmed glasses.\u00a0 Years later, whenever we would look through old pictures and come across a photo of Darrell, we knew exactly who he resembled: Ralphie, from the classic movie, A Christmas Story<\/em>.\u00a0 Darrell never objected to the reference.<\/p>\n

Ira was always a chunky kid.\u00a0 He was mistaken for a girl once at a restaurant, probably because of his long hair and boy-boobs.\u00a0 As a toddler, Ira had very thick, very curly brown hair.\u00a0 People always said he looked like the kid from the Oscar Mayer commercial.\u00a0 You know the one; the cute kid whose bologna had a first and last name.\u00a0 I always thought that Ira looked like Weird the Bellhop, one of the characters from The Gigglesnort Hotel.\u00a0 Ira had to wear braces on both of his legs to help correct a hip problem.\u00a0 He was the child version of Forrest Gump.\u00a0 Ira\u2019s leg braces came off with much less fanfare than how it happened in the movie.\u00a0 No one was chasing him or yelling, \u201cRun, Ira, run!\u201d<\/p>\n

I was shorter and thinner than my brothers, and no one thought my facial features resembled anyone else in the family.\u00a0 That was until one Halloween, my parents suggested I dress up like a girl, complete with makeup and a dress.\u00a0 After the costume was complete, everyone said I looked like my Aunt Denise, which was fine if I was a girl.\u00a0 Boys don\u2019t want to hear that they resemble their aunts\u2014or any woman\u2014no matter how flattering that might seem.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

My father was a hairy man. He had a mustache at 13. And it wasn\u2019t one of those cheesy, peach fuzz\/pencil-thin\/barely see it kind of \u2018staches.\u00a0 It was the real deal.\u00a0 Think Burt Reynolds or Tom Selleck.\u00a0 He was one of those men who could grow a thick beard in a week.\u00a0 I\u2019m not like that.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried to grow a beard, but it just comes out all wrong. \u00a0Patchy, thin, unappealing.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Whenever my brothers wanted to get me mad or make me cry, they would simply remind me that I was different. \u201cYou\u2019re nothing but a nark,\u201d they would say if I confessed to my parents when we misbehaved.\u00a0 I had a guilty conscience\u2014something my brother\u2019s did not seem to possess\u2014so it was difficult for me to lie.\u00a0 \u201cWhy do you have to be such a jerk?\u00a0 Why can\u2019t you be more like us?\u201d\u00a0 I was different, my brothers would say, for only one reason: I was adopted. My parents were in on it too. They thought it was funny.<\/p>\n

As I got older, I began to wonder if I was actually adopted. I wondered if I had to embark on a quest to find my birth family, to see if I could fit in there, to see if I had “real” brothers and sisters.\u00a0 I might have even fantasized that it was true.\u00a0 That someday I would find myself on a daytime talk show, hearing Oprah Winfrey or Maury Povich announce and bring out my entire grief-stricken family.\u00a0 The family that thought about my whereabouts regularly, the family that continued living no matter how hard it was for them.\u00a0 The family that liked to read like me, the family that liked to lift weights and eat healthy like me, the family that had brown eyes and thick brown hair, was slim, and cared about the food they ate.\u00a0 The family I resembled.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Being hairy isn’t something I think I missed out on. I mean, my father had hair on his chest which is, again, sometimes seen as manly. But he also had hair on his back, and on his stomach, and on his butt. My father used to sleep naked when we were kids.\u00a0 He never thought twice about walking naked in the house, as long as visitors were not around.\u00a0 I\u2019ll give him that.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I’ve always been the negative print of a black sheep. I was the only one of the children to like school, and the only one to go to college for both my Bachelor\u2019s and Master\u2019s Degrees. I am the only one who converted from Judaism to Catholicism. I am the only one who hasn’t been arrested, who likes his job, the only one who has coached his children in sports, the only one whose wife homeschools their children. I’ve never thought it makes me better than anyone else. It just makes me me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As I’ve gotten older, I have started to see things differently. Physically, as well as behaviorally. When my father was sick in the hospital\u2014dying from pneumonia, a side effect of the chemotherapy treatments for gastric cancer\u2014I noticed that we have the same legs. More specifically, we have the same calves. It’s a strange thing to notice, but when you spend hours staring at a person in a hospital bed, you tend to look at them, I mean really look<\/em> at them.\u00a0 I never noticed how round my father\u2019s face was, or how many wrinkles he had on his forehead and around his eyes.\u00a0 I never noticed how long and wide his ears were.\u00a0 I never noticed the way his eyes, even closed the way they were, protruded so far out.\u00a0 I never noticed how peaceful a dying man could look.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

With all of the hair on my father’s body, his legs were probably the spot that had the least amount. It was light colored, almost transparent, and thin; barely noticeable. My legs are the same way. The hair is darker, but the amount is negligible. When I was a competitive bodybuilder, my calves were thick and strong; they measured 17″ around. Now, even though I still workout on a regular basis, I’m lucky if my calves are 13″. My thighs have always been thick. Still are. \u00a0But today, like right this moment, when I reach down and put my hand on my left calf, I feel more skin and bone than muscle. And they feel cold when I touch them. Just like when I touched my dad’s legs as he lay in bed, dying.<\/p>\n

Thanks to this tactile memory, I think about my dad more often than I expected. If I am laying in bed reading, and my legs cross, I think about my dad. If I have an itch on my leg and I scratch it, I think about my dad. When I wear shorts, I think about my dad.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

As I get older, I believe I am beginning to look more like him, too. I see him in my expressions, in my short stature; in the way my body is shifting. I’ve even started walking like him, hunched over a bit, quick; like E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial. \u00a0My dad had this thing he used to do\u2014my grandfather, his father, used to do it too.\u00a0 Whenever it was cold outside, and he had to perform an activity like pumping gas, he always puffed his cheeks up and blew out steady burst of air, repeatedly the entire time. I do the same thing, occasionally.\u00a0 But my puffs come with more frequency.<\/p>\n

In 1996, Darrell was the best man at my wedding. He had to give the Best Man speech.\u00a0 It was short and to the point, welcoming my wife, Cyndi and her family into ours. I\u2019m not sure there was much preparation behind the speech.\u00a0 Darrell didn\u2019t read from a sheet of notebook paper or from index cards.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any embarrassing jokes or gestures to share.\u00a0 He did, however, end with a simple proclamation: “Cory,\u201d he said, \u201cYou were not really adopted.”<\/p>\n

I’m beginning to believe him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my blog, I first read this essay on the blog Is Greater Than. \u00a0I think you will understand why I wanted to reprint it here. Cory Fosco received his MA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University in June 2008. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Loyola University Chicago in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[531,18,535,536,12,538,537,532,534,83,7,16,533,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-1649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-guest-posts","7":"tag-my-fathers-legs-cory-fosco","8":"tag-anthology","9":"tag-cellstories","10":"tag-chiron-review","11":"tag-ellen-wade-beals","12":"tag-guild-complex-prose-series","13":"tag-harper-community-college","14":"tag-hippocampus-review","15":"tag-is-greater-tha","16":"tag-is-greater-than","17":"tag-solace","18":"tag-solace-in-so-many-words","19":"tag-superstition-review","20":"tag-weighed-words","21":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1667,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solaceinabook.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}