ifwinterends

apparently, this year my dad turns 50. half a century. it seems like an insane thing to me, for someone to be alive for that long. though i do know people who are older than that, for some reason my dad is forever about 30 in my mind. always 30. but apparently, this year, he turned 50. i'm fairly sure that his birthday was yesterday. the 14th seems to be a date i remember for no particular reason. it could be tomorrow, i'm not sure. either way, yesterday, i thought of him. i tried to remember anything about him. i remember him being short. so he must really be quite short because if i remember him being short even when i was 9 years old then he must really be short. everything looks bigger when you're young than it actually is, or at least that is what people always tell you. and if he seemed little to be then, then i've concluded he must be short. i wonder if he's put on weight. i can't imagine him being any different than he was the last time i saw him - and i can't even remember when that was. was i...12? was it 13 years ago? was Shane already born? does that mean i was 15? i have no idea. but he's 50 and it makes me wonder what he thinks of his life and the decisions he made. would he argue that he had no decision to make and that it was forced upon him to lose contact with his two eldest children? i say eldest because i imagine he has had more, though i have no reason to believe this. i would think that his parent would tell Ashley and i if he had more kids, but when we do talk to them, they never bring him up. is he dead? or is he 50?