Cigarettes and Paco Rabanne....

I remember certain things about my dad: how he wore the ugliest boat shoes ever; how soft his silver hair felt; how he liked to eat his eggs mixed with potatoes and his tuna fish soaked with tons of lemon juice. He drank only coffee and water when he wasn’t drinking scotch, he loved watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and every once in awhile, I saw him reading a book, which made him seem more interesting to me for some reason. I remember the rock paper-weight I painted for him was in his top bureau drawer along with all the other things he probably forgot were there, he owned too many pairs of white socks that nobody ever wanted to match up and roll into sock-balls, and he smelled of cigarettes and Paco Rabanne.

However, going fishing with him when I was a little girl probably remains my most significant memory because those were the only times I actually spent time with him at all. We’d wake up at some ridiculous hour, maybe 4:30 am, pack up our bologna sammies, a thermos of water and some chips, and then get our poles together for our day on the water. We’d pull into Freeport’s Nautical Mile while it was still dark outside, unload all of our stuff, and bring it onto the boat we’d spend half the day on. Then we’d go find a stool at the counter in the greasy diner where we always ate our before-fishing breakfast of eggs, toast and home fries. By the time we were done eating, the sun would be up and the morning actually looked like morning.

We’d settle into our spot on the party boat, defrost our spearing and squid and wait to depart. I always felt awkward being alone with my dad because I really didn’t know how to have a conversation with him. But by the time the boat pulled away, that awkwardness dissipated. My dad would talk about the buoys, and how the captain knew where to anchor and just anything about fishing in general. I’d ask him questions and he’d always be happy to provide the answers. By the end of each fishing trip, I had a lot of fluke in my bucket and a new appreciation for the kind of relationship I could have with my dad.

Until I became a teenager, that is, and I eschewed fishing trips with my dad for nonsense time with my friends, trips to the mall with my boyfriend, or simply the allure of my warm bed. I was too cool and too busy for my dad, or so I thought, and as an adult looking back now, I would bet my eyeballs that he probably felt at least a little bit deserted and disappointed.

As kids, we all think our parents will live to be gray, shrunken shadows of their youthful selves so how could I have known I should have ditched my friends in order to hurry up and make memories with my dad because he’d be dead by the time I was nineteen? At almost 40, I don’t have nearly enough memories of him to be at peace with his death. He missed too much:

…my first experience at college, even if it was only Nassau

…walking me down the aisle and dancing with me. To this day, it’s too hard for me to watch anyone dance with their fathers.

…the joy of being a grandpa. After suffering with 4 females his whole life, he missed enjoying 2 grandsons and one princess.

…holding his oldest daughter’s hand through brain cancer and survival, and holding up his wife, as well.

… seeing all three of his girls as women, watching us stumble through life, picking us up when we fell down, cheering us on when we deserved it or simply because we needed it. And boy, do I need it now.

…teaching his grandkids how to bait a hook and how to tell when it was a fish or a crab biting the line.

…seeing his granddaughter at her first dance recital, being dissed by her dance partner but taking control to a roomful of applause.

…seeing his grandson –my son - on stage dancing like nobody’s business, shocking the shit out of everyone, especially me.

…watching me make that monumental walk across the Hofstra stage at almost 40 years old, finally earning my Bachelor’s Degree.

Admittedly, this blurb is pretty random and is basically just a self-serving recognition of my mistakes as a kid and my sadness at those realizations as an adult. It’s frustrating knowing I have to make an effort to remember his voice and how very few times I spent alone with him. I hate knowing I’ve spent half of my life without him and how I forgot what having a father is like. I hate the fact that I will never be able to know what kind of relationship I could have had with him as a grown daughter, instead of only having memories of being a young, selfish teenager.

I know there’s nothing I can do because, even though I hate to say this, but it is what it is. I suppose if anything at all, the tiny consolation of having a few memories will have to carry me through.

At least until they fade…

"Seventy-Two"

Today, June 7th, would have been my dad's 72nd birthday and this December marks the twentieth anniversary of his murder. I have spent half of my life without a dad, and to tell the truth, I don't really remember what it's like to even have one.


Every year, when either his birthday, Father's Day, or the anniversary approaches, I tell myself , "Just don't think about it too much. Don't walk around or mope so people will know I am thinking about him. I can think about him, (or not), and cry about him, (or not)." Trying not to think about any of it just makes his absence even more overwhelming, which, of course, makes me cry anyway.


Last night I was looking at some pictures my mom posted on her Facebook page and I was so taken by both my parents' youth, their beauty, their...togetherness. It struck me that once upon half-a-lifetime-ago, I had parents - plural. In that other part of my life, never did I imagine that there would be any parenting done by anything less than two people.


As a kid, I always imagined that when I was a grown woman with my own kids, I'd return to my parents' house - my childhood house- to watch them "grandparent" my children. I struggle now, still trying to imagine what it would have been like. Would my dad be more interactive with them than he was with me? Would my mom have the kids sleep over on weekends and make them teddybear-shaped pancakes in the morning? Would my mom even wake up before 10:30 to make the pancakes? Would my kids climb the same tree that my sisters and I climbed in the backyard? My life seems punctuated with endless question marks. You know, I actually rent out small spaces in the worlds of "what-if," "it's not fair," and "why us? why me?" It's not even like I want to be in any of those places; real estate there is automatically included in the "losing-a-loved-one" package.


On any of the occasions that would typically honor my father's life, like today, it's his death that somehow winds up dominating my mind. It's not the memories of his life, or the memories of the (very) few things we did together that pop into my mind, but the way he died and what my entire family is missing because of his death that saturates my thoughts. However, there are years when his birthday comes and goes almost as if it's like any other day, but maybe because my kids have to be somewhere or the day is simply over-scheduled enough to keep my mind mostly occupied. While I always acknowledge the day somehow, even if silently to myself, and allow it to pass dry-eyed, I will still call my mom just because I want to acknowledge it outloud for her.


So many years have gone by now and all of the people in my daily life have no clue who my father was, including my husband and children. My mother recently said that she wanted to write a memorial to him on the twentieth anniversary of his death because, "I want people to remember him, to remember he was here." Maybe it wasn't in those exact words, but pretty close. When a person passes away, all you hear is that person's name for some time. But then what happens after those first few months or even a year? Nothing. Nobody ever mentions it again, as if that person never existed at all. At least that's how it feels. Certainly, I don't expect anyone to say my dad's name in casual conversation every day for the remainder of my life, but it would be nice if someone had a random memory to share with me about him. I'm a huge believer in sharing; I do it all the time. I remember seeing a friend many years after high school and telling her how I still remembered the smell of the soap in the bathroom of her childhood home, and also a funny story about her father, who had since passed away. She seemed so grateful to know that someone remembered those things, especially about her dad. Honestly, I told her because they were happy memories for me and I really wanted to share them just for the sake of reconnecting through that old childhood bond, but in the end, I was thrilled that it made her feel good on a completely different level.


I feel so accustomed to silence where my own dad is concerned. Sure, every once in awhile you have to tell someone that your loved one is dead if it comes up in coversation, and sure, he or she says they're sorry. As sorry as anyone might be, there's a certain disconnect to their sympathy because they never knew the person who died. I really wish someone in my life actually knew him, knew he existed which makes me understand my mom feels compelled to write a memorial in honor of him. Last night, feeling overwhelmed with life and feeling sad looking at the old pictures of my parents, I started to cry for a few minutes. Nobody wants to be sad alone, so I went downstairs to sit with my son and my husband but I started to cry again. My son asked me what was wrong and I said, "Tomorrow would have been your grandpa's birthday." Neither of them said a word. Their complete, yet faultless, disconnect to my sadness was because neither of them knew my dad nor understood my loss, but their silence made my grief even more suffocating. So, I called my mom.


I really never know exactly how I'm going to feel on Father's Day, when I have to give cards to my husband's dad instead of my own, for instance, or on my dad's birthday, like today. Maybe I'll mention it to my friend if we're on the phone, or I'll call my sister and talk about how old my father would be if he was still alive. Maybe I'll say hi to him when I finally go to bed, in the dark, at the end of a long day full of child-related activities. Maybe I'll cry alone, like I've done many, many times.


What I do know is that I love him and I'm heartbroken that he's not here anymore. But at one time, he was here. For all of you who never knew him, or for all of you who knew I once had a father but don't remember him, his name was Nathan Mizrahi.


And today, he's "Seventy-Two."

Do-Overs...

According to dog experts, dogs don't remember what happened last week, nor do they hold grudges because you yelled, 'no, bad dog!' - they simply live in the moment. As I walked my girl, One, in the cold and dark of this evening, my mind started to wander, as it is want to do when we go for our nightly walks through the neighborhood. It wandered and wondered all at once, actually: wandered back into my past, then wondered why I couldn't stay in the present. I watched as One scampered along beside me, enjoying herself as she stopped to eat some snow or sniff a particularly odiferous spot on the sidewalk. Even when she suddenly pulled me across a sheet of ice and I had to yell and pull her leash back hard before she managed to herniate another one of my disks, she still looked up at me with love. She didn't care that when I pulled her leash, metal prongs put pressure on her fat little neckie; she just stopped and looked at me, like, "Come on, Mom, let's go!" All she wanted to do was continue on, leaving the past at the corner of Camp and Merrick Avenues.

But as I walked on, hoping that One didn't decide to do her backyard business in someone's front yard, my mind was somewhere back on Ann Road and Beach Drive in the years 1975 through 1990. God, there are so many things that I would do different. If I had a do-over, I would or should:

1) ...have taken the sharpest pencil from my pencil box in third grade and stabbed out the eyeballs of the boy who told me I was too fat and who started my path into deep, dark, calorie-restricted places. Or at least called him a jerk and kicked him in his nuts.
2) ...have accepted my parents' compliments and believed that they knew they were talking about... instead of believing a conceited third-grader.
3)...have studied harder.
4) ....have tried out for kickline a second time. If I managed a perfect split once, I could have managed one again... and make the judges pay attention to me this time.
5)...have continued writing through junior high school and high school. Who knows? I could have had tons of writing credits by the age of 18 instead of... ::thinking, thinking:: uh, none.
6)...have tried to forget about the idiot in do-over number one and all the subsequent idiots, male and female, who only made me worse. My calorie consumption from the years 1985-1990 totalled about... 1,000.
7)...have realized by age 15 - at least! - that I shouldn't have allowed my childhood chubbiness to define me.
8)...have learned the meaning of 'get over it!' waaaay earlier.
9)...have learned that the most important opinion of myself was my own.
10)... have told a former boss that he was an arrogant asshole and deserved, or even provided him with, a good ass-kicking. When someone works for you and offers to give more to the job, you don't yell and belittle said person.
11)... have gone to sleep-away camp (Camp Wayne!) or even college. College at 38 is awesome but somehow I bet at 18 it would have been really, really.... groovy.
12)... have gone fishing with m'daddy more. Why did I think I was too cool or too busy at 13 to do something with him that I loved so much?
13)...have been an athlete in junior high/high school. Trying to be fit now, at 38, has come with a painful price: bad knees, back, elbows, feet. All pain and weight gain...
14)...have learned that people's intentions are sometimes good, oftentimes misleading, too many times selfish. And instead of being continually surprised and/or hurt, I could just accept it and move forward.
15)...have not eaten enough pineapple during the '80's and '90's to feed a small country. This is linked to do-over #1 in some way.
16)...have bought Z. Cavariccis in more colors other than black and brown. They were flattering.
17)...have not let someone I adored move far away before we were able to wrap things up.
18)...have figured out a way to steal the Ralph Lauren perfume from the plastic container in 41's room, who had stolen it from 46's room, without her figuring it out.
19)...have cared more about what *I*thought of me rather than what everyone else did. Doing the right thing doesn't make people like you more and being liked doesn't always earn you respect. I'm still trying to figure that one out, and, finally...
20)...not have done a cartwheel on wooden floors without wearing protective gear.

Really, this list can continue on indefinitely. I would bet a lot of people might have a do-over list; some really short, some really long. And I don't think because I have one means I am bitter or completely unhappy; I think it means that I know I wasn't, nor am I now, perfect, and that I can hopefully learn from my past. That's partly what it's there for. This isn't to say I'm going to go out and buy, (or search the vintage racks) for white Z Cavs, but I might, let's say, ponder #s 14 and 19 a bit. I've already learned from #3 and have a nearly perfect GPA at Hofstra these days.

I can't help wandering into my past so often; there are things there that I need to draw from; to learn from. I don't stand in there wallowing and suffocating, though. (Okay, that's a lie. There are some times when people need to wallow.) One thing I intrinsically know, however, is that when I am with my children, I am like my dog, One: I must live in and for each of those seconds, not allowing anything in the past concerning my children to upset me. Pain of childbirth? Can't recall. The day my 2 year old saw too much Cinderella and called me a mean step-mother, even though I am her birth mother? Eh... barely registers. Okay, all kidding aside, I actually do relish every moment, even those hurtful ones, because I know these are the moments that will count the most, and that will outlive every other memory I've ever revisited. I'd never want to do these over; I'd simply want to do them again and again.

But, even though it was thirty years ago, and I am supposed to be evolving and mature, the one thing I still want to do is kick that boy from the third grade in the nuts.