Sentimental Accidents

Handwriting Analysis

betheboy — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:03:00 -0700

Due to the legally sensitive nature of the post below lets all just say this MIGHT have happened.

Several months after my father passed away my sister was still in our hometown taking care of the important things that need to be done when a loved one dies unexpectedly. Because I could not be there in person I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to get my father’s estate in order but my sister and the rest of the family assured me that they could take care of things.

Once all of the major issues were dealt with my sister needed a break so I invited her to fly out to Los Angeles to spend a few weeks at my house; this would give her a chance to relax and we’d all be able to talk about the unexpected insanity of the previous six months.

My sister arrived in LA on a May afternoon with her clothes, her laptop and a shoebox which she explained was full of candy and homemade brownies. She made it very clear that I was welcome to eat all of the candy but not the brownies because they were not just any brownies…they were special brownies (wink, wink).

My wife and I looked at my sister in shock; not because she had brought pot brownies into our house, that was fine. We just couldn’t believe that she had actually brought it through airport security and onto the plane.

She explained that she didn’t want to worry about buying any in a town where she didn’t have any connections so it was just easier that way. My wife and I explained that we lived in a neighborhood with more marijuana dispensaries than gas stations but it was too late. Besides, my sister had already slipped through the TSA unnoticed and nothing could stop her now.

Still, we were shocked. My sister explained that there was never any reason to worry.

She opened up the box to show us that she had disguised the shoebox containing the brownies as an Easter basket from our grandmother. The brownies were under the plastic grass, which was covered in candy, and itunes gift card and a card that said “Happy Easter from Grandma” on the envelope.

My wife and I had to admit that it looked right, the itunes gift card was an inspired touch, and we couldn’t argue with the results. Still there was one thing that bothered me and I had to say something. I told my sister:

“I can’t believe security didn’t catch you…that’s not grandma’s handwriting.”

April 13, 2009

betheboy — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:35:00 -0700

The last time I got my hopes up for a New York Mets game in April was back in 2009 because I was going to be in New York for the Mets home opener, which happened to be their first game at the then brand new Citi Field.

My father called me a few days before I left LA for NY to tell me that he scored us a pair of tickets to the game even though it had been sold out for months. He had a knack for obtaining hard to get items and a reputation for not revealing how so I didn’t ask any questions. It was a new season, a new park and my father, who is responsible for my being a Mets fan, was taking me to the game. This was as good as life could get when it came to baseball. There was no reason to ask any questions.

Unfortunately we didn’t make it to the game. The tickets fell through because the person tasked with delivering the tickets traded them for drugs. This is sometimes the cost of doing business with friends and family. I was disappointed and so was my father. At the time the ticket problem felt like a bad end to a trip home.

My father apologized for what had happened and invited me to join him at his favorite bar to watch the game. His favorite bar happened to be the VFW Hall where he was inexplicably a member despite having never served in the armed forces…I didn’t ask how, the explanation would only lead to more questions that I’d never get answers to.

We sat over a few beers and enjoyed the first few innings. A few days earlier we had sat in the same bar and had a long conversation. That talk was the reason I had come home. After years of being distant from one another he and I had settled into a comfortable groove with one another. The change began when I got married in 2007 and just kept getting better. When he asked me when I’d come home so we could catch up in person I booked a flight. I was very surprised and happy to be sitting at a bar with my father, finally clearing the air and talking about regrets as well as our mutual desire to get past them and be closer from then on.

After a few inning we decided to head home to watch the rest of the game. When we arrived at the house there was plenty of ballgame left and beer in the fridge. The Mets fell behind early and lost the game but that didn’t matter. After 34 years of misunderstandings and missed opportunities we were finally just talking like two people who actually liked one another. We talked baseball, comedy and family and eventually stopped paying attention to the Mets.

When the game ended we stayed up a little while longer talking about the future. There was more to talk about but he had to work early the next morning and I had to catch a flight back to Los Angeles so we said goodnight and goodbye.

The next morning my father was gone before I got up to leave. I sat in the airport unsure when I’d be back but I hoped that whenever I did we’d finally get to a game.

Eventually I made it to Citi Field but, instead of going with my father I went with a friend. As it turned out, that Mets home opener in April 2009 would be the last game I would see with my father; in October of that year he passed away. From my perspective it was shocking but in retrospect I should have seen it coming because I now believe that he knew he was running out of time.

It’s been three years since that night and I am no longer disappointed that we didn’t get to that game. Instead, I’m grateful that we got to stay at home talking about more important things. While it wasn’t the last time we spoke it was the last time we saw each other. Things didn’t happen the way we had planned, they rarely did, but they still turned out okay.

Breakin' Barriers

betheboy — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:14:00 -0700

In 1984 I was 10 years old and desperately seeking the three B’s: baseball, boobs and break-dancing.

Baseball was readily available; I could watch games on TV all spring and summer.

Thanks to limited parental supervision there was easy access to grown up movies and magazines so the second B was accounted for with shocking regularity.

Break-dancing on the other hand, was the most elusive of the three B’s.

I had some of the things I believed I needed to break-dance: music, cardboard, spray paint but I was missing the one thing I needed most…a crew. Nobody back then would even think of break-dancing solo. Solo breakin’ would be ridiculous…sure someday it might happen someday but I wasn’t going to be the one to cross that line.

I tried putting a crew together but the best I could manage was the kid down the street who was not allowed to listen to rap and my little sister who was six years old. In addition to having a wack crew I only had the vaguest idea of how to actually dance, mostly I just rolled on cardboard while music played and that was not impressive to anyone, not even my mother who remarked that my robot moves looked like: “a robot crapping its robot pants”. Clearly I wasn’t going to achieve greatness in such an oppressive environment. If I wanted to learn I had to find someone to teach me.

I didn’t have to look far for role models. Some of the kids in my neighborhood appeared to be pretty serious dancers, with a real crew and everything complete with matching burgundy outfits with the name of their crew, The Junior Rockers*, on the back.

*The name Junior Rockers was never explained. Were they a minor league affiliate of another bunch of older break-dancers called The Rockers? I’ll never know.

I wanted was to be a Junior Rocker so I asked if I could join. The Junior Rockers immediately said no way. Sure we rode the school bus together and played baseball in the street but that’s as far as it went, I was not dance crew worthy.

While I was dejected, I had a plan, somehow I though that if I just got my own matching suit I’d be accepted in their crew; because in my mind like that was the only requirement…a burgundy suit made of plastic with the name on the back.

It seemed pretty simple in my head…

Get a matching suit
Show up at the empty lot after school
Dance

Instant acceptance, right?

I figured that if they said no I’d play the old “Come on guys, I spent the money on the suit…please let me join” card.

Here was a problem: When I explained the plan to my mom she told me it was ridiculous because she wasn’t buying me a customized dance outfit when I could barely walk in a straight line. Even worse, she said she would go talk to the other kids parents about letting me hang out with the dancers. This was even worse than not getting the suit and I begged her not to talk to anyone’s parents. I felt it was better to have no crew then to have a crew your mom got you into.

Instead of giving up I made my own suit out of things I had at home like sweatpants and trash bags (I wish I was kidding). Then I worked on my moves and got ready to show what I could do.

I’d like to tell you that I marched down the street in my homemade suit to dance for the crew and that they respected my effort and took me in as their equal or at least the token white kid, but they didn’t. Instead of being welcomed I got pointed at, laughed at and if I had lunch money it would have gotten stolen from me.

Looking back on it I guess society was not ready for some social boundaries to be broken through dance, especially not by a ten year old kid in a red windbreaker with trash bags wrapped around his sweat pants.

Celebrity Snow Days

betheboy — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:36:00 -0800

This short entry appeared on my now defunct old blog many years ago but I was reminded of it today following the passing of the Monkees Davy Jones.

When John Lennon was shot I was only six years old. I remember my mom crying, but I don’t remember being sad because I got to stay home from school. This started the bittersweet tradition of the Celebrity Snow Day.

A few years later it happened again:

“Mom, John Belushi died, can we stay home from school?”
“Yes”

Then the next year:

“Mom, Marvin Gaye got shot”
“Did he die”
“Yeah”
“No school tomorrow”
“Yay!”

In time this tradition faded away and eventually it disappeared completely*. When Rock Hudson died we took a half day but according to my much younger brother, they didn’t miss a minute of school when Kurt Cobain, Tupac or Biggie died. The kids today may have a lot of advantages but they don’t have it all.

*I resurrected the old tradition on my own by taking a day off when Joe Strummer passed away. I’m sure that my mom would have approved and I’m also certain that Davy Jones’ passing would warrant a day off. RIP Davy.

Headaches and Signs

betheboy — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:10:32 -0800

In my early 20’s I begun to suffer from terribly painful headaches. Not migraines, just painful headaches. This was around 1997 a time when I taking home about $200 week and then finding a way to pay rent, keep my car insured and eat. My primary entertainment was sitting in my studio apartment with a headache and keeping these headaches a secret from people.

By the spring of 1997 I had been suffering from headaches for about a year and had done nothing about it. When you’re broke you have to decide what is essential and what you can do without. I was almost 23 years old and my essentials included the aforementioned rent, food and car insurance. On top of that there was the cost of gas for the car, a phone for my apartment, beer and increasingly… gin. Fashion was not a priority, which explains why 90’s era photos of me look so bad and finally, health care was not a priority for me even if this meant not treating things like my terrible headaches.

Not seeking medical care was not new for me; after spending hundreds of hours with doctors in the first 8 years of my life I pretty much stopped going after that. Part of this was due to the fact that I was generally physically healthy but mostly I was afraid that going to a doctor might turn us something wrong and that would cost me a lot of money. I told nobody until finally I found myself unable to do anything for more than a few hours without having to lay down due to the headaches. This was when I finally confided to my then girlfriend that I thought I had a brain tumor and was going to die.

I considered her the sensible one in our relationship so when she told me that I might be getting headaches due to eyestrain I wanted to believe it even though I had never had eye problems in all of my years of taking the eye tests at school or when I took the eye test to get my driver’s license. She asked me to go to an optometrist just in case. I agreed to try it.

A few days later we were on our way to the optometrist and I casually mentioned, like I always did, that the street signs on Long Island were impossible to read because they were so old and faded. She ignored this comment because she had grown tired of hearing it from me. We got to the eye doctor’s office and I went in to take my exam.

I talked about the headaches, I took the eye tests and in a few minutes the doctor advised me that he had good news and bad news: The good news was that I probably didn’t have a brain tumor. The bad news, which suddenly seemed manageable, was that I had a severs astigmatism and would need glasses. He also advised me not to drive until I had glasses.

Out in the lobby I found my girlfriend in the middle of a: “Oh my god what if they find nothing and he IS going to die” style panic. After spending a selfish moment basking in the realization that hey she must really care about me to get this upset I gave her the good news and asked her to drive me home, which she did. I also asked her to drive me to and from work for the next week and she told me that this was not going to happen.

As she drove home she didn’t complain about the road signs once. I drove myself to and from work like I had been doing for a year but I didn’t drive anywhere else that week.

After a week my glasses were ready. To keep up appearances my girlfriend drove me to pick them up. When I tried them on I was amazed. Everything looked different. Because I had never worn glasses before my depth perception would be off until I adjusted to the changes but everything else was suddenly so clear. My eyesight had declined so gradually that I never realized there was anything wrong.

Since I was still adjusting to wearing glasses my girlfriend drove us home too. As she drove I said to her: “Hey while we were in there they must have replaced all of the old street signs.” She didn’t correct me. I would figure it out eventually; the road signs, my priorities and more.

Note: That girl in this story and I eventually split up but not before me and my glasses moved to LA to give it one last try. We are still friends to this day.

Bring Enough For Everyone

betheboy — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:34:00 -0800

Nobody told us what happened inside of the building across the street before my mother rented the house in the summer of 1983. Since we moved in over a weekend it was a few days before we found out that the small white building was an industrial bread bakery. As far as we were concerned, that summer we had arrived in paradise.

Our version of paradise was a high ranch three bedroom house on a dirt lot, a few doors down from the elevated train tracks. There was one fewer door between us and the train because the house next door had burned down shortly before we moved in. The presence of a charred windowless shell of a home 15 feet away probably contributed to my single mother being able to afford the place but like I said, it was fine by us. We had spent the last four years living in basements on the edge of poverty and suddenly we had ROOMS.

Then, after the weekend, the bakery came back to life. I don’t know if you’ve ever been three doors down from THOUSANDS of loaves of bread being baked at once but it’s pretty much the best thing ever, or at least it was the best thing my brother, my sister and me had experienced to that point in our life. At nine years old I was the oldest so I led my brother and sister down towards the bakery where we saw the racks of bread cooling outside.

Unless you’ve been poor you can’t understand how amazing it is to see so much food just sitting out in the open. We just stared at it from the curb for a while unsure if it was real. There were people inside but nobody was standing by the racks. After a few minutes someone else approached the building and knocked on the door. They handed the person who answered it some money then they were handed a paper bag which they filled with bread. We had stumbled onto the black market of bread where it was just sold out of a factory back door and taken straight home to eat.

Looking back it doesn’t seem like much but it was one of the most amazing things my siblings and I had ever seen up to that point. We had not only moved into a giant house but there was food just sitting around waiting for someone to come and get it. Between the three of us we had less than a dollar but that was enough to get a small paper bag from the man inside which held a fresh loaf of bread. On later trips we would learn to fill the paper bags and our pockets and eventually to just fill our pockets and run.

One morning my brother and I were on our way back from a bakery run with our pockets full of onion rolls when a car pulled up beside us. We were only about 50 feet from out front door and we were about to get busted for stealing bread…or so we thought. When the driver told us to get in the car we said nothing to one another. When he opened the car door I told my brother, under my breath to not go. He told me under his breath that he knew that. This guy in the car was trying to kidnap us.

He beckoned us towards the car through the open passenger door but we stood our ground. When he said as nicely as possible: “Get in.” My brother and I decided to see what was in it for us.

“Why should we get in?” I asked as I looked towards my house.

Everyone was still asleep inside and couldn’t see what was going on. The driver had situated his car between us and the path to our front door.

The driver reached into his bag and said: “I have a cupcake.” He pulled a single individually wrapped Hostess cupcake out and showed it to us.

My brother had a question: “Do you have a cupcake for each of us?”

Perhaps it was his first day as a kidnapper because he admitted that he only had the one cupcake. My brother and I told him that we would get in the car only if he got us a second cupcake. We told him we’d wait there, he closed the passenger door and drove away.

My brother and I debated waiting for that second cupcake for moment and then thought better of it. We ran home to eat bread and watch from the window to see if our would be kidnapper returned. He never did.

A Year Of Billy Joel: Streetlife Serenader

betheboy — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:36:37 -0800

A Year Of Billy Joel: Streetlife Serenader:

ayearofbillyjoel:

Song: Streetlife Serenader

Album: Streetlife Serenade (1974)

Over the course of the month I’ve been working on A Year of Billy Joel, five different people have contacted me to warn me about the album Streetlife Serenade. Their messages boiled down to the following warning: Streetlife…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here because I’ve been working on this music writing project for the last few weeks. This is a story that I intended to tell here but it fit better with this other thing. Such are the dangers of having multiple projects running side by side. I promise to begin posting here again very soon. I’m just overwhelmed with work, projects and marathon training at the moment.

Making It Last A Little Longer

betheboy — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:48:40 -0800

As a kid I would come to the sad realization every Christmas night that it was over.

The weeks of planning and anticipation had ended with opening presents earlier that day. The food had been eaten, the relatives had been seen and by 8 PM on Christmas night there was nothing left to do but go to my room. As a kid this seemed unfair.

I often wondered why I lived in a world where Labor Day and Memorial Day were celebrated with three days of drinking but Christmas was only celebrated from the time the Yule Log was shown on TV on Christmas Eve through getting home from seeing my family on Christmas day. That was less than 24 hours.

One year, my father managed to extend the holiday spirit just a little longer. I remember riding in my father’s van on a Christmas night many years ago. I was still pretty young, maybe 9 and my brother and sister were 7 and 5.

After weeks of anticipation it was almost done; every gift had been opened every relative seen and now we were on the drive home from our great grandmother’s house.

My dad was due to drop us back at our mother’s but we weren’t going the right way, instead of going home we were going towards a part of Long Island I had never seen. The houses seemed impossibly large compared to ours and they were all fabulously lit up with holiday decorations. I was impressed but also worried about getting home on time. From the passenger seat I turned to my father to say:

“Dad, we have to go home”

He kept his eyes on the road but I could see him smile as he replied:

“Your brother and sister don’t want to go home.”

“But we have to.”

My father knew he could always count on my brother and sister to disagree with me. He looked at them in the rear view mirror and said:

“Everyone who wants to stay out and have fun looking at the Christmas lights, raise your hand.”

Then he looked at me and said:

“Raise your hand if you want to go home.”

I didn’t bother raising my hand and my father continued to drive.

This was a time when seat belts were still just a suggestion so my brother and sister stood up in the back of the van, faces pressed against the windows calling out the decorations they saw. Eventually I began to do the same from the front seat as we slowly drove past house after house calling out what we saw until well past our usual bedtime.

The Tree Dream

betheboy — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:19:15 -0800

My dad had a dream about the family and our Christmas tree. Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, he would crank up the holiday music and start setting the tree up in hopes that it would come true.

The Christmas tree dream went like this: He’d set up the tree and the lights and then we’d each take turns placing an ornament on the tree until the tree was perfect. This was designed to bring us all together but this did not work for one very simple reason: My father had many good qualities but patience was not one of them.

The first time we tried this we each hung one ornament before he started telling us that we were doing it wrong. Then, because he didn’t give us any instructions on how to do it right he got mad because we were going too slow. We had no idea there was a right and wrong way to decorate a Christmas tree.

Within minutes the would be happy family event devolved into shouting and my dad told us to put the ornaments down and get away from the tree. We then sat across the room sipping our hot chocolate as he finished the job.

A year later, the same thing happened.

The year after that we skipped the helping part and just watched my father put the tree up. It was more fun for everyone that way.

Two Types Of Family Gift Giving

betheboy — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:39:00 -0800

Part One- Holidays in Stereo

By the fall of 1984 my parents had been separated for more than three years. While we were doing better than we had been the first two years, things were still far from easy for my mother. When Christmas came around that year mom reminded me that money was really tight and Christmas was going to be very simple. I didn’t need a reminder but I told her that I understood. Then she asked me if I would be okay with getting less because the younger two kids still believed in Santa. At 10 years old I was considered old enough to be in the know about ways of the world; after all I kissed a girl that summer and was already downing a lot of coffee every morning. It seemed reasonable and I didn’t want to be a baby. I said yes.

I’m sure it hurt her to ask me to make such a sacrifice, and she must have appreciated it because she said I could play records in her room after school. I wasn’t normally allowed to do this because her boyfriend was a dick about his records.

Between getting home from school and my mom getting home I had an hour and a half to lie on the big bed and listen to music. On the big stereo with the silver-tone finish and giant knobs I could spin my favorites at that time: The Beatles Abbey Road, Best of The Jackson 5, and The Ventures Greatest Hits. I danced around and made myself lo-fi copies of my favorite songs by holding a tape recorder up to the speakers. Those afternoons made it seem like Christmas wouldn’t be so disappointing.

As the last school day before Christmas passed, I wondered to myself “is this record deal only through Christmas or can I do this all the time?” I was afraid to ask.

Christmas morning finally came and I kept my bravest face and smiled. Mom got up and left the room while we cleaned up the boxes and wrapping paper. She came back in, thanked me for being so grown up and told me I should go to my room right away because there was a surprise waiting for me. On the floor covered by a sheet was her receiver and turntable, in all of their silver-tone and wood finished glory.

It turns out that my mother’s boyfriend had decided to buy himself a new stereo for Christmas. While I was being brave she carried her old stereo components and speakers into my room. It was the best present I had ever gotten even before she pulled out the records that went along with it.

Part Two- You’d Better Eat All Of Those Presents

In my family it has always been perfectly acceptable to give food as gifts. When I say food I don’t mean gift baskets like Hickory Farms products, I’m talking about things like a can of olives, spaghetti, some pepperoni, and maybe gum.

Now you might think that groceries make an awful gift but if you do, you’re missing out. The food giving tradition has been going on for decades but stating in the early 90’s my father turned it into something of a holiday art form.

The first year that my brother, my sister and I received foodstuffs as gifts it was our own fault. My father, who always enjoyed giving his kids gifts, had asked us many times if there was anything we wanted and we just gave him nothing to work with. A few days before Christmas, after wrapping up all of the gifts he had gotten for his kids, my dad felt it just didn’t look like enough, and so he improvised, by calling upon a family tradition. That Christmas morning we found what looked to be a Christmas miracle; we hadn’t asked for anything but there were stacks upon stacks of presents waiting for us.

Despite all three of us being at or close to adulthood we all pounced on the piles like little kids, shaking the packages and wondering what could be inside. I went first, opening that first one slowly and great with anticipation, much to my father’s amusement. I’m pretty sure it was a box of Jell-o mix inside of a bigger box, and everyone laughed until the started unwrapping cans of vegetables and boxes of crackers. Eventually we got to the real presents but we we’re still laughing over the fake ones.

Over the years the fake gift became my father’s holiday tradition. Each year he worked new items into the mix (like cake mix) and every year we laughed about it like it was the first time.

My father passed away in 2009 but it’s worth noting that a few days before Christmas in 2008 I found a package waiting for me at my home in Los Angeles. While I hadn’t asked for anything my father had mailed me a last minute gift from New York. I unwrapped it to find canned peaches, a jar of peanut butter and a note that said Merry Christmas.

The Infamous Holiday Story

betheboy — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:25:00 -0800

By the time the holidays arrived in 1995 I had already moved out of my father’s house. Since I was technically going to be a guest in the house where I used to live I called my father a few days before Christmas to ask if I could bring anything. I should have expected the response I got:

“I’ve been doing this for a while, I think I got it. Just be on time.” He told me.

I had been on my own for six months and I was enjoying my independence. I wanted to tell him I could just skip it altogether but I knew he wanted me to be there so I backed off.

“I was just checking.” I said.

“I told you I got it. Remember how it works? I cook, you eat.”

“I know.”

“You remember how to get here or did you forget the address too?”

“I think I remember where the house is.”

“Good, I’ll see you then. Be good.”

I hung up the phone and wondered what I was getting myself into.

For the first several months after moving out I rarely visited home. Things had not been great when I left. The combination of economic pressure and alcohol had strained relations between my father and his wife and this made the house a tough place to live sometimes. As the holidays approached I mentally prepared myself to go home. I was unsure of what to expect; my brother had been keeping me up to date on the state of things at home. I was ready for almost anything but almost wasn’t enough to prepare me for that Christmas.

The house looked exactly the same. From outside I could hear holiday music and see the cigarette smoke cloud above the dining room table. I tucked a six-pack of Guinness under my arm and took the small bag of gifts I had brought with me and headed inside.

The volume of the Christmas music when I opened the door was a shock. Spending six months in a studio apartment in the back of a friend’s house had taught me to keep the music down. I wasn’t used to blasting music at home but my father loved showing off his sound system so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Somehow, despite all of the noise he heard my car pull up and he came from the kitchen to greet me at the door.

“We’ll the long lost wandering son returns.” He said as he turned down the volume on the stereo.

You’d think from that greeting that I’d run away from home without leaving a note but it wasn’t supposed to be a day for arguing so I just said Merry Christmas, hugged my father and looked over his shoulder at crowd gathered at the table.

Seated around the dining room table were my father’s wife Linda, her mother, a guy named Ray who smoked despite having a tracheotomy and my little brother. I expected to see all of them.

What I didn’t expect was the little person who was wearing an elf hat, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer on a bar stool in the corner.

My father didn’t bother with introductions; he closed the front door turned the music back up and headed back to the kitchen. I put my gift bag down and said hello to the four people I knew and waited to be introduced to the one person I didn’t know. He didn’t wait for someone to handle the formalities; he hopped down from his stool and introduced himself.

I looked past my new friend over to my brother for some sort of guidance but he shrugged his shoulders as if to say “Damned if I know.” I extended my hand and said:

“How are you….I gotta put this beer away.”

Before I continue this story let me admit something. In 1995 I didn’t call our guest a little person and in 2011 I’m embarrassed that I was so thrown off by the presence of what we called a midget in an elf hat, drinking at my table on Christmas but I was shocked because as far as I knew, we didn’t know any midgets or dwarfs or whatever term I would have used to describe them. I’d like to think that in 2011 things would have happened differently but I digress.

I made my way to the kitchen, popped the top off of a bottle of Guinness and put the other five in the fridge.

“How do you drink that stuff?” My father asked.

I replied with a question of my own:

“Who’s the midget?”

“He’s a guy I know.”

“Yeah, but who is he?”

“He’s a guy having Christmas with us. He’s been here helping me out all day.”

When it came to things you could get from my father, the list was seemingly limitless. He was well known among the people who spent their time in bars and on construction sites as a guy who could get certain things done:

Need an illegal cable box? Call Mike, he could get one for you.

Want to place a bet on a football game? Find Mike before Friday and he’ll get somebody to take your action.

Looking for phony auto insurance paperwork or a safety inspection sticker? Not a problem, Mike could take care of you.

As far as I knew however, getting a human being who’d work for beer was outside of his normal scope of work.

When asked how he obtained these things my father’s answer was usually: “I know a guy,” but he rarely let on who that guy was and most people knew better than to ask. The one thing you couldn’t get from my father was a straight answer when he didn’t want to give one.

Of course, I wasn’t most people. I was a nosy son so I pressed my father for more information.

“Yeah but WHO is he, how did he get here?”

My father didn’t stop what he was doing, he just said:

“I won him.” Like that was a thing that happened all the time.

“You won a midget?” I asked, managing to be both indignant and offensive at the same time.

“Yeah” my father replied. “I won him in a keeping your mouth shut contest.”

I understood his point and I didn’t press the issue, which probably means I missed out on some kind of amazingly untrue explanation. After all, my father once claimed he found a rare tropical bird in a cage on the Long Island Expressway. When he was told that the bird was in fact a very rare species and not the kind of thing you’d just find on the LIE, in or out of a cage, he said:

“How rare could it be? There’s one right there?”

There was no way to get my father to tell you anything unless he wanted to tell it to you.

As dad and I reached an impasse, our little friend came into the kitchen.

“Mike, you need any help?”

“Nah, I got it. You meet my son?”

“Yeah, he looks just like you. Mind if I get a cold one?”

My father grabbed him a beer from the fridge.

Once we had the kitchen to ourselves my father looked me in the eye for the first time since we had started talking and said quietly:

“You know what the difference between you and that guy is? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you…he doesn’t act like he thinks he’s too good to be here.”

Before I could protest my father continued:

“Now that you’re on your own I never see you. I gotta wait until Christmas to see you.”

I stared at my father but couldn’t say anything except that I had been busy at work and at school, which was true but only part of the story.

He was wrong but that’s the way things were between us for a long time. We couldn’t see each other clearly. He couldn’t see that from my perspective it was nothing personal, I just needed to be on my own so I could learn to be a grown up.

As for me, I couldn’t see that he could show me the same kindness he had shown a little person with a drinking problem at Christmas. I’d just have to come around often enough to let him.

We would get to that place eventually, but we weren’t there yet.

Back at the table there were hungry people. My father told me to take a seat and send his new friend in. Together the two of them brought the food out and we all enjoyed Christmas dinner together.

Later, as we ate cookies and drank coffee I handed out the gifts I had brought. Unfortunately I hadn’t brought anything for the unexpected guest but I’m sure he understood. My father made sure his new friend was taken care of. He gave him a bottle of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes. Later, our guest in the elf hat made a phone call and a short while later a car came to pick him up. As he left we shook hands again.

“Please to meet you Binky*, thanks for everything. Merry Christmas.”

He thanked me, and thanked my father again before heading out to the car that was waiting for him in the street. I never saw Binky again, but every Christmas I wonder where he is.

*Seriously, his name was Binky. I am not making this up.

Don't Wake the Kids

betheboy — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:34:05 -0800

By the time the news of John Lennon’s death broke I was already asleep. My parents, sometimes woke me up to watch TV with them but not that night. Usually they woke me because there was a particularly good Star Trek or Odd Couple rerun on but on this night they let me sleep. It’s easier to explain space travel and divorce than it is to explain death. A month earlier they had also let me sleep as Regan was elected president.

The next morning my mother woke me up and sat me down on the couch to talk. Weeks earlier, while combing my hair she asked:

“Do you know who the President is?”

“Jimmy Carter”

“That’s right, but he’s not going to be the President any more.”

I stopped fidgeting long enough to ask:

“Can I stay home from school?”

My mother said no and proceeded to tell me about the electoral process but I was uninterested. All I heard was: “Blah…blah..Ronald Regan…go to the bus stop.”

I did, and for the next eight years I blamed Regan for the fact that I hated school.

Now, a month later my mother was again trying to explain a complex and tragic situation to a six year old.

“Do you know who the John Lennon is?”

“He’s your favorite Beatle”

“That’s right, but something bad happened to him last night.”

I stopped fidgeting long enough to ask:

“Can I stay home from school?”

“Yes.”

She said some other things but I only heard that I could stay home from school. Later, when the music was playing and no one was saying a word, I began to understand.

Life And Death On The West Side

betheboy — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:34:00 -0800

“Please don’t do this. He’s his best friend.”

My mother was begging my father to not leave the house, to not take me with him and to not do what he said he was going to do when we got out there. I was waiting by the door in my blue and orange Mets jacket hoping that my mother would win this argument.

They were fighting about my best friend. He was a boy in my class who had everything better that I did. For some time they had patiently listened to stories of adventures he and I had experienced while at school and they listened as I outlined all of the ways his life was better than mine.

My friend had no bedtime; he ate ice cream every night and was allowed to watch anything he wanted on TV. I believed he could do whatever he wanted and I expected that my parents would eventually let me do the same. My friend’s name was Carpo, of course his name was Carpo; because when a six year old makes up a friend they give them a ridiculous name.

My mother indulged my imaginary friend even though I referenced Carpo almost exclusively to critique her parenting and get out of doing anything I didn’t want to do. Of course I hadn’t told them that my friend was imaginary but the fact that I said he had a motorcycle probably tipped them off.

My father on the other hand had grown tired of me resisting bedtime because my friend didn’t have to go to bed and not eating my dinner on the grounds that “Carpo didn’t have to.” He wasn’t about to let my mother convince him to let it go on any longer. He had tried unsuccessfully to get me to admit my friend was made up. Now, despite my mother’s protests he turned to me and said:

“Let’s go. We’re going to Carpo’s house so I can tell his mom and dad a little something about how to raise a kid.”

This was where my father expected me to admit that Carpo was my own creation. Surely he didn’t expect me to actually make him go out but he underestimated my stubbornness and commitment to a story.

When he asked me where my imaginary friend lived I had an answer.

The neighborhood where my parents met and where I spent my earliest years is split in two by a canal that runs about a half mile from the boatyard on the main road down to the bay. I lived on the east side of the canal, my extended family lived on the east side of the canal, my entire life up to that point had taken place in a small grid of streets on the east side of the canal.

When my father and I headed for the car I knew what I had to say:

“Carpo’s house is on the other side of the canal.”

I guess I figured my father would just say we couldn’t possibly go there and that would be the end of the story. As far as I knew there was no way to get to the west side. The west side of the canal was an unknowable mystery to me. I never met anyone who lived there and no one in my family had ever mentioned going to the west side of the canal.

Instead of throwing up his hands and letting me do what I pleased my father started the car, turned down the radio and drove around the block until we we’re parallel to the canal. From the passenger seat I could see houses on the west side. None of them looked like the kind of place my imaginary friend would live. My father stopped at the light and asked me if I knew the address.

“No, but I’ll know the house when I see it.” I said.

My father made the left when the light turned green and then made another left on the other side of the boatyard. For the first time in my life, I was on the west side.

Each street had the same name as the streets I knew, only with a W instead of and E on the signs. The houses looked the same too. My father drove slowly down each familiar looking street and told me to point out my friend’s house. I pretended to look for it but eventually we ran out of streets and I ran out of ideas.

I didn’t admit that I had made Carpo up and my father, to his credit, didn’t embarrass me further by dragging a confession out of me. He just made a right turn onto the main street and took me back home.

When we went back in the house he said we couldn’t find Carpo’s house.

I went to be at my usual time that night and I never, ever spoke of Carpo again. My father was okay with this but my mother was not. Years later, my mother said that she never forgave my father for what he had done.

“He killed your imaginary friend,” she would say. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

Visitation

betheboy — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 22:44:00 -0800

Except for the empty closet, the place didn’t look any different than the last time I was there. The furniture was in the same places, the beds were still made from the day we left and the toys had been sitting untouched for weeks. The closet in my room was empty though. My clothes, along with my brother and sister’s clothes had all been packed into bags and taken away with us when we left.

While the place looked almost the same as it did when we left, it was darker than I remembered it. My grandmother, who lived upstairs, had let me into the apartment. She allowed me to wait downstairs alone, only after my homework was done, on the condition that I left the door at the top of the stairs open; this would allow her to hear me until my father arrived.

My arrival at the house that Thursday afternoon was part of the unofficial custody arrangement my parents had agreed to after separating just a few weeks before. All three kids would spend Friday night through Sunday afternoon with my father but since I, at almost seven years old, was the oldest I also spent Thursday night at my father’s. It was never explained if this extra night was intended to be a punishment or a reward. At seven years old I loved my father but my mother was the one I was closest to.

Perhaps the Thursday father and son night was supposed to bring us closer together but as I sat in my old bedroom waiting for my father I was scared. The last weeks of living together as a family had been tense and unhappy. Was he angry with my mother? Would he be angry with me for leaving with her? What was I going to wear to school the next day? All of my clothes were gone.

From my old bedroom it was be impossible to tell when my father’s car pulled into the driveway so I moved into our old living room. It was only 5 o’clock but I needed to turn on the lights. There would normally be enough light at that time but father had covered the window to make the room as dark as possible. This was a trick he had often used on me to convince me it was later than I thought so he could send me to bed early. In a few years I would find this fact funny but on that afternoon it was another reason to have mixed feelings about seeing my father.

I heard my grandmother’s phone ring upstairs and a minute later she called down the stairs.

“Sam, are you there?”

“Yes. Was that my father?”

“Come to the stairs so I can see you.”

I got off of the couch and walked to the landing. From the top of the stairs my grandmother continued:

“That was your father. He’s picking up pizza and he’ll be here soon.”

She asked me if I wanted to come upstairs; I didn’t. I turned on the TV and tried to act as grown up as possible. When my father arrived I was watching the news. This was not the first time I had seen him since we had left but it was the first time it was just the two of us. He put the pizza down and hugged me and then, in a scene that would repeat itself for the next thirty years we made awkward small talk about nothing while we ate.

Things opened up after dinner. He made me a glass of chocolate milk and one for himself. I asked him if he was going to have a beer and he said no. He stirred his chocolate milk with his straw and reached for a cigarette.

“I want to talk to you about that. One of the reasons your mother left is because she thinks I drink too much and maybe I do.”

He lit his cigarette with a match and asked me if I wanted one. He was joking but I declined.

My mother had talked about his drinking and even if she hadn’t I knew it was a problem. My father walked over to the counter and came back with a stack of pamphlets. As he showed them to me he said:

“So I went to this meeting and I met with some people and they are going to help me stop.”

He put the last pamphlet down and asked:

“So what do you think of that?”

“I think that’s good.”

“Yeah, me too.” He said. “Will you tell your mother I’m going?”

“Yes”

“Then ask her if she’ll come back.”

I said I would and finished my chocolate milk. We watched some TV and I went to sleep in my old room. I went to school the next day in borrowed clothing and my mother brought me some things to wear when she dropped off my brother and sister on Friday night. My father’s first weekend with the kids passed without incident or a drink and on Sunday night he reminded me of our conversation on Thursday.

My mother drove us back to where we were staying and even though I promised to ask my mother if she’d bring us home I didn’t say a word. At some point not long afterward, on a weekend visit, my father sent me to the fridge to get him a beer and the world moved on as it had been before.

Over the next several months my father would ask me to talk to my mother about coming back. He would talk to her about it too and he continued to do so for some time. Eventually he moved on and for the rest of my father’s life we never mentioned those conversations again. I never told him that I thought it was unfair of him to put me in that position and I never told him that I thought he might have been on the right track for just short while.

I’ve often regretted keeping the latter part to myself, not that I think it would have made a difference. This is just speculation on my part. I’ll never know exactly what my father thought. I just know that at some point he chose his path. My father made a choice to lead a hard drinking life, perhaps because he was afraid to fail at trying to find a better way. Living with the feeling that you have no choice has got to be awful and dying with the feeling that you never had a chance is probably worse.

Again, this is all just guess because we didn’t discuss this when we had the chance. Maybe I’m wrong, hopefully I am and my father never had a second of regret, but I don’t think that’s the case. In the end I’m unable to change anyone’s past but I’ve chosen a different path for my own future.

Maps and Legends

betheboy — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:18:00 -0800

Based on the traffic at that time of night, I figured I had an hour to get the place presentable before she arrived. I was already wearing the nicest shirt and jacket I owned so I just had to make the place look a little less like a single guy’s apartment than it usually looked.

Washing the dishes and making the bathroom (barely) presentable was easy enough and since my roommate was out of town I could blame anything that wasn’t perfect on him.

Making my apartment suitable for classy company also meant taking care of the situation outside. On any given night I could expect to find several of my neighbors and their friends drinking on the front porch. On any other night I might have joined them but on that night I went outside and begged them to please move their gathering inside. After I explained why I was asking they agreed to move to the back of the house. It would be good enough for a good second impression.

The first impression had happened a week earlier when she and I met for drinks. The fact that we were just meting as friends didn’t stop me from being excited to meet her; nor did it stop me from overdrawing my checking account in order to pay for the drinks. I did this knowing that we were not going on a date. This was purely a friendly thing except one of the friends (me) had a crush on the other one.

I had no illusions that I would be able to change her mind that night or at least none that I was willing to speak out loud. We met, we talked and we said goodbye. I ended that night out as broke and single as I had been when it started, but I had finally met her. I had a new, beautiful friend and a goal: to see her again.

The best I could manage was a nightly conversation with her. This was hardly a consolation prize and in a matter of days it became the highlight of my day. For me there was a nightly ritual surrounding our conversation. After dinner, I fixed myself a drink, put on a shirt and jacket and attempted to be charming as we discussed anything and everything that came to mind. These conversations lasted until the wee hours and at some point every night I would invite her over to my house for a drink. Every night she declined my invitation and I hung up my jacket, except the night when she said yes.

With the house in what I considered passable shape and the outside situation under control I just had to wait.

I put on some music and paced the floor.

I fixed a drink.

I looked out the window.

The hour I had assumed it would take for her to get ready and get to my place had passed but I didn’t want to call her.

I walked out on to my still empty from porch to see if she was outside looking for my address but she wasn’t there.

Inside I turned the record over and waited. After what seemed like an eternity she called me; she didn’t sound happy when I picked up. She asked me where I was and informed me that she had been knocking on my door. I told her to stay on the phone and I’d come outside.

I fixed my hair, smiled and opened the door but when I looked outside she wasn’t there.

After a pause I asked her what street she was on.

Then I gave her the correct address.

We got married six months later.

The Good Doctor

betheboy — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:21:00 -0800

My wife and I hadn’t planned on waking up before dawn on a Sunday to run a 10K race but as the sun came up over Santa Monica on that October morning we were stretching our legs and looking for Lisa near the starting line. We did not see her face but somewhere among the thousands of runners she was there.

Lisa had invited us to participate in the race and we jumped at the opportunity because we knew how important was to her. My wife and I are novice runners but Lisa had several triathlons under her belt prior to that morning. However, this was going to be her first official run in some time.

Nine months earlier Lisa had surgery to remove cancer from her foot and in in the process much of her left foot and ankle had to be reconstructed. The surgery was followed by months of difficult physical therapy but she never complained. Lisa considered herself lucky, after all this was her second battle against with cancer and she was still standing. Being a doctor herself, she knew things could be much worse. She was thankful to be running that morning and we were happy to be there with her, wherever she was.

As we lined up for the race we looked for her again but did not see her before it was time to start. A few weeks earlier I had completed a half marathon for the first time and my goal for that race was to merely survive. At the shorter 10K distance I was running for fun and to support my friend. I thought of how a year earlier I could not run for 30 seconds without feeling like I was going to die. Lisa was instrumental in getting me to run. Being an athlete and a doctor herself she could offer plenty of advice but what I really needed was encouragement, which she provided.

Several weeks earlier Lisa was at our house on a Saturday afternoon. In between yelling at the TV during the Notre Dame game (she was a proud graduate) she talked to me about training and her recovery process. I could not help but be inspired by Lisa and as I carried that inspiration with me as I ran that Sunday morning in October.

I finished the race in better time than I expected and shortly afterward Lisa and my wife crossed the finish line. We exchanged hugs and congratulations. Later, after we were joined by another friend we shared a celebratory breakfast and talked about what we wanted to accomplish next. My wife and I were looking forward to improving our time and distance. Lisa talked about getting back into triathlons and how excited she was to be getting back to work where she saved lives on a daily basis.

After we finished our breakfast we said goodbye. We were all proud of ourselves and feeling like the best was yet to come which makes what happened so difficult to comprehend.

A few days ago, just a month after we all ran a race together, my friend Lisa passed away unexpectedly. I cannot express how unfair and cruel this seems. The world feels colder and darker without her and I’m sad and angry that the person who gave the most and asked for the least in return is gone.

There are no bright sides to this story but I take solace in the fact that I am one of the countless lives that she impacted and changed in her work as a doctor and as a friend.

I woke up on Saturday morning angry with the world. While I wanted to stay in bed all day I got up and ran. Eight miles later I didn’t feel any better about losing my friend but at least I could tell her that I didn’t quit. During our last conversation I had told Lisa that I was going to try to run the LA Marathon in March of 2012. More than ever I am committed to this goal and Lisa will be with me as I hopefully cross the finish line.

Note: A few days ago my wife had some important things to say about our friend Lisa. In addition, Lisa was in the process of training for a half marathon which she was running to help raise money to fight cancer. You can still make a donation to her Team in Training Fundraising page.

Sunday Mornings Never Change

betheboy — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:45:00 -0700

Two weeks ago I found myself driving through my hometown at 7 AM looking for a place to get coffee. I pulled into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts and walked inside. It was Sunday and the line was shorter than I expected. I looked around for a newspaper but couldn’t find one so I walked up to the counter and ordered coffee.

I was hungry but I couldn’t bring myself to order a breakfast sandwich or a donut. The idea of eating fast food on a Sunday morning made me feel like I was letting my father down. It was the second anniversary of his death and I was on my way to the cemetery.

When my father was alive he struggled with putting many of his feelings into words. My father could express anger verbally but every other feeling was communicated through actions, most of them involving food. Over the years my father developed a food-based shorthand for each of his three kids as a way of letting us know how much he cared. He made pasta for my sister, grilled chicken and burgers for my brother and made breakfast for me whenever I made it back to Long Island.

The breakfast tradition my father and I shared had actually begun many years earlier. After my parents separated my brother, sister and I stayed with our mother but eight years later I moved back to my father’s house.

Shortly after I arrived things became difficult for my father and I but for different reasons: I was 15 years old and going through typical teenage growing pains but my father was experiencing something tougher. He didn’t say it out loud but for the first time in his life he felt like he was failing. He assumed that he could turn my troubles around overnight but this didn’t happen. Then, after more than a decade of climbing the ladder at his job he found himself out of work.

For what seemed like a very long time, both of our futures were uncertain and we were frequently at odds with one another but every Sunday morning we put these problems aside.

Every Sunday morning I woke up to find the same things: Coffee, a stack of Sunday papers (there were four newspapers in the area and we read three of them) and a full breakfast. We’d eat, read the papers and talk sports until it was time to take on the rest of the day. We did this every single Sunday from the day I arrived until the day I moved out five years later.

While other family members sometimes joined us around the table, as far as my dad and I were concerned, Sundays were our thing. Sometimes it was our only thing and it was important to us. This is why I always made sure to make it to his house for breakfast when I was back in town.

Back in the parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts I sat in the car with my coffee for a few minutes but I couldn’t waste too much time. I wanted to get to the cemetery early to beat the rush. My family is big on visiting graves and if you don’t get there early on a special day: like the anniversary of a death or a birthday of a loved one you could find yourself standing in a line waiting to pay your respects.

By 7:30 AM I was driving through the gates of the cemetery. I had only been there once since my father was buried but I knew the way to what I like to call “dad’s new place.” I drove slowly along the path leading up to the spot where my father is buried and parked my car across from a pickup truck that I didn’t recognize as belonging to any member of my family. I got out of the car and started walking towards my dad’s marker when the driver of the pickup truck got out and called my name. I recognized the voice before I saw his face.

Steve was a friend of my father and an all around good guy. It was good to see him. He was part of my father’s inner circle, in fact Steve was one of the few people who knew my how sick my father was before he died.

Steve and I were quietly looking at my father’s headstone when he said:

“I come down here on Sunday’s sometimes to have my coffee and read the paper.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, every couple of Sundays I used to go to your dad’s place. He’d make breakfast and we’d read the papers.”

“He and I used to do the same thing.”

“I know, he told me that every time.”

I asked Steve to give me a second. I went back to my car to get my coffee. I had thought that bringing coffee to the grave site would have been disrespectful but obviously it would have been okay with my dad.

About 15 minutes after I arrived a car pulled up and out stepped my grandmother, my aunt and my sister. My aunt and sister were holding cups of coffee and my grandmother had brought a newspaper.

Please Pardon The Delay

betheboy — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:56:25 -0700

Hello,

I apologize for the lack of new story. For the last several days I have been back in my hometown, the place where many of my sentimental accidents have taken place. I have come home to see a good friend get married and to help out with some family issues and I’ll be here for the next several days.

Something new as soon as things calm down.

Thank you,

Will

Something To Bring Home

betheboy — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 22:05:00 -0700

Every Sunday my great-grandmother cooked for the entire family. Cooking for 25 people or more required a day and a half of work and two kitchens. She used the upstairs kitchen for baking and the downstairs kitchen to prepare meatballs, sauce and pasta.

Every Sunday my brother, sister and I would arrive at my great-grandmother’s before noon. My father, who adored and admired his grandmother, wanted us to be there in time to help with the final stages of preparation for dinner. My favorite part of helping was being sent to get things from the upstairs kitchen. These errands gave me the opportunity to see what was in store for dessert but it also let me hear my great-grandmother give directions.

When my great-grandmother gave directions she gave them in reverse. Before telling someone where to go she’d tell list all of the places they shouldn’t go. When she sent me upstairs to get something she’d say:

“You know the cabinet by the window? It’s not in there and it’s not under the sink. It’s in the drawer next to the fridge.”

Over the years I was sent upstairs dozens of times and I never got tired of hearing my great-grandmother tell me how to find things. Long after I knew where she kept every last item in that kitchen I would patiently wait for her to tell me all of the places I shouldn’t look. Then I would go upstairs, find whatever I was sent to retrieve and try to sneak some dessert before heading back downstairs.

My ability to swipe some dessert depended on what was being served that day. Cake was tough to sneak but cookies were easy because they fit into my pockets, unless my great grandmother had made pizzelles.

Pizzelles are traditional Italian cookies made with a press that is similar to a waffle iron. They are thin, anise flavored and look fancy. Even though pizzelles take a long time to make my great-grandmother made them by the hundreds. I once spent a Saturday afternoon with her as she made a batch. I watched as she dropped tablespoons full of batter onto the hot iron and pressed the top down. A minute later she would lift the top and remove the cookies from the hot press by hand. This process went on for hours.

When she was done and the cookies were cool, she placed half of them into a container for the next day. The rest of the cookies were bundled into packages of about a dozen cookies each. The packages of pizzelles were handed out to everyone as they left the house after dinner on Sunday, just in case anyone got hungry later that night.

My great-grandmother remained very active until her mid eighties when she became ill. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment. All through her treatment she insisted that everyone come over on Sunday’s for dinner. Cancer was no reason to break up a family. She covered her head with a pink turban, put on a housecoat and went back to work in her kitchens. The one good thing to come out of this, from my perspective, was that she began to send everyone on more errands. This meant more chances for everyone to hear her give directions in reverse like:

“Go into the little cellar and get the spaghetti. It’s not on the top shelf or the middle shelf. Look on the bottom shelf but not by the door. It’s all the way in the back.”

My great-grandmother’s health improved for a while but she could not hold on forever. In October of 1993 she passed away peacefully. If there is such a thing as a good way to go, my great-grandmother achieved it. She lived to be 86 years old and said goodbye to us all with no regrets. She left behind an enormous family, a legacy of love and kindness and one very special surprise.

After my great-grandmother’s funeral the family gathered at her house because that was the place we always gathered. The house looked the same as it had looked for decades but it didn’t feel the same because we had all lost our caretaker and guide. We all left the house that night knowing that something very special had ended, but we didn’t leave empty handed.

At some point a family member went upstairs to the kitchen to look for something. We joked about all of the placed they shouldn’t go but when they got upstairs the kitchen upstairs they found them…dozens of carefully wrapped packages of pizzelles.

Sometime in the final week of her life my great-grandmother stayed up all night cooking one last time, and carefully wrapping up packages of cookies for us so that even though she was gone, we didn’t leave her house empty-handed.

The story does not end there. In 2008, 15 years after my great-grandmother passed away I am married and living in Los Angeles. After many difficult years my father and I had put our differences us behind us and found common ground to build a good relationship on. One day I told him how much I missed pizzelles and a few days later a package arrived at my door. Inside I found a pizzelle maker and my great-grandmother’s recipe. Should you ever find yourself at my house for a holiday dinner, you might be sent home with a package of cookies.

Are your stories true?

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 19:05:54 -0700

Yes, the stories you read here are true. Everything you have read so far has happened to me and everything you read here in the future will have happened to me or to someone close to me. Thanks for asking.