Category Archives: Family

Someone offered me an ice cream in a cup, the kind that comes with the little wooden spoon. First this reminded me of my father and the time he beat up the ice cream man. Then I realized that it’s been nearly three years since he passed away.

It’s weird to say that I’m over someone’s death because it feels too much like being over someone’s life. I’m over my ex girlfriend, I’m over the Mets collapsing in 2007 and 2008 but I’m not over one of my parents being gone. Instead of saying I’m over it, I say I’ve gotten past it. It’s still there in the past, I just look back less frequently now.

Every now and then some unexpected pops up, like today when an ice cream cup reminds me that just before my father’s death he called me. Our conversation was cut short but before he hung up he said: “I need to tell you something, but I’ll call you later.” The follow up call never happened. I realize now that he was going to tell me that he wasn’t well but sometimes I imagine that he was trying to tell me about a treasure map or a secret pile of magical pornography (this is more likely).

One of my most useless skills is the ability to remember every phone number that I had growing up as well as the phone numbers for family members and local businesses near my hometown. Occasionally I will pick up the phone to make an business call and instead I will impulsively dial one of these numbers. Today I dialed my father’s number and when it rang I hung up so that I didn’t have to hear an unfamiliar voice on the other end. I’m past it, but not over it.

Last week my wife Nina and I were at Della Terra one of our favorite spots Los Angeles. We enjoy Della Terra because the food is great and the service is unhurried; it’s where we go when we want to get away from our regular routine but don’t want to travel far. At one point, as we mapped out plans for future adventures over a casual dinner, I noticed my wife’s attention had shifted from our table and was focused on someone or something behind me. I stopped talking and gave that “We’ll are you going to tell me what’s going on?” look to Nina who said: “That mother and daughter are wearing cool matching vests?”At first I was hurt that she found matching vests more interesting than our conversation but as I saw them sit down a few tables to my right I noticed they were fabulous vests…and then something happened, I stopped paying attention to where I was and started to think of Long Island on a snowy day in 1982.

In the winter of 1982 my parents had been split up for only a short while. My mother, brother, sister and I were living in a basement apartment where we mostly played Atari and ran around like maniacs. Freed from her relationship with my father my mom was trying to balance the hard work of raising three kids on her own with having a little fun. Since we were poor this usually meant improvising some fun at home like roller skating in the house or drawing cartoons on the walls. Most of the time we’d adjourn to the one room in the apartment where we were allowed to say dirty words and swear our heads off. Yeah, it was a magic time even if we barely had money for school lunch and warm clothes. The lunch money issue could be dealt with by bringing food from home. The clothes issue was manageable since we lived 100 feet from the school and running could keep us warm.

On a snowy day that winter found ourselves in a bind: school was closed and my mother had to work. The woman who lived upstairs could keep an eye on all three of us kids in morning until someone could get to the house to watch us but she had two kids of her own so she just opened the door to our place and told us to come and go from her place to our apartment as we pleased. My sister took her up on her offer but my little brother and I headed outside to throw snowballs at cars, which we believed was the best thing life had to offer. The problem was we didn’t have coats; between the two of us we had a sweatshirt and a vest and it was cold.  My brother came up with the idea: one of us would wear the sweatshirt AND the vest until the other one got cold too cold and then we’d switch back.

I thought of these memories, which I had forgotten for nearly 30 years, in a matter of seconds as the mother and daughter took their seats. I shared the story with my wife who is always amused by absurd moments from my childhood and impressed by the fact that I’ve grown up to be a normal adult. I always tell her that I grew up just fine because I never thought my life was different from anyone else.

After dinner I thought about my brother who knew that keeping us warm one at a time was better than both of us freezing.  As far as brothers go mine is top-notch and always has been, especially when it comes to helping people. Many miles away from my home in Los Angeles, my brother and his wife are expecting another child. Their baby boy is due in the summer but at the first sign of cold weather my brother will surely give the shirt off his back to keep the baby warm. Hopefully someday soon we can all get together, throwing snowballs at cars will be optional.

I warn you in advance that this is a little bit of a mess, hence the title.

According to reliable sources my father married three times in his lifetime.  While select unreliable sources credit him with four wedding (and a funeral) I’m going to stick with what can be proven. Many of you reading this are familiar with his first and third wives (my mother and his last wife) but I suspect that only my family knows about my father’s second wife, Linda, whom he was married to for the longest time of the three. While I’ve mentioned her a few times in stories on this blog she has never really gotten the credit she deserves for being a positive influence on my life. Here are a few things you should know about her:

1- The first time Linda I met her I had just been suspended from school and sent to my father’s house so he could deal with me. Despite my delinquency she made me chocolate milk.

2- From the time I was 15 until I was 20 I lived with her and my father. During much of this time my father was only sporadically employed so his second wife fed and clothed me and kept a roof over my head. She later did the same for my brother and sister.

3- She caught me smoking and drinking when I was 15 and didn’t tell on me.

4- The only time my father hit me I did not hit him back, but she did.

5- About six weeks ago, she died.

My sister called me today to tell me that she just learned that Linda had passed away after a long illness that we did not know she had because we had not spoken to her in many years. This was not by design, over the years we just lost contact.  The easy thing to say is that she and my father divorced and each one went their separate ways but the truth isn’t always so neat.

The truth is this: they had several good years but things changed over time.  She and my father both brought out the best and worst in each other, the best was the ability to light up any room they walked into and the worst was alcoholism and raging self-destruction. In the five years I lived with them things got ugly with enough regularity that as a teenager I always had an escape plan in the event it got too out of hand.

From my perspective it seemed like my father caused these problems a greater number of times but it takes two to make an unhappy marriage. Regardless of who was to blame they split up shortly before I moved to Los Angeles but that was kept a secret.  The night before I moved she joined my father and I for dinner and smiled like nothing was wrong. No one in the family knew they had split until Linda stopped RSVP-ing for family events. My father proceeded with his life as if nothing was wrong and nothing had happened. Our questions about her were met with vague answers or silence. Still, we kept in touch for a while through email and mutual acquaintances would tell my family how she was but eventually those things stopped. When members of my family tracked her down they were kindly told that she was sorry but she wanted to leave the past in the past. I accepted this decision because I had no choice, still I hoped there would be time at some later date to catch up.

When my father passed away last year Linda’s absence was notable but understandable. After all she had been through with my father I understood that she might not want to reopen those wounds even if I was a little hurt that she wasn’t there. What I didn’t know is that she was already sick from cancer at the time. When my uncle tracked her down to tell her my father had died she asked how my brother, sister and I were doing but never mentioned a word about her health.

Today I don’t know what to think. I’m sad that someone who meant a lot to me is gone and I didn’t know about it for six weeks. I regret that I could have at any time over the last several years tracked her down and I never did. I feel terrible that I allowed my father to essentially erase someone out of our lives. I feel selfish for having hurt feelings when she didn’t show up last fall. I’m sorry that things ended badly between she and my father and I’m sorry that she didn’t live long enough for her life to get better again. More than anything I just wish I could have said thank you.

I tend to miss my father most when I’m the only one awake in the house on a Sunday morning. My father was always the first one up, on most days this was so he could go to work. On Sunday’s however he would wake up, put on a movie and then make breakfast while he waited for everyone else to wake up.

On most mornings these days I wake up before my wife and leave for work but on Sundays I’ve been waking up early, putting on a movie. I’m a plate of bacon and eggs away from becoming my father, and that’s okay with me.

It’s my birthday today and, like I do every year, I’m celebrating by retelling an old family story.

The Best Advice I Ever Got About Hookers

Today marks 18 years to the day since I received some life changing advice. It was my eighteenth birthday and a relative pulled me aside to share some wisdom.  He told me:

Always keep some extra cash on you, in case you run into a hooker.

-How much?

$20 should do it.

I kept that extra $20 in my wallet for years but I thankfully never used it in the way it was intended.