Remember the first time we went to London as a family? Elka and I were in high school, and very into English rock–oh no that was me. We were all into Carnaby Street and English fashions. It seemed so foreign then; the ambulances that blared a noise that sounded a bit too much like Nazi movies; tinned fruit for breakfast.

I apologize for thinking it cute that you and mommy liked Carnaby Street so much and that Elka and I kind of made fun of and kind of loved your blue Carnaby Street blazer you were to wear for the next 20something years. I don’t remember what mommy bought. Mini dresses and skirts I know as she had better legs than I did.

You were younger than I am now. Bummer. I was going to ask if you thought about death and/or getting old and then I remembered two things: that trip where you “misplaced” our passports and other things constantly as you were convinced you were rapidly becoming demented. Your father and mommy’s father had died at 55. You thought if you were going to survive physically your mind wasn’t.

Your mind survived and you went onto as much glory as a CPA can have. It’s strange as I can’t remember you loving the arts particularly, but you loved artists, writers and a certain Russian male ballet superstar who agreed with your political views. Fortunately I have blocked your politics from my mind. Alone we hardly talked politics. After the teenage and post teen years when all we did was fight except on vacation or in restaurants–the neutral zones, we worked hard at getting along.

When I moved back to New York and Boston University said I could take any three courses at The New School to graduate you lobbied hard for me to take Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s course on Death & Dying with you. Wow daddy what I would have done later to have taken that course. But then I didn’t want to take a course on dying and I didn’t want to take a class with you. What if I met somebody? What was I supposed to do? “Oh I would love to go out with you. Let’s just say good night to my father.”

Of course you were a big draw. Most of my boyfriends and male friends adored you. I sometimes wondered who they liked better. I know it wasn’t your politics though I think you toned it down a bit for my friends. Poor mommy. I don’t know if you ever knew that you were permanently kicked out of husband’s night at mommy’s Brandeis group.

As they met one Saturday night a month and most of your friends and immediate cousins were dead or worse–worse meaning living in Florida–that was a big thing. Mommy could still see then and would literally graph your nights as you needed to be out every Saturday night or have company. I think I vowed then to truly learn to like myself as we’re all left alone at certain times in our lives.

I have to remember all the little things about you. What made an artist ask if he could draw you when we were at a restaurant your last Father’s Day?

After you died a nurse from the hospital called and spoke to Elka–mommy and I were at the diner:
I just want you to know how handsome your father looks.

In retrospect that’s kind of weird but it was very comforting. You never faded into the woodwork. I was so proud when we meet somewhere in Manhattan as you looked so great. Though I hated it when maitre de’s would try to give us the private banquette for lovers. You of course found it funny, and funnier when I would say rather primly “he’s my father. Please.”

When I came home from the former Soviet Union, I remember thinking how old and tired you looked. It was the first time I had ever thought that about you. You were 75 and had less than two years left on this earth.

One night you were waiting for me on a Ralph Lauren bed outside 40 Carats in Bloomingdales. I was two or more hours late as I was working in Jamaica and the subways had been out. It was the first time I added “not quite frail” to you. You said you were going to leave if I hadn’t come then but I know you would have waited.

The Academy Awards were on four or five days later. I told you I wasn’t going to watch and you yelled at me for not watching a “historic important” event. You didn’t understand the concept of having to be up at 5:30 to be at work on time, and I was so energetic and young….You went on and on. I ended up yesing you just to get off the phone. I yes’d you a lot. You would plan a trip to Europe for me, I would get there and change all the reservations. You never minded. You just had to be right, had to do the planning and probably would have traveled for me or with me if given the opportunity.

I always have wished that wasn’t our last conversation but you know, we had enough great ones.

On March 31, it will be eighteen years since your death. I badly need a center. Somebody to talk to. I hope you don’t mind if I chose you.
Both this house thing, and blogging have me crazed. Many of my blogging friends have stopped blogging or blog randomly now. I don’t feel part of a community. When I first began to blog I loved that feeling of being part of a fairly new grassroots movement. Sometimes I feel very much my age, suffering from early dementia, and jealousy of every younger blogger who can remember her name and do ten things while spelling her name for the order taker because the web site’s she’s ordering from is down. I know I sound bitter and really don’t mean to. The past two and a half years have been overwhelming and the two years before that–constant dental work–weren’t a picnic. I should take all my skymiles, earned from the renovation, and go somewhere, but I live at the beach and would feel too guilty. And the rapidly dwindling resources…unfortunately a lot are dwindling because of the stock market not my buying. This has led me to scale down the renovation. Oh life, can’t live with it or without it…

I feel sad that blogging wasn’t around when I was in my 30′s or even a bit later as I led a much more exciting Sex in the City type life. Few people care about memories, it seems. They want it to happen today or preferably sometime tomorrow if they can learn about it today. I will probably feel different about this after I move in and the shock of actually living in a house I own with all my own stuff wears off.

I just ordered a day bed with extra mattress for the guest room and a very conservative, for me, couch. Almost everything else can wait until I’m in the house. The kitchen cabinets are coming next Wednesday. Guess I’m free to tackle taxes and find the source of misinformation the health insurer underwriters have about me. Though how I can prove I never was hospitalized, without doctors notes affirming to that, is beyond my understanding. Please excuse my frenzied anxious state. I know that if pre-existing clauses end next year, they’re going to add a clause saying it doesn’t affect me and me alone. I am my father’s daughter. We major in worrying and thinking up absurd things that nobody else would think of and then it does come true. I’m very into positive thinking and I strongly believe we’re in charge of our destinies to a point, but old habits die hard–and the to a point means we have to acknowledge somethings in life can’t be changed just because we want them to be

Me now

My house blog. Will do the earlier pictures as I do live in an upside down world though not house

Deleted posts is I.

I’m spending money when I want to retreat and squirrel it away. The least the Amish people who are making my kitchen cabinets can do is have it on time, but no. The rest of the kitchen work depends on having the cabinets. I need my house. I have been living without my glass, other things, and furniture since a year ago last November. Oh my favorite clothes too.

I need to buy more furniture. This isn’t the fun experience it should have been. I resent so many people having such a great time in the 90′s and earlier this century and me saving, saving, saving–and now losing losing losing losing. Yes I feel good that I have enough to do this.

Of course I might find myself regretting what I wished for. i might never be able to leave home again

I feel as if every nerve in my body is on fire; sort of the feeling after a toothache. I walked to my house via the ocean. It was lovely. I took many pictures. I tried getting lost coming home but met a new (obviously) friend.

The next will be more relevant to today. I found myself reliving a memory and wanted to write it without including my father’s POV. Frankly his views befuddle me though I understand more than most people. I suppose I will be going back and forth from memory posts to what’s wrong with the world today?
Hi Daddy
Do you remember when you told me that if I went with you to a meeting of the Mir Young Men’s Club, I would meet a bootlegger?

I knew that the club consisted of people from your parents generation and you were the youngest active member. I was eleven and in lust with the lure of both gangsters and FBI agents You had told Elka and me, many times, how when you were a boy during the depression you would go to Montauk with the bootlegger and ride shotgun–which makes no sense considering your youth and your fear of guns.

You probably went once or twice but in your stories you went often and while you didn’t explicitly say you were central to the operation a daughter can dream. And you knew that. After you died mommy told me that half your stories were made up and she was so surprised that I of all people fell for them Of course she wouldn’t tell me which half nor would she tell me how much you embellished. My parents. What jokesters.

Off we went from the garden apartments in Queens to some stuffy over furnished dark dingy, smoky but with doilies apartment somewhere in the Bronx. Everybody but you and I had white hair if they had hair at all and that did include the few women. Before the solemn reading of the minutes they made a big fuss over me.
“What a shana maidela.” “You look just like you looked at two.” I heard that one until my 30′s when the last of them died out and never considered looking like Shirley Temple a compliment. Or even looking like me at two. Note for you if you ever comeback to life: a girl wants to be known for her age appropriate beauty not her toddlerhood.

Then they told me how much I looked like you. And I did. We had the same deep set eyes and smaller than I would have liked mouth. I liked that one because it meant people forgot that I was adopted. Fortunately neither you nor mommy would mention that fact but thank whoever for that meant you too were good looking.

I have never forgotten that apartment or the meeting. There was rugelach (a pastry) during the reading of the minutes and new business. New business basically consisted of discussing who died and was buried in one of the cemeteries The Mir Young Man’s Society had sections in. In the cemetery you and mommy are buried in, The Mir Young Men’s Society is next to The Jewish Actors and even I know some of the names. Once Elka and I were wondering around as you had taught us to and we found Barbra Streisand’s father, between our society and the Jewish Actors.

I don’t remember what else was discussed People sat in folding chairs. The room became hotter and hotter and I could smell jars of schmaltz herring (in a an onion and white sauce, I think) being opened. I still think herring except for kippers a vile and gross food. The smell and smells of tuna and egg salad beginning prepared made me sick and I wanted to leave but didn’t dare say anything. I knew you wouldn’t make me eat anything as you thought the same of tuna and egg salad as I did You were worse as you thought if mommy didn’t make chopped foods you would immediately die.

So we sat in the stuffy stinky room and I wondered where my bootlegger was. I wondered if he looked like a gangster on TV or more like an FBI agent. You let me watch an hour of TV a day and most of my TV time then was consumed by “hip” shows catering to teenagers which I would be in a year and half–77 Sunset Strip Hawaiian Eye and Surfside 6 which took place in Miami Beach and whenever we went I would take Elka and make a pilgrimage to the house boat.

I didn’t know that the houseboat wasn’t part of the show until right now when I Wiki’d it. I’m assuming that you learn about Wikipedia and other things where ever you are. Since you’re not on this earth I can make assumptions or not that I couldn’t normally. I do stick to truth in stories. It’s just the world’s changed so much in the past almost eighteen years and I don’t want to waste time explaining unless I do. (Uh, I sound just like you.)

I don’t know how I was able to watch TV in peace as we only had one set and you insisted on watching with us. Maybe “my shows” took place on your poker, pinochle, civic associations or classes at The New School nights. I think poker and classes were on the same night–more about your life outside work, and your work in other letters.

But I think I also watched FBI type shows and was confused as to whether I wanted to be an FBI agent, not that girls could be, or a gangster. I can’t explain how excited I was about meeting the bootlegger. You had told me so many great stories.

When you introduced me to an old frail man on crutches I wanted to kill you. Somehow I hadn’t accounted for the decades gone by since the depression. Your eyes were smiling. You looked as if you wanted to laugh loudly. I remember thinking “he’s trying to teach me some important life lesson,” but I still can’t think of what it could be. That I hadn’t factored in the passage of time? Daddy we all learn that one when we’re ready. That I shouldn’t expect one thing, when the possibilities are infinite?

I got my revenge quicker than I would have imagined. We went to the Botanical Gardens or The Bronx Zoo. When you looked for parking, on the street, so you wouldn’t have to pay, you the world’s most careful driver, drove the wrong way down a street and you got a ticket.

My server’s been having issues. they say they’re fixed, but….I’m looking for a more reliable host. Or I might self host on WP. That would give me more disc space but I wouldn’t have the pinup. Oh life…
This is a post I wrote for my father. It’s raw, probably not very good and not meant to be political. In that spirit I would appreciate no comments about my politics or my shallow materialism. They will be quickly deleted
Hi Daddy
You would have been 95 last Monday. Can you imagine? I miss you. I really miss you. To say you would have been a beacon of sanity in a world gone mad isn’t quite true as you were never completely sane. But you were wise when you weren’t crazed and I was one of the few people who could tell the difference. That was the greatest gift.

The Dow went under 7,500 today. To you that probably sounds incredible. It never went over 5,000 in your lifetime. As you predicted the world has changed greatly in the almost eighteen years since you left this earth for something better I pray.

I’m scared daddy really scared. I had bought an apartment over a decade ago on Riverside and 75th. You would have been proud–it was a “world class” location. Though probably I should have spent 40K more then and bought a much larger apartment. It would have brought in 200K more when I sold. Yes daddy that’s how crazy it was. 40K which once seemed like so much seemed like a drop in the paint bucket. It seems like a lot again. Still I spend. But will stop when the renovation’s over.

You used to make fun of me. When I spent a decade trying to teach you how to work an ATM you would tell people I was really great at withdrawals. It so embarrassed me.

I know now that was your pride in my having. You went from being born in an apartment with the toilet outside the building to riches. Fortunately you had that gambling gene and while great at buying stock wasn’t so great at selling. KMart, Lowes–there were a number of truly great companies you bought in that went bankrupt and we lost significant amounts of money in. Only fortunate as your losses make my recent losses seem more bearable. And this is one time most people in the country are in it together

Then there was the great margin call of 70. I was only nineteen but mommy called and asked me to come home as she was scared to leave you alone. We lost everything. But you were 56 and had only just begun. My kind of man.

You told me I had to be perfect. But you taught by example that perfection doesn’t exist, and that maybe somebody could put $1,000 in the market and in 50 years that would be 50K or something through the miracle of compound interest. But in the real world it doesn’t work that way. Most strive for more and greed, no matter how wonderful the person, sets in.

I became greedy. You told me, begged me, not to put more than ten percent of my assets into stocks. I was good during the dot com (Internet era) but I wanted what everybody seemed to be having. I went to mommy and asked for dispensation. Stupid I know. I lost very little and made more. I understood that a company couldn’t be valued on potential but on earnings. How wonderful it would be if we were valued on potential–I would be….

What’s happening now is something nobody has ever seen before. It’s called the most serious recession since your beloved Great Depression. Some call it a depression. People were given easy credit to buy homes and buy goods.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for teaching me that debt, except for a mortgage, isn’t good. I was offered many mortgages without applying. The little voice in my head, (yours) told me that something wasn’t Kosher. You were right.

I knew I had to get out of New York when money began to seem meaningless to me. There were many other reasons but people were spending money as if they could print it themselves. Some kind of did.

I bought a house. Me, the world’s most inept person. I’m living in a townhouse and one day I realized that taking care of a house wouldn’t be much different. Really home ownership is the only form of housing ownership that makes sense. I know I won’t default.

Yes daddy it’s come down to that. Briefly banks no longer hold the loans they make. They bundle them and sell to investors but there’s no market for them as there is no market for so many things.

Under the program, the Fed will lend to investors who acquire new securities backed by auto loans, credit card balances, student loans and small-business loans at rates ranging from roughly 1.5 percent to 3 percent.
Depending on the type of security they are borrowing against, investors will be able to borrow 84 percent to 95 percent of the face value of the bonds. Investors would not be liable for any losses beyond the 5 percent to 16 percent equity that they retain in the investment…..
The market for new securities backed by mortgages and other types of loans has collapsed. Last year, investors bought $313.9 billion of these securities, down from $1.6 trillion in 2007 and $2.1 trillion in 2006, according to Dealogic.

Last month, banks issued just $1.6 billion worth of such deals

That’s only one problem and one possible maybe partial solution. It’s crazy daddy. We had an inept administration in DC. People blame Clinton, who was president just after you died, but they forget that there was a Republican congress and he had to pander to them. I could go further in placing blame but uh….Remember Alan Greenspan? He did frigging nothing. Believed that brokerage houses and banks could self-regulate. Now he called for nationalization of banks.

Here’s Paul Krugman. He’s an economist I think you would have liked as he speaks plainly and speaks truth. He does scare me more than I have been.

Everything that I thought I knew. I know nothing. I just know I want to live in comfort and saved for that. I saved so I could leave somethings to your granddaughter. I want her to have a great life.

Daddy I could so use your counsel. As a father, a CPA and an investor. But you’re not here and I have to pretend that I know just a bit. For nobody right now is expected to understand more than a little