I feel as if I wrote this in another world.  In many ways it was!

Happy New Year. It’s a beautiful day. I hope that bodes well for the coming year. Were my mom on this earth she would tell me to get out and take a walk. But I was in Central Park until one Am last night, so she might have excused me on those grounds.

We walked passed Tavern on The Green. Last year there had been ice sculptures and everybody was allowed into the grounds. This year it was balmy and Benny E King was singing outside in the courtyard of the restaurant. Remember him from early childhood “There is a rose in Spanish Harlem.” and other great ’50′s song.

At the band-shell there was a DJ who basically played techno music when he wasn’t playing Frank’s version of “New York, New York.” There was hot chocolate, tea, coffee, a mini-marathon, and the night reminded me of everything that’s good about New York. The crowds were further downtown. We had our own fireworks in the park.

I’m the dodo who asked Lucia and Little Luce what time the fireworks would be. Glad I could be of some amusement value.

I had a bottle of Moet left over from the election. It was the bottle of champagne we were going to celebrate with. (Not the double L’s; it was a school night and Lucia usually stays home when Little Luce has to go to school the next day.)

When I was growing up my parents would go out every New Years to a fancy dress party or costume party. My parents went out every Saturday and I assumed that I would when I grew up.

Well I got married without ever having been on a real date and we had known each other for four years so I don’t know why I thought I would live a sophisticated life.

Okay, we had gone out on about five real dates, but even back in the late ’60′s early ’70′s we traveled in packs. Our idea of a big evening was sitting around looking at each other; our idea of a really big evening was sneaking into the Fillmore East before the main act. (I know that we girls passed for groupies; but I’m not sure what the boys passed for, probably roadies–I mean rock stars, of course.) Or going with a minimum of 20 people to Hong Fat in Chinatown at two AM and running into 40 more people we knew.

I’m thinking about this because the first time I remember meeting INYTBA (an affectionate acronym) was at the Band-shell though we lived on Long Island; and had met there many times. I think the Jefferson Airplane was playing.

The spring before, when I was still in high school, I had seen Country Joe & The Fish “One two three four what are we fighting for,” there. I thought about those lyrics a lot last night. All these years later and I’m wondering again, and the country is polarized once more. I thought about the Band-shell, Central Park, the Be-In’s, the many concerts I have seen there and all the other ways Central Park has been important to me.

I did end up living a somewhat sophisticated life for a number of years. When I lived across from the park in the East 60′s I would have a small New Years Eve party every year for six to ten of my best friends. Then I would have a
First Saturday After New Years Party or Lucia’s Annual Surprise Birthday Party for anywhere from 75 to 200 people. The parties would end somewhere about dawn. I don’t pine for them or the times but sometimes think that somebody else was living my life. I couldn’t have known all those people. Me? But I did.

My friend Patrick would have fancy dress dinners with five courses, and many forks. As my father had been a waiter summers during high school and college, I could set a perfect table by the age of eight.

But Patrick would get so crazed that Lucia or I would use the wrong fork, I would use a wrong fork on purpose just to see his reaction. Patrick and his lover would buy huge tins of Beluga caviar something I proudly hate, and I would feed Patrick my portion by slipping him my portion, by putting my spoon into his hand under the table, so I was never uncouth. It was fun watching Patrick being scared that we would embarrass him in front of his friends from Sutton Place.

I thought about Patrick last night and all the free operas and symphony’s we had attended in The Park.

My Central Park history goes back so long I don’t remember ever not knowing it. My dad would take fave sis and I to climb on rocks–just like the ones he had climbed on when he was growing up in East Harlem, and Central Park was his backyard. Only we wouldn’t go to the northern part of the park then because it wasn’t safe. It is now.

It felt great to be in a place that brings back pleasurable memories and to know that Little Luce was storing her memories in her memory bank to be handed down to still another generation.

It felt great to get away from the real world and its problems for a few hours.
Even the anti-war memories were filtered through a hazed over moon.

Once in Junior High I was supposed to give a speech.  No words came out.  I spent the rest of Junior High and all of High School waiting to lose my voice again.  Never happened in the literal sense.  But few if any people in Jericho outside of my family really knew me until Senior Year when the class intellectual/hippie girl and I began hanging out basically because we were the only girls we knew who liked to go into the city and be part of the counter-culture. Read more…

As always Thom thanks for the words. I truly love 3WW
My father would patiently teach me to cut paper dolls. I would be so excited until, of course, I cut the head off or part of the legs and arms.  The torso, forget, it would look dismembered.  I would have made a good serial killer and I was–of paper dolls or anything that required the least bit of coordination.
I still can’t open an envelope that has a perforated edge without screwing up whatever is in it, and as it’s usually a check, uh!!!!!!!!!!
“Try harder,” my father would eventually scream.  “Just try da da darn it.”

My father was a CPA.  Accountants by profession and nature are perfectionists.  He would lose his temper.  I would scream.  A good time was had by all.  The evening would end with me dissolving into tears, and my father hugging, kissing me and apologizing.  But still I knew if I only tried harder….My father knew everything.  He must have been right.
I was a bad girl intent on making my parents life miserable.  They never told me this but I knew.  If I hadn’t thought this myself the child psychologist my parents sent me to when I was nine, beginning to bud, and throw temper tantrums.  But only at home and only to my parents.  OK my little sister too.  Never in school.  Never in public.  I was considered a model child.
My father and I would drive to the psychologist.  The car radio would be on.  One week New York had a parade for Fidel Castro.  The next week, it seemed, he was the enemy.  I asked my father why.
He turned off the radio and looked at me sort of stunned.  “You know that’s a brilliant question.  I have no idea.”
it was the first and probably only time my father didn’t have an answer to a question.  He talked whether he knew anything about the subject or not.  He could have told me that Castro had been fighting Batista who was a dictator and America was glad.  But then the American government decided to fixate on Castro being a Communist.  Or he could have said that the American government just learned that Castro was a Communist, which I believe was the official story.
But he didn’t.  He gave me a great gift that night. I think my father, then a “progressive,” later a lover of all things Nixon and then Reagan wanted me to understand that we lived in a crazy world where things didn’t always make sense.  Or maybe he just didn’t know.
The child psychologist was an ugly short man with nose hairs and tobacco stained teeth.  He was the professional and I was just a child who never yelled at adults or kids or anybody not in my immediate family.  Like my father he didn’t believe in silence.
I loved doll houses, furniture and dolls but not in his office.  Dr. Wiener would make me play with the dolls–a mother, father, sister and of course me.  The dolls didn’t look like us.  They were objects not people, and I thought it was a stupid waste of time.  I was a girl who loved dolls almost too much.  But these dolls made me sick.
It’s OK,” he would say, “this is your safe area.  You can talk to the dolls and tell them how much you don’t like being adopted.”
“But I like being adopted.  I love my family very much.”
“Pia, you have big problems and they’re caused by being adopted.  In our sessions we’re going to make you see how much being adopted hurts you.”
Even when I was nine I didn’t understand how being clumsy, not being able to learn grammar, having temper tantrums and so much more was caused by being adopted. It didn’t make any sense to me.  I didn’t remember life in a foster home.  This was my family and I loved them very much.
My father would buy us O’Henry bars, and we would eat them on the drive home.  He would play rock & roll then because I liked it.
I began to buy into the things Dr. Wiener said.  I would tell my best friend, Ava, as we lay in the grass in back of the garden apartments we lived in that being adopted was very complicated and very difficult.  I was so glad that it was me who was adopted and not my little sister because I didn’t want her life to be hard.  Then we would lie in silence looking at the blue sky until one of us had something important to say. Usually about rock & roll stars or books we were reading together or separately.
•••••••••••••
Later I would understand that many therapists and others looked at being adopted as a disease.  They were convinced that many parents only adopted to have a “complete” family, and that ADHD and other problems were considered problems of the adoptee.  All that time, money, and effort wasted on trying to solve problems that didn’t exist and not trying to solve the problems that were real!!!!!
For the record I miss my parents everyday and can’t imagine life without my sister.

Dear Mr Stewart
My Aunt Adele is 83 and a half. She’s been a practicing Buddhist/Jew* for over 30 years, and has slept at the Dali Lama’s feet.  Aunt Adele went to Russia to be a clown for kids in institutions with Patch Adams.  She’s taught art in college and raised two daughters.  Recently her first great grandson was born.
She has one major item on her bucket list and only one item–she wants to meet you!  Please Mr. Stewart could my family have tickets for your show and we’ll secretly arrange for Aunt Adele to meet with you.  Please!!!
I was picked to write the letter as I have a blog and I went to the rally for sanity.  As I live in South Carolina (cue the laughter) it was an amazing experience.  I spent a day traveling there and a day traveling home for two nights, and one amazing day of being around people who think for themselves.
I left NY because it became so pricey, and crazy after 9/11.  While I don’t regret the move, I will always be a New Yorker in my heart.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you have been doing for the first responders.

Thank you for being alive.

And if you decide to run for President…..

*Well she’s been Jewish for 83.5 years.

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My family asked me to write a letter to Jon Stewart.  I’m having some problems–if you have any suggestions!  For some reason I couldn’t link or embed the 12/16/10 Jon Stewart show which is completely devoted to 9/11 first responders.  For anybody who has been reading my blog for any period of time you know how important that is to me–and if the city I live in now has a memorial next year that barely mentions The World Trade Center I will film everything.  It upset me to go to a memorial that was supposed to be for 9/11 but really was a warm up for the tea party rallies the next day.  That was the day I knew The Tea Party was going to be a force to be reckoned with.  I hadn’t been living here a year then and didn’t want to make waves.  I love making waves and won’t be quiet if my taxes ever go for something like that again.

I know this is supposed to be about my Aunt Adele and Jon Stewart.  I can’t think of two people who would agree with me more.  I love coming from a family where we were brought up to think.  And we’ve come together in mutual homage to….

I’m trying to make this a coherent story.  It’s difficult putting in excerpts.  Bear with me! This is a continuation of last weeks–the post just above.  Thanks Thom for the words!

I wasn’t a neat person.  I couldn’t make my bed perfectly.  There was always a bulge somewhere.  My clothes weren’t arranged by color or in any order.  I had too many clothes, from Loehmann’s, from my parents stores, from Paraphernalia the coolest store in the world or New York, from my family visit to London the previous spring.  We had gone to Carnaby Street and I even had a brown velvet smoking jacket with a white lace collar and sleeves.
Most of my clothes ended on the floor of the closet.  My bureaus weren’t organized.  I didn’t have an underpants drawer for my too many pairs of underpants or a socks draw or anything resembling order.  I had no idea how to order anything.  My side of the room was a mess.
This is where you think that my parents failed at raising me.  No, they did everything possible to teach me organization.  My mother had begun working part time a few years earlier.  We had a cleaning woman, three days a week,  who wasn’t allowed in my room unless it was already clean and the bed was made.  No matter how much I tried I couldn’t order or clean things.
My Dad was a CPA.  He lived for precision.  But he loved me more than he loved order and that was almost smothering.  My Mom tried to balance him.  But you can’t stop a force of nature.
Our fights were fast, fierce and furious.  My sister and I had always related to Danny Williams (Danny Thomas) in Make Room for Daddy because he had dark hair, a big nose,a great sense of humor, and an obvious career that he went to at odd hours.  Mostly he yelled at his kids, Linda and Rusty.  It might have felt that he yelled more than he did because it was so good to see an imperfect father who would walk the plank if he had to for his kids.
My father had told me the summer before I began college that he was glad I was rebelling against him.  For if I didn’t I would rebel against the world.  Take the fun out of it, Max, why didn’t you?  But Freshman year was going to test our boundaries and relationship even more than Senior Year at High School had.
And my mother had found an ounce of pot in my room a week or so after I graduated high school.  I could have lied and said it was oregano but the thought never occurred to me.  She didn’t usually look in my closet but the night before my friend and I had gone in a “strange man’s” car and came home too soon.  This was very suspicious behavior.  Roofers were putting in a new roof.  My mother thought that if the roofers began a fire and the Jericho Volunteer Fire Department had to come, they would go into the house through my room and hammer my closet down–it being so neat and all.
My mother was a very intelligent, rational woman.  Even I knew this wasn’t intelligent rational thinking.  My high school boyfriend had been a 27 year old hippie East Village living, Mack truck driver.  They had let me date him so I wouldn’t sneak out or hate them when I was 30.
My mother uttered many words as she gave me bus fare to my aunt and uncle’s house in Connecticut.  My Aunt was a hippie artist who was to become a Buddhist. My Uncle was a former radio announcer now businessman.  In the 40′s, they had been friends with The Weavers and other folk singers.  My mother felt that I would be safe with them as she told my father what she had found.
After I arrived at my Aunt’s she asked if it was sex or drugs that had brought me to her house.  I looked at her.  “Honestly?”  I said as I played with my hair for a second or two too long.  “It could be either.  I had an older boyfriend I just broke up with.  His friend raped me.”
What can I say?  It was the summer of 1968.  I was a strange girl saved from total oddness by looks and something in my personality that attracted many people.  And repelled others.  By the time I got to college I was used to this weird dichotomy that was me.  I was fearful.  I only spoke to people who spoke to me first.  Fortunately many people spoke to me first.
I certainly repelled my college roommate Melanie and the Resident Assistant, Lois.  As I went about my life meeting more and more boys, they hatched a plan to bust me.
Now, I wasn’t a big drug user.  I dabbled.  But I had a spaced out look that made me seem as if I were a heavy user.
I wasn’t neat.  Melanie and Lois didn’t understand that this was a problem in me.  That inside me was a girl who wanted to be the neatest girl in the world but I couldn’t be.  I didn’t know how.  They couldn’t understand how a girl who had such nice and nice looking parents could be so sloppy.
My mother wore mini dresses.  She had great legs, and had always taught me to show off my assets so she showed off hers.  I made fun of her in that daughterly way, or maybe I was envious because in 1968, breasts and waists didn’t count.  It was legs, only legs that mattered.
I was too young, too self absorbed to understand that legs were what mattered to girls.  Boys they liked legs and other things.  I had the other things.
Every day boys would give me little presents like sparklers, incense, candles.  I thought many boys who all had long neat dark hair, large dark eyes, big nice noses, long tall bodies clad in cords and tees were giving me presents.
We never really talked.  I went around with JohnnyB who had come up to me and began talking the first day of college.  We made arrangements to go to the first dance of the year together.  It was called The End of the World Dance and the group that was playing was, I swear, called God.
One day a boy gave me a present and I realized that Noah was the only boy to have been giving me presents.  We began talking.  It turned out that he had been kicked out school the year before.  Supposedly for hanging out with drug users and I guess dealing.  Even his parents believed the school. In reality he had convinced many people to the 67 Moratorium.  I was impressed as he wasn’t the usual anti war nerd but a genuinely good looking funny boy who made me laugh.  But I wouldn’t date him because he wasn’t a college student.  Aside from that he was everything I had ever dreamed of in a boy.

(I have been doing a word exercise–750 words.  As always thanks Thom for the words.  All the 3WW’s below this are fragments or outline type chapters from Space Chick) This is my article on Non Verbal Learning Disorder (NLD) that sort of inspired my memoir.

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It was summer orientation before my freshman year at that bucolic campus on the North Shore of Long Island.  Post wasn’t known for its academics.  if it had been I wouldn’t have gotten in.
Five curvy miles from my parents house, almost in the same public school district, they let me have a dorm room so I could have the “full college experience.”  My cousin had graduated the year before and he had talked my parents into letting me live in the dorms.
I had been corresponding with the girl who was to be my roommate.  She was a cheerleader.  I was a hippie freak.  She had long dark brown hair she ironed every night.  I had longish chestnut hair that frizzed everywhere it seemed.  Still people, to my constant amazement, loved my hair.
I knew because hordes of men in the city, construction workers and average guys would scream things out about my hair, face, clothes, body.  In 1968, you didn’t have to wonder if you were pretty or not.  Guys would just tell you.  I hated it yet couldn’t imagine being one of the girls nobody said anything to.
I’m sure Melanie was shouted out to.  If she ever went to the city without the protective arms of her quarterback boyfriend.
I’m sure I was the last person Melanie wanted for a roommate.  We had bought matching blue bedspreads, curtains and other things for the room.  The bathrooms were large and communal.
Freshman girls had a 10:30 curfew on weekdays and a 1:00AM curfew on weekends.  It was supposed to be for our safety.  At orientation they explained the rules.  There was a Resident Assistant (RA) on each floor.  She and she alone would determine if we were doing everything right.
There was a demerit system.  You could get demerits for not making your bed by 9AM, for not wearing shoes in your room, for not wearing a skirt to dinner, for being sloppy, and it would turn out just for being me.
She was judge, jury and it turned out, wannabe executioner.  Lois the RA was German.
She took an immediate like to Melanie.  Everything about Melanie screamed “affluent, good girl, fun, easy.”  Everything about me screamed “rule breaker, bad, maybe stupid, possibly poor but those clothes she wears….”  I wanted to be like Melanie, god did I want to be.
Orientation was more fun than I expected it to be.  When I was buying my books an older boy, much older stared then smiled at me.  I was scared to smile back but I did.
Melanie and I made some sort of truce during orientation.  I wanted her to like me and did everything in my power to make myself likable.
But the truth was most girls didn’t like me.  I had a few girlfriends but most people who talked to me were boys.
We went home for the rest of the summer.  It was the summer of the Chicago Convention.  Vile.  Horrible.  My parents had practically locked me in the house so I wouldn’t go with friends I had made earlier that summer.  It was for my own safety my parents assured me.  I was angry at them but secretly glad I wasn’t there.  Yet I should have been.  It was so conflicting.  For the rest of her life, my mother a non-crier, would cry whenever she saw anything about the Chicago Convention.  “You could have been killed.  Or worse.”  Worse meaning brain damage.  If they had only known how damaged my seemingly good brain really was.
I don’t know how to talk about non verbal learning disorder in this memoir. I can only show what I was like and maybe at the end of the book put in a chapter that explains how my behavior, in each chapter,  was infuenced by NLD.  I don’t know.
The rest of the summer was spent getting ready for school.  My mother and I went to Floyd’s a discount store near our house and spent $40 on health and beauty aids as they were just beginning to be called.  It seemed like a fortune to me then.  We filled up two giant shopping bags.
We went to Loehmanns and bought clothes my mother liked.  Fortunately my mother had good taste, and was proud of my figure.  I knew most girls I would like would basically wear bell bottoms with cotton peasant blouses.  I could get the bell bottoms from my parents store along with an endless variety of tee shirts.  But I was into dressing up.  I wasn’t the bell bottom kind of hippie but the Indian print dress type.  I managed to make all the clothes my mother bought at Loehmann’s into some sort of hippie atire by pairing dresses with pants and/or putting a Mexican rope belt on.
I managed to make myself stand out.
Finally school began.  My parents drove me and I couldn’t wait until they left. They stayed and stayed.  Finally just before nightfall they left.  I kissed them good bye.  Walked out of the room and began to make myself a life.

This is a writing exercise. They have a very different and interesting stat section.  I began doing this yesterday and will rework the stories for the book. I give myself 40 minutes to do the exercise. Turns out to be the perfect time.  So it’s unedited here. Sometimes I wonder why I’m doing this.  Really wonder!

Hi Leslie
Thanks for your incredible letter and gorgeous Christmas card.  It’s a fireplace keeper! I can’t wait until the Blenderbuster reunion Memorial Day Weekend and wish it were next week.
Remember the year we went to Jones Beach, rented four umbrellas because it was windy, and found that was the absolute worst thing to do in the rain?  So we got into Victoria’s car, drove in what became pouring rain, round and round, as we listened to Rod Stewart and smoked way too many joints.  Good times.  Stupid times but somehow we survived.  (Don’t try my life at home kids!)
I think North Myrtle will survive us.  They’ve survived my older Goddaughter’s visits and she’s educated Black too.  Round here that’s not usual.  They wouldn’t know what to do if they knew your family owned both a plantation and a summer house in Sag Harbor.  A summer house I miss much.  I kind of modeled my house here on the house in Azurest.  They’re not used to Jews either.  Sometimes I feel as they would like to see me in a sideshow.  Or I’m in one
Once I was at your house alone.  I was just getting back into writing–sometime in the mid 80′s and would take a beer, a tablet and pen outside and just sit and write.  Victoria was the first person to arrive for the weekend.  She got a new car–a red Saab I think.  I heard her come at least a quarter mile down the road and yelled at her for giving us Whites a bad rep.  But then I went into her car and saw the dashboard lit up.  It looked like Soho at night–then.  Now I would analogize Times Square I guess.  But maybe it had a more funky look.  (To the young uns and people who only think they know New York–Soho was built up and crowded by the early 80′s.  Tribeca was the next frontier and even it had fun bars, clubs, restaurants, and people moving into lofts that not long before had been garment factories.  Tribeca had been a schmatta capital.)
End of digression:
Once when we were staying at the house I was taking a walk.  Lucia had six month old Little Luce in a sling and they were walking the opposite way.  Lucia whispered to me to call Little Luce’s name and I did!  She looked up at me and waved!  It was the first time she recognized herself!  Now she’s a junior in college!
While everybody here seems to think most Hispanics are undocumented Mexicans (including Lucia’s very of Puerto Rican descent sister CLo) CLo, Lucia and Little Luce haven’t been run out of town or anything like that.
I have been watching  The Golden Girls to prepare for our reunion for several reasons.  I like it.  We were so young when it was first on and they seemed so old–Dorothy (Bea Arthur) keeps saying that she’s 60.  I still think they look older than we do now and Rue was only in her 40′s–but the haircut.
Once Victoria and I were staying in a motel in Cutchogue.  Exhausted from a day of swimming in the water between the North and South Forks and eating a $9.99 lobster dinner that was to die for we retired early and watched The Golden Girls.
You know Victoria’s humor?  Dry,  understated?  A wit I want to appropriate for my own.  She was the first person to say:
The Golden Girls date more than I do.
I almost choked it was so funny.  Other people claim to have made that expression up but I was there that night.
I still remember the night I met you and Victoria.  The winter of 78 was famous for its blizzards.  This wasn’t one. But it had been snowing.

Vince Alessi was my date to Lori Bernstein’s party at a loft she rented on the Bowery.  Vince brought his white Caddy and made a big production of seeing if it was still there every fifteen minutes.  It did get covered in mounds of snow at times.  He would run out to shovel it. So you could see the white car in the snow.  Not because it was a good way to get out of the parking spot later.

I got stoned.  It was easier than caring.  After the party ended I had Vince drive about seven of us to the Kiev for breakfast.  Of all the breakfast places in New York it was my favorite.  Except for maybe The Empire Diner as you never knew who was going to play the piano.
Your and Victoria were supervisors, I a mere coder.  But we started talking….Your boyfriend until he died, Rick, was there.  Everybody we were too hang with constantly for the next decade or so was at Lori’s party.  We should have kept in touch with her to thank her.  But uh she came on to all of us at different times and that was more than a bit uncomfortable.
I thought we were all going to remain a family forever, like The Golden Girls did.  Maybe we needed to reach their ages to truly appreciate one another.  Lucia, bless her, actually looks forward to my too frequent visits.
I’ll probably see you soon as Rafe is recovering from the aneurysms and I need to see him.  Will know when, when I get my new Spirit Mastercard with four free roundtrips and can make reservations.  This is in addition to my ten free trips anywhere in the continental US or five trips out of the motherland.  I see a lot of travel in my future which is good because, Leslie, I need laughter.  I need mental stimulation.  I need to finish the frigging first draft and shop it.  God yes I need that.
Love you much
~pia

winter 1972

My father was waiting up for me.  I had moved home for a few months while I decided whether or not to get married.  Some people accuse me of making rash decisions but in reality I can take forever.  Or not.  It depends on my mood and the importance of the decision.  This was an important decision but I knew divorce was a viable option.  Hey I have always tried to be honest with myself.

My father looked uncomfortable as he stood next to what we have always called “the marble” in the entry way, as it’s made of Carrara marble.  “The marble” is a sort of catch all. I have known it most of my life and can visualize it perfectly but don’t know how to describe it as I have never seen a comparable piece of furniture anywhere.

“Dave Shapiro’s father died tonight, and so did JohnnyB.”  As nice as Dave, a member of my high school class, was, I really didn’t know his father.  JohnnyB on the other hand had been the first boy I sorta dated in college.  Johnny was tall, blond, sexually confused and had been a dancer on two TV shows Hullabaloo and an up with people type show.

When I had been living in Israel I had this horrible feeling that Johnny would die but had no idea either where the feeling came from or how to tell him.  I told my boyfriend who believed me and together we tried to think of a way to warn Johnny.  It was too late.  One day his girlfriend called me–I never did understand that relationship and told me that he had passed out the night before.  His revival was quick and gratifying but he was throwing up blood.  She took him to Roosevelt Hospital where they gave him medication despite her telling them that he had hepatitis.  JohnnyB lapsed into a coma.

The nurses told us that he got more phone calls and visitors than a Mafia member who had been shot in the head during a salute to Italy parade.  I loved JohnnyB and his demise hit me hard.  My father was droning on:

I don’t understand Pia.  I lived through the depression and World War Two and you have more dead friends than I do.

Is it a contest?

I knew what he was really saying.  I knew too many hardcore druggies, and people with problems.  Though JohnnyB had given drugs up years before.  My boyfriend didn’t do any.  Me I liked the passing of the pipe or a doobie only.  That night I appreciated the effort my father made not to say more.  But those two sentences stayed with me forever.

We both started laughing and went into the kitchen where my father sat while I made us tea and made phone calls.  I wanted to ask my father why just once he couldn’t make the frigging tea himself but he did buy all his employees coffee, treated women with respect, and he was not just my father but my boss that year.  He gave me the week off to go upstate to stay with JohnnyB’s family, before during and after the funeral.  It was my first Irish wake, and I couldn’t get myself to look at Johnny’s body.  After all it was just his body, not his spirit that had gone, I thought, two months earlier when he went into the coma.  But I couldn’t look at the body.

I had forced myself to go into his hospital room where he was hooked up to many machines. I was rather horrible around sick people, even ones in comas.  Especially ones in comas   That one day I would become a geriatric social worker was unthinkable.

Johnny’s father was an engineer for IBM.  He had always been ashamed of his bright handsome sexually ambivalent son.  Other fathers would cry to me, later, but he was the first.  It didn’t make me uncomfortable. I liked the role of comforter.  Johnny’s parents left New York for the mountains of North Carolina where Johnny’s father became a carpenter. I have always hoped he found peace.

Happy Channakuah!!!!!

✡

I’m getting into this.  It’s becoming fun.