This is  a post I originally wrote for Studio 30 Plus Magazine

Hi Daddy,

Do you remember when you asked me if you should shave half your moustache?  And I looked at you as if you were crazy because frankly….and asked you why?

“So that the people who knew me before will recognize me when I get up there and so would the people who knew me after.”

My genius father who went to NYU on two scholarships–one math and one basketball; who was born in a tenement without a bathroom and made it all on his own–was very capable of asking questions such as the above and meaning them.  I told you only if you wanted to look like an idiot while on this earth and you accepted that.

Unlike the time you told me Blechman was doing a series of MTV ad’s about real people and had asked you to be in one.

OMG, that’s frigging incredible.  Can I come watch?

Uh Pia what’s MTV?  This was in the mid-80′s.

It’s a TV station that only plays rock videos.

No, Pia, that’s impossible.  Maybe it plays rock an hour a day.

It is possible and true.  Look at rock radio.  Why am I having this conversation?

You refused to believe me.  Though being in the commercial was one of the high points of your professional career as a CPA!   And who knew he would turn out to be right about MTV.

You loved it when The New York Times called you an incredible example of a middle aged professional.  As you were 70+ the words “middle aged” rang like music through your ears.  I did have to point out that you brought us up never to trust anything we read in a newspaper, especially The Times.

Your birthday was 20 years ago today.  We went to an Italian restaurant in The Village you had gone to, as a student,  so many years earlier.  That weekend we went to Long Beach to see your Aunt Ann.  “Where’s the girls?”  “They’re right here.  “Where are the girls?”  “Next to us.  Say hello to Aunt Ann.”  We must have said hello 25 times.  It was hilarious in an only a family way.  Afterwards we went to an upscale Southwestern restaurant in Island Park where a man asked permission to draw you.  He didn’t even know you were an MTV late night staple!

The Academy Awards were on March 25th.  I was working for Social Security and had to get up at five AM.  You called and couldn’t understand why I said I was going to sleep early.  Screw the Academy Awards for once.  You didn’t like TV but had this weird thing for “historic events” and the Academy Awards was history in your mind.

The next morning was your wedding anniversary.  Mommy said you did what you did best and bitched about Kevin Costner winning too many awards for Dancing With Wolves at breakfast.  Then she got ready to go out and you went down to your desk.  She called your name to say good bye and you didn’t answer.  She found you slumped over your desk.  Five days later you died.

Thanks for those five days.  If there really is an up there and you and mommy have reunited you know that ten years later she went suddenly, and I never had any last words.  No arguing over stupid Academy Awards.  No seeing her lying peacefully in her hospital bed.  Actually when you were in yours, mommy said “he’s lying like a lox,” an expression Elka and I found much funnier than it should have been.

I miss you daddy.  I miss you more now than I did then.  I didn’t have time to mourn.  Life was too busy.  Mommy was getting older, and well I guess we mourn on our own timetables.  Though yes if I had taken the course you wanted me to take with you when I was 25–Elizabeth Kubler Ross on Death and Dying at The New School I would have known more.  But what 25 year old girl takes a class with her father?  This one, much older now, regrets not doing it in a lackadaisical it would have been nice manner.  But I took classes to meet boys and you would have been in the way.  We had dinner before school. Afterward you went to your poker game, and never asked where I, your almost divorced daughter was going.  A father knows he doesn’t want to know details.  And I thank you and love you even more for letting me be me.

You were my friend daddy.  Before it was common for parents and children to be friends I had the incredible honor and privilege of having two wonderful parents who lived to drive me crazy but also lived to find “nachas” (joy in Yiddish) in me. I thank you for always being there.  For never giving up.  For knowing that I was more than the sum of my parts.  And if I didn’t always do everything perfectly well daddy, who did?

I never thought “Princess Perfect” was a term of endearment!!!!!!  I will have a new post here sometime this week.  Kind of having a panic attack from writing this one!

A post I wrote for Studio 30 Plus.  I accidentally posted it here yesterday and Google cached it.  Oh the wonders of the Internet!

The last thing I really remember was wanting to write something exceptionally witty on the Groupon Superbowl commercial for Twitter.  This was to prove: my ability to write short wonderful retweeted things, show my disdain for Groupon (yes I got the intended joke just didn’t find it funny) and destined to make me famous.  Ha!

You know the one about going to the doctor perfectly healthy and two days later….I went for routine blood tests (fine) and even had the doctor check my lungs as I’m weird that way (fine.)

Two days later I began coughing.  And coughing.  And have never coughed so much in my life.   Only it’s not from my lungs it’s from my diaphragm which is getting such a great workout I could barely get out of bed.

In the past three days I’ve had the time to re-evaluate my life.  I kept telling myself I was sick and everything was under a cold/flu haze but still.  There are times that I feel as if I’m intellectually dying here.  I don’t miss the ice or the grit (not that cities are anymore) but I miss being able to walk 24/7.  I miss stores that assume you want delivery.  I miss great take out.  OK I would kill for good chicken in the pot and I don’t eat chicken.    I miss classes that I can take or not take.  I miss dark haired people like me who constantly question everything.

I can’t live a virtual life.  It’s just not me.

I miss saying no to dinners and sometimes saying yes.  I miss not having to make elaborate plans to do just about anything.

I don’t understand the South’s hatred of public transportation.  It’s ironic because so many of the homeless began with jobs but their cars died and it spiraled from there.  Don’t they understand that economic growth happens to areas that are prepared and being prepared includes public transportation?

I know I’m feeling better tonight and will probably be feeling almost healed tomorrow, but I so miss feeling part of a community.  I’m the different one here.  And no I’m not going to change my religion, change my politics, change my belief that we have free will, and sometimes that leads us to great places and other times not so great ones but it’s always our choice. (Which is going to be at odds with somethings I write for Psychology Today but I’m writing the different sides of me.)

Well it’s Thursday and I ventured the few blocks to “town” today.  I was hot.  I was cold.  I couldn’t wait to get back home and into bed.

If I bring two shopping bags with me, am I bringing one for show?  I always wonder about this as they put all the groceries into one bag though I always ask for them to use both or let me do the packing.  For once one bag left me breathless and I had to stop in the middle of the walk home and redistribute everything.  The bags felt weightless.

Before I grocery shopped, I spoke to the pharmacist I have a not so secret crush on who told me to keep drinking liquids, and agreed with me that going to the doctor was iffy.  For some reason the coastal part of Horry County is the hardest hit by the flu.

When Eldon drives me to the doctor he waits outside so he can laugh at all the people who come out while waiting to have a cigarette break–as they’re coughing.  I think that’s the reason.

The newspaper says it’s because we get so many tourists but I’m from New York and have never seen such a virulent outbreak.  And if you don’t have a tissue or something that will pass for one, cough on your elbow.  Thanks.  Signed a public service announcement!

I am feeling better.  Actually have an appetite–the one thing I liked about this was not eating!

I’m back to liking the South!  Just need some down home NY cooking, and some New Yorkers!!!!!  CLo and W, my former landlords, here, are coming in three weeks.  Let me go as I’m beginning to babble!

Friday: It’s raining again.  Yesterday was the first day since last Sunday it didn’t rain and before that I can’t remember.  It feels as if it’s been raining forever.  I’m bored but I’m still sick.  My sinuses are still clogged.  I don’t think I will need the newest version of my will because of this but you never know.

Tomorrow begins a spate of warmer sunny days.  Please, please!!!  I moved here thinking the weather while still cool in winter was decent.  Then every winter has been “the coldest winter anybody can remember.”  Tired of that.  Tired of people who don’t believe in climate change.  If they don’t believe the industrial revolution and everything that happened after was enough to foul the air and….They deserve the ramifications.  The rest of us don’t.  Let me go before I lose my last two friends or something.

I’ve been blogging since we blogged uphill both ways.*  Really.  I barely knew what a blog was.  For the first four months I did it strictly for myself.  Then I found a blogging association most of us love to leave out of our blogging resumes.  The next  morning I found myself in an alternate universe I sometimes think is my real life.  People bookmarked me.  OK I got that.  But the link exchange–uh, what’s a link?

I learned this new world, though the learning curve was long and high,  and began to meet people through emails.  Gmail didn’t have IM then and I swear AOL chat would crash my computer.

Anyways as the Wombat says, I discovered amazing uh esoteric people.  Many who are much younger than I am.  Like in: I first knew them when they were in their late teens.  Having young exceptionally bright friends forces me to think and challenge my views on some subjects.  They remind me of the best of me–those years when everything was new, almost always fun except if it was horrific.  And while the world was in horrible shape I knew I was destined for a wonderful future.  And it happened!

The Wombat is an amazing person and friend.  He has opinions (learned and scholarly) on almost everything,  appreciates James Spader like nobody but me, while being straight.  Has one of those great storybook Boston families that actually has camping reunions.  And so much more.  He’s an incredible helpful, thoughtful friend.

His current post, mostly on Egypt has an unusual, different and really almost commonsense take.  He talks about things other people don’t.

Uh government workers have joined the protesters.  I so hope this is a revolution for good and the betterment of the Egyptian people.

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Now I blog for Psychology Today and my latest post was called an essential read, by Psychology Today.  Not that I’m bragging or anything.  Yeah me!!!!! (I never say things like this and lately….)

I’ll take essential read anyway I can!!!!!!!

It’s on panic attacks in a child–me!

This is the saddest story I have read in a long long time

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Part One

Part Deuce

The other night I watched The Kids Are Alright an amazing slice of life movie that left me wanting more and thinking.   Julianne Moore’s character was empathetic from the beginning.  Annette Bening’s character had to earn my respect and like.  She did an incredible job.  Bening is one of my favorite actresses.

The Kids Are Alright is about a lesbian couple who have two kids.  The older kid, the daughter turns eighteen and for reasons I won’t go into finds the sperm donor.

I always thought of my birth father as the sperm donor.  My birth mother wouldn’t tell me much about him.  They had dated for a long time she said but he was Irish Catholic and that was a big no no.  I know his name was John. She wouldn’t tell me his last name.   Yes my birth father was a John. (As a collector of truly awful jokes I love that one.)  He was born and died in the same town when I was between twelve and fourteen.  After my birth mother told him about me he married somebody else and had three children.  So I have three half-siblings I’ve never met.  I would like to meet them.

But they don’t know about me and even if I could somehow find them I’m not sure I would want to disrupt their lives.  I realized that the major problem between my birth mother and I was that we didn’t live up to each others fantasies.  I didn’t think I had any, yet….

I know subconsciously I was looking for a woman who looked more like me, was a reader, intellectual and had a rapid fire wit.  She turned out to be a nice ordinary woman and I hate my younger self for putting such constraints on her yet I can’t be harsh on me as I had no model or guidebook.  (I’m sure you all figured this out within the first two paragraphs of the first post!)

I know we need more books, movies and all media on adoption, sperm donors, and every other way many modern families are conceived.  Because I still wouldn’t know how to play a meeting with her (if we hadn’t met already,) my birth father (were he alive and I’m not really sure he died but I am cynical) and his family.

I do believe I was absolutely justified in meeting her.  As to the rest I’m not so sure and would love input.  My sister and I have made some preliminary research plans but I keep backing out.

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I will never forget the scene in American Beauty where Bening,  a real estate broker, goes to a client’s house and immediately begins straightening a chandelier and cleaning.  It was so real. American Beauty was also the first movie in a series–well the second time I saw it I went with Lucia, my best friend, and told her to look for something. I didn’t tell her what or that it was an object not character.

She started screaming: “they (Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey) have your kitchen!”  I screamed also.  Yes. I. Did.  In the middle of one of New York’s biggest, filled to capacity, multiplexes.  We have no shame when it comes to certain things.

It was a bit embarrassing but I was to come to realize that the white (usually called) Newport cabinets with brushed metal or stainless knobs, and black with gray speckled granite counters and even floors, (mine was)  stood for a certain kind of American 90′s affluence in films.  Of course my kitchen was minuscule but…Lucia and I are house object freaks.  Our homes express us which I guess was the one of the reasons I reacted to my birth mother’s lack of house personality so badly.

Forgive my rambling.  I just wrote the first draft of my second Psychology Today blog post and will let you know….Oh you know I will. Thanks all.  The stats have been above my expectations and I would love them to be higher, much higher. I’m learning the not very subtle art of shameless self-promotion, and actually feel good about it as I know I have a great product.  Thanks me!!!!!!!