My family, redeux

Shayna made an amazing Courting video. She made it awhile ago but Courting and both Savannah’s have been rather temperamental lately.

I think that Stuffed Tiger paid me a compliment. “in a style that is more Pia than The New York Times.” I am flattered. Once again I will hedge that with “I think.”

Wow, there’s a Pia blogging style. Unfortunately or not, The Times has been veering from straight news for some years now, even in the first section. For a hot minute or five it felt like the first page was a small town daily capped by the infamous;
“Ms. Flo Schwartz can no longer dance around her living room naked…..” I made the exact wording up, but I couldn’t stop laughing when I read it. This was front page news in The New York Times

I remember wondering what my dad would have thought about. Like most educated New Yorkers my dad had a life long love/hate relationship with The Times. He was just louder uh more vocal about it. My father yelled a lot. He meant no harm but he liked things to be perfect. Everything had to be his way, and somehow he expected the news to fit his point of view. If I sound vague it’s because I’m still trying to understand that one.

I have always wanted to write the following paragraph:
“My father was a simple man. He would go to work at seven thirty, with the other men on the LIRR, work and come home. When he arrived home, he would smile and say; “hello darling, sweetheart, kitten. Did you have a wonderful day? Tell me about it?’

My parents would have drinks at six. At exactly six thirty my mom would ring the cute dinner bell and my sister and I would come to the dining room for dinner where we would talk about trivial things. After dinner, he and my mother would retire into the den for after dinner drinks and light conversation.” I assume that we would have had a full time maid who cooked, served and did the dishes so as to relieve my mom, sister and I of our nightly chores.”

But we were a real family, not a TV sit com or some book that I had read. Often I thought that life would be much simpler if my dad did drink. The man had no bad habits. He did drink occasionally, but never smoked, exercised regularly and was an obsessive worker and an obsessive player. By that I mean he scheduled in time for weekly poker games, classes, civic duties, nights out with my mom, and much family time. I become exhausted just thinking about his schedule. No wonder why he yelled so much, he was chronically sleep deprived as he didn’t go to sleep until at least two AM.

As he was self-employed and never scheduled any appointments until eleven AM he would sleep until at least nine when he would have breakfast consisting of orange juice, farmer cheese, bread and Postum. Gawd, he could have been a Mormon except for the occasional drink and the bi-week coca cola. Not sure if Mormons gamble or not, should really find that out.

My father was saved from being a boring pompous a-hole by being himself; a man who could never stop lecturing unless he was telling a story or a joke. It’s difficult for me to describe my father’s sense of humor, and I really have to begin remembering some stories.

Forever and longer, he tried to teach me the proper way to fold The Times for subway reading, in eighths. Forever and longer I couldn’t learn. This wasn’t the cause of great merriment or joy as he was always trying to teach me things that he believed were important to living a proper life. As I couldn’t learn many of these things we would scream so loudly we could probably be heard three towns over.

Never did learn to live a proper life. I don’t blame my dad, I think I understand what’s it’s like to have a child you think could rule the world if she wanted if only….

I do have a cold and another huge dentist appointment tomorrow. Please bear with me if I don’t answer your comments or emails until later this week. And thanks so much, all of you. My RLF’s believe that I have lost my mind, or the little that was left and have gone deeply into the dark and sinister world or blogging. Think that they have it confused with online porn or Texas hold-em–my own version of Spam and Internet hell. They just don’t get us and smile vague smiles or shake their heads when I bring anything blogging up. But I don’t care because we are the future today. Sometimes I think that I have turned into my dad, and that the only thing that saves me from being pompous and boring is something not really definable. At least by me.