Daddy's Girl and Mommy's too

Happy birthday Bone. 35 and finally almost maybe possibly somewhat an adult
I want to thank writerKat for giving me an award for excellence. I live to write and write to live which isn’t a great thing when I’m supposed to be emptying book shelves.
I read Jonathan’s blog once a week–every post. It’s like reading a great serial. He and his wife Wendy just adopted three children. Jonathan shared the process. Now he’s sharing the day to day life, and I can’t help but tear up..
I should edit this to explain my mother asked me to describe what I ate as she ate about five foods–all good for you. She was little and petite.
The plumber asked her for a plunger. She knew he was licensed as the building wouldn’t use unlicensed plumbers but still….Then he and the building handyman told her that she might have to buy a new toilet. Just when she thought she was through with most of this. Just after the tub that practically touched the toilet had been reglazed.

Other women would be apt. Other women would know what to do. High powered execs by day, home handy person by night. She was the only one thinking “daddy, why the hell aren’t you on this earth?”

Not that her father would have known what to do nor would the men she had been with. In her world it was the women who could do the handy work. Just not her.

She thought back to the time she was moving to East 63rd Street and her father had made a graph of the apartment with accompanying little cardboard pieces of furniture. It had embarrassed her. He wasn’t moving. She was, but he talked about “our apartment.”

He turned out not to be intefering, and was respectful of her privacy. She missed him and thought further back to the time he had taken her out of school to see the circus. Later she found out he hated the circus but thought every lttile girl should go.

He took her to Yankee Stadium to see a game as every little girl should….He liked basketball and betting on football games.

Daddy took her sister and her so many places in the name of education, culture, and “they should have the experience.”

The one place he couldn’t get away with a one time or once a year experience was the beach. She loved it too much. She remembered the time she was turning some birthday and had just broken up with somebody. She trudged out to Jones Beach–subway, train, wait for the bus–two and a half hours in all. She walked from the West Bathhouse to the water. The West Bathhouse beach is one of the widest in the world. It was over a hundred degrees at the beach and the walk from the water to the Bathhouse seemed to take forever.

The ride home would have taken at least four hours. So many people trudging to the bus stop. Too few buses to the Freeport train station. She did what any normal girl from the Island would do, she found a phone booth:
“Daddy can you pick me up?”

The ride would have taken less than half hour at night in the dead of winter. in summer it could take up to an hour. It took her parents over two hours. Her father couldn’t pretend he wasn’t angry:
Beach bum. I raised a beach bum. Only a beach bum would go to Jones Beach on the hottest day of the year and it’s a Saturday–all the weekend traffic.
I’m sorry daddy. It was stupid of me. But tomorrow’s my birthday and I wanted to celebrate by myself at the beach.
You’ll stay at the house tonight?
Of course. Have to celebrate my birthday with my favorite parents.
Did you wait in the heat?
No did you know that there’s an airconditioned ice cream parlor in the Bathhouse? I waited there and had a small sundae.
Her mother chimed in
Oh good you were comfortable. Can you describe the sundae?

They went to a diner on Jericho Turnpike. First her mother made her model her lavender halter sleeveless dress with matching Candy mules:
Nice. Sexy but Pia darling if you lose anymore weight, you’ll lose your figure.
That’s kind of the point mommy….
Her father interrupted:
There’s a string hanging from the dress.

They went into the diner. Her parents immediately played “YMCA” and danced to it. Nobody else had parents like this. She spotted people they knew–a major ex boyfriend’s aunt and uncle. They were smiling. So was everybody but her.

She doesn’t remember where they went for her birthday dinner. Someplace with even more varieties of fish probably. She doesn’t remember anything else about the weekend but how her parents saved her from going home by public transportation and then humiliated her.

She would give anything to tell them how much fun they were. She probably did. They lived long enough for her to forge a true adult relationship. Still she would like to thank them for everything.

Her parents had been older though she never thought of them as old. If her father had lived he would be 94 on 2/16. She would have loved for him to have been a part of the Internet revolution. But that became her destiny. Maybe that’s what life’s about. She’s not in the mood to philosophize .

She only wants to see them once more. To find out all the other things they hated but did anyway. Today she just really wants to cry to her daddy.

Oh she’s a real adult, but there are sometimes, you just need your parents, nobody else.

As people who have been reading Courting for awhile know I adored my parents. My father was less handy than I am if such a thing is possible but he was a successful man so people didn’t tell him he needed to buy a new toilet when the plumber didn’t even bring a plunger or special toilet snake–and he did come for a consult Wednesday. It turned out of course I didn’t need a new toilet. The handyman probably told him I’m good for big tips. Not in this case.