Thankful

I knew before I knew, if you know what I mean. My father began to look old.  His eyes were beginning to to sink and his skin was beginning to hang loosely from his bones. He looked grey and sick. "I have cancer." He told us matter-of- factly, late in the winter of 2006 . He discovered a growth on his head and he went to the doctor to have it looked at. Concerned, the doctor ran some tests. A short time later, the test results were returned. The growth, the doctor said,  was cancerous. The tests also showed the cancer in other parts of his body, namely, his lungs.

My father was veteran of the Vietnam war, serving in the Air Force. He once told me that he guarded Agent Orange, the defoliant used to kill the lush vegetation of Vietnam's jungles. Perhaps, this was not the only thing it killed.  He never talked about his experience there very much. It was too hard for him.  He was unable to disentangle himself from the horrors he witnessed, so much so that he couldn't even watch movies about the subject. It changed him.

As a father, he was sorely lacking. He drank too much and was never keen on discipline and structure. He was there/not there. It's hard to explain unless you've experienced it: the feeling of someone being present and not present. It's as though his body returned from Vietnam, but his soul remained. I recall very little emotional connection from my father while I was growing up. I have no doubts that he loved me and consider my childhood, all things considered, relatively scar free. But I also don't remember a lot of affection.  I don't remember him at birthday parties; I remember waiting for him to come home from the bar. I remember going to the bar at 10 years old.

I rebelled in my teenage years and was given a lot of leeway. I was never really disciplined, and knowing this, I never really pushed it that far. What would be the point if no one was going to come get me? I grew up (or out) of it and settled down.

In 2003, my daughter Lily was born, and something inside of my father changed. He became a loving, doting grandfather, inundating my daughter with such affection, the likes of which I had never seen. He showered my new family with gifts in an attempt, I think, to make amends. I appreciated the help and gifts from my father, but that hole that I felt was still there. Apparently it could not be filled with things.

Before he discovered the growth on his head, he stopped drinking, a part out of necessity and a part out of a new consciousness. He started going back to church. A lapsed catholic, he sensed, I think, that there was something wrong with his soul. He was taking steps to fix that. He started taking my mother on nice vacations and watching what he ate. I concluded that with the birth of my daughter, he saw an opportunity for his own rebirth. I appreciated and treasured his relationship with my daughter. However, my relationship with him was still in shambles.

I am to blame too. I could have confronted him and taken the difficult path and made myself vulnerable. Alas, I did not. Prideful, I told myself that I did not do the damage, it was not mine to undo. I was wrong. Life is for learning. I did learn from my father the type of father I didn't want to be, I told myself, so there's some value in that.

In January or February of 2006 he announced that he had cancer. He told us he would be getting treatment and that the prognosis was unclear. He would be getting radiation and chemotherapy to fight this monster. A few months later, in July, my son Max was born. This seemed to steel his resolve to fight. It wore on him, but he had a purpose. He started a time capsule for his grand kids, with thoughts and notes and memorabilia. I, thinking he was winning his war with cancer, thought this was novel. Looking back I see he was creating his legacy.

Sometime in the summer after Max was born, my father called me.

"Hi, dad" I said.
"Hi son. I just wanted to call and talk to you" he said, seriously.

I put my lawyer hat on. I was thinking he was going to ask me about trusts and estates or living wills. I was completely unprepared for  what followed.

" I want to apologize for being a drunk for all those years. I should've been a better father." he said, his voice cracking.

"Da..." I was stunned. It was like a cool rain on a hot summer day, rinsing over the heat and uncomfortableness, washing it away. I responded, my voice strained with emotion.

"...that's all I ever wanted from you."  It's hard to believe that those words from my father could undo all the feelings of resentment I had. But they did. Just like that. I can't change the fact that my history with my father is what it is. But forgiveness and love really are powerful things.

I was closer with my father for the last few months of his life than I ever was for the previous 34 years. He died on January 20, 2007. The chemo and radiation proved too much for his body to handle and he died of a heart attack.  I cried, a little, mostly for my mother. They were truly soul mates and they adored each other and were having fun being Mumuu and Bumpy. But I didn't cry for my father.

It's not that I wasn't sad. I was. Or that I wasn't going to miss him. I do. I would have wept if my father had died with this strangeness between us. In retrospect, he was making his peace with himself, his God, his son. In doing so, he allowed me to make peace with myself and with him. And let him go. I am thankful he gave this gift to me.

Accounting for taste

For a while now I've held a fairly strong opinion about a particular topic. This opinion has turned friends and loved ones against me, made colleagues whose trust and respect I have gained question my sanity and made strangers instantly dislike me (which, thinking back, is not that rare). I believe that pie is superior to cake. There it is. I did not arrive at this opinion easily or half-heartedly. Nor am I alone: Adam Carolla has commented on the awesomeness of pie and there is a blog devoted to the comparison between pie and cake. This is not to say I don't like cake. I do. But if at gunpoint I would choose pie. Here are some other gunpoint decisions.

• Empire over Star Wars
• Pulp Fiction over Reservoir Dogs
• John over Paul (White Album over Sgt. Pepper)
• Gibson over Fender
• Marianne over Ginger
• Guinness over anything else
• Connery over Moore, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan or Craig

I would make these assertions not as "I prefer" but as "X is better". I'm not going to foray into the pointless exercise of "It's just your opinion"  and "It's not right or wrong, just preference". Blah. For me, the best pie I ever had wipes the floor with the best cake I ever had.

Allow me to explain. Think of a cake. Simple ingredients: flour, egg, sugar, butter, leavening, vanilla or chocolate. Mix, Bake, Frost... Presto-chango Cake. They even have instant cakes that are idiot-proof and deliver satisfactory results. Of course, you can over-mix made from scratch cakes and have tough or dry cakes, but for the most part, pretty basic. And delicious. Let me state again, I like cake.

But a pie is no simple apply, lather, rinse repeat deal. First there is the crust. Oh the crust. A delicate blend of flour, lard, butter, salt and sometimes sugar, blended just so and brought together by a cold liquid. No over- mixing please. And chilled. And wait. And brought out to be rolled just right. The chilled butter will create pockets of air and the lard will melt at a different rate to create a delicacy that is at once tender and crusty and...heavenly. Or you could create a graham cracker crust,or a hybrid, as advocated by the America's Test Kitchen for some custard pies. It takes skill and experience to make perfect pie crust. Which brings me to the filling.

Savory or sweet, the filling completes the pie. I would be content to just eat the crust, if need be, but an expertly prepared filling is Divine on its own. Whether the savory silky goodness of a quiche , the rich sweetness of pecan pie, or the nostalgic euphoria of apple pie, there is nothing better. Even cake's best argument, cheesecake, is actually a custard pie. The chemistry and timing needed to combine superb crust and delicious filling is not a hasty undertaking and is not for the weak. Frosting can cover up sub-par cake, but sub-par pie is just that, sub-par. And completely unacceptable.

For me, a slice of expertly made blueberry pie, a strong cup of coffee and good conversation is like a momentary foray into Shangri-la. Cake has never taken me there. In fact, I would say, pie takes the cake.

Late to the game...

 Late to the Game

Everybody is blogging. Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks, tall kids short kids even kids with chicken pox...Now I am. And I am late to this electronic super nerd party.  But at least I'm here.

I envision setting the blogosphere on fire with my posts. Somehow, through the din and confusion of the noisy marketplace of ideas called the internet, my voice will rise above the others and be seen as original, unusual, triumphant.  I will be Farmer Ted driving Jake Ryan's dad's Rolls home with the Prom queen in the back, digging on my idiosyncrasies.

But then i hear the voice in the back of my head, you know the one that says "You are not special".

"Scram!" I say to the voice, but he never really leaves. He replies, "You'll end up like Bryce in Sixteen Candles, going home with his nerdy friend."

"Seriously, you're no good for me!" I tell the voice, but he's a permanent tenant in my brain, so much like my wife does to me when I am rambling, I simply learn to ignore him.

So this is it.  The first one.  We all remember our first time right? Underwhelming you say? Perhaps. It got better, right? Maybe it'll be little better if I'm drunk? Maybe you'll experience it once and have no desire for it ever again. Maybe you'll have a headache and not be in the mood to read it. I've heard all the excuses. I'm married.

In any case, a bit about me. I'm a 37 year old (when the hell did that happen?) father of two. I am a lawyer and I work for a Institute of higher learning. But what I really want to do is dance. Just kidding. I rant and babble and decided that maybe a blog would be good for me (well, better for those who would be spared my lunacy). Will I touch on politics? Probably. Religion? Yeah. Mostly pop culture and shit that annoys me? Likely.

I will probably offend somebody.

 
"If anybody reads it at all!"

"Shut up!". Sheesh,  that guy's annoying. In any case, I don't think blogs aren't supposed to be a concrete permanent impression of the writer. It's a snapshot. A diary entry.  The snapshot of me in 1986 wearing my Mork suspenders and Evel Kneivel long sleeved T shirt isn't me right now. It's a little piece of the jigsaw puzzle called me, without it, you don't get the complete picture, and you can't tell the complete picture just by looking at the one piece.

 
It's like good ole George Bailey throwing stones at the old house in "It's a Wonderful Life". The snapshot of George in that moment was a brash kid who viewed the old house as decrepit and deserving of ridicule.

This makes his "Oh, look at this wonderful old drafty house" statement at the end so moving (Yes, I get misty each and every time I watch it...so what?). So I'm throwing stones, and looking for Zuzu's petals. I'm trying to keep up. Quoting movies from the 1940's should help. How do you shut this typewriter off? Til next time.

Shant wear shants

Remember the 86 Celtics? Many experts believe they might have been the best team to ever race the NBA's hardwood floors. DJ, Parish, McHale, Bird. They synched like a finely tuned machine, each cog doing its job perfectly.  They also wore the shorts that resemble speedos. There is probably room for a "loose ball foul" joke here as well, but i won't go there.

Somewhere along the line players' shorts morphed into culottes . 

 

 But I digress. My concern is not with extra long shorts like those worn by  Kevin Smith. My concern is that lately I have seen an overabundance of dudes wearing what appear to be Capri pants. Clamdiggers. This is not right. Whenever I see this phenomenon I shake my head. How did this happen? I imagine it was likely some guy, drunk, who somehow lost his pants and decided to try on his girlfriends' Capri pants. Instant trend. 

 I understand why heavy set dudes would wanna wear something akin to a muumuu for comfort and snack storage or perhaps to hold their special dialing wand. But capri's? It just seems ...well...off.

It's amusing and often hilarious to see men in tutus or in curlers and pink bathrobes. Mostly because it's absurd. Think about Monty Python or Kids in the Hall.  Men pretending to be ladies is funny because, for the most part, we have no idea how to do it. We are hairy, sinewy smelly beasts without a hint of femininity.  

And women pretending to be men is hilarious too.  Amy Poehler used to play an awesome man on SNL...oh wait, that was supposed to be Hillary Clinton. Nevermind.





But this is a case of gents in clothes designed for ladies with no hint of irony or that they're worn for humorous effect. In any case, I'm not sure how this caught on. Some would say its the feminization of our culture, the blurring of lines between male and female. Maybe. Perhaps men needed to have something to wear between cargo shorts and and pants that made your calves look awesome in heels. Whatever the reason, I don't like it. I'm slowly becoming my grandfather.