Dad's Centenary Ten Years After His Death`

Madeo, a fancy little Italian eatery, whose clientele has been both celebrity and celebrity watcher since 1985, has closed within the last couple of weeks. When I read this I felt another pang of inevitable change that disturbs the pleasant memories of days gone by. This was the place I took my late father for dinner on the occasion of his 90th birthday. We were joined by a woman he had not seen in nearly 30 years. She was a love for which the timing had not been right, someone to whom he had been introduced a few years after my mother had died back in the seventies. It had not worked out, but their year or so together he ever remembered and savored. I was gratified that she was willing to fly to Los Angeles from New York to spend a weekend of memory. Dad was very sick. He would die only a few weeks later. But that evening with Sophia, Dad and Andrew and Len and me was a special one. Over the last ten years, every time I passed the restaurant, comfortably still serving food and charm, that evening and Dad's small dance step with his former love as we waited for the valet, always came to mind and brought me a comfortable nostalgic smile.



Dad had the linguine with clams, which was about twenty-five dollars at the time, and observed, "I could have made the same dish for a lot less."



There is a rumor that when whatever build out is being done in the former ICM building is completed, Madeo may return to the location. That would be nice. But it won't be the same.

Last night, I was at a dinner at my parish, of which my Dad became a parishioner at age 85, to celebrate both St. Patrick's Day and our third annual, "St. Joseph's Table".  There was much Italian music, many pieces I heard routinely as a child growing up in the Bronx, which my father accompanied with his mandolin. I really wished he were with us. He would have said, "This was the best party that I have ever been to!"  He said that pretty much after any party. And he would have been joining the dancing, twirling a much younger lady whom he found interesting, with debonair flair.

In a couple of weeks, had he lived, he would have turned one hundred years old. His eldest sister made that great age, but she suffered from dementia and it was a difficult last few years. I like to think that if he had survived his doctors' ministrations, he would have easily made this milestone.

He would still be telling me, and my friends, all of us now officially senior citizens, what to do. He would still be telling me, and my friends, how little we know of the world (and he might well have been right about that), and he would still be enjoying a little bit too much wine at one of those parties he loved. He would still be holding forth on the difficult past, the wild and crazy present and the apocalyptic future.  If he was dissatisfied with the political direction of the country in 2008, he would be positively apoplectic today. He would not hold back his views. I would be begging him not to raise politics and he would, as always, ignore me. It is not that I necessarily disagreed with his views, then, or as I think they would be today, but I am not a provocateur. When he got to a certain age, Dad relished being a provocateur.

My relationship with Dad was complex. It was the subject of many psychotherapy sessions--as Dad suspected and about which he probed, unsuccessfully. In so many ways, we were of a kind, and so we clashed, two waves crashing on shore from different angles.  But one thing was sure. Dad would throw himself on railroad tracks for me. He even attended a session with me--how many near octogenarians would do that for a daughter? I don't know that it accomplished much on his side of things--he thought therapy was an indulgence, but he was stoic in his discomfort if it would help me.

If you are lucky, when you get older, you get a bit wiser. Children expect perfection from their parents. No parent is perfect. Some are better than others though. Like many people, my father came from a difficult background. He grew up in the Depression. His parents, as he often said, with both regret and not a little resentment, "were peasants". In an of itself that 's not a bad thing, but he was speaking in short hand for how his father was trying to create a mini Greek fortress within the home, and how he held his children back with his fear and autocracy. As to his mother, it sounds as if the instinct for love was somewhat muted. As a child, I couldn't warm up to her, and she was an old lady at the time. My Dad managed to become an educated, cultured, industrious guy. His way of loving was to make a lot of food (common I think to immigrant families), and try to solve my problems, even if they weren't amenable to mere logic and persuasion. He was father, and in many ways, mother to me. As I said, it got complicated, but when I look back, I had it better than most, and with all my eccentricities, I have managed to keep my head, physically and emotionally, above water, and even, when one is really fair about it, to thrive in many ways.  And he is largely the reason. He would have liked me to say that when he was alive.

The thing about Dad, which I share regrettably, is that he held himself back. That fear transmitted from his family to him was hard to overcome. He could have enjoyed more of life had he let go a little. I tried to encourage him. He counselled caution in all things.  I have a sense of him sometimes, nothing really specific, having pierced the Cloud of Unknowing, telling me to let go a little now, while I still have the chance. I know he is looking after me, one of several intercessors, who I have come to trust.

"Eternal Rest grant unto him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon Him."

You want to hear something, Dad?  I miss you.