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Love is Love
Dad
Grounded
Dear Daughter,
As your grandfather reaches the end of his life, I find myself craving more.
More time. More information. What was his life really like? How did he come to be who he is today?
So, I figured I’d make it a little easier on you.
I was born in the early 1980s, when TVs still had antennas, or as we liked to call them: rabbit ears.
If the show was fuzzy, I had to get up and move the rabbit ears to try and get the station back in tune.
There was no remote. Instead, I had to get up and turn the knob for the very few channels available to us.
There was no choosing what we wanted to watch. We watched what the stations offered.
Sometime in the 1990s, we got a tv with a remote and cable which offered a lot more channels. Still, we found out what was playing by reading the newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, which printed a schedule of shows by the hour.
I vividly remember channel 99 because we didn’t “subscribe” to that channel but there was a lot of moaning and an occasional boob or two amidst the fuzziness- chaotic, zig-zag lines that perpetually moved down the screen so you couldn’t get a clear view. I was equally confused and fascinated, wondering what these people were doing.
Yikes. Now, I know.
My grandmother had a rotary phone- one where the numbers were displayed in a circle formation and you rotated the dial on the front for each number. I loved it when someone had a nine in their number because I got to move the dial almost a full 360 degrees!
We had a phone with a very long cord so that my teenage sisters could walk into another room from the kitchen and close the door to have their private conversations.
Sometime in the 1990s, the “sneaker phone” was all the rage and boy, you know I had one, too! It looked like a shoe but was actually a phone (with a cord of course)! That was the bees knees.
When I heard a song on the radio that I loved, I had to quickly find a blank cassette tape to record the song if I wanted to be able to hear it again. Cassette tapes were four inch long plastic cases that held magnetic recording tape. Sometimes, I accidentally recorded over another song that I loved and there was no going back. Once it was replaced, it was gone.
I lost many a tragic recordings to this oversight.
I also eventually got a boombox that had TWO cassette tape players, which meant I could copy one tape to the other, making “mix tapes” for my friends. I would create a playlist of my favorite songs, decorate the plastic cover, paper insert and plastic case and give it to them as a sign of my love and friendship. It took a long time, so it was a gift from the heart.
The same went for movies. We had VHS tapes, not DVDs. If you wanted to jump to a certain part of the movie, you had to fast-forward. If you wanted to go back and re-watch, you had to rewind. It wasn’t as easy as choosing a “scene”, so you really had to want it to make the effort.
I think that’s what I’m learning from my dad.
He was born in 1931.
Everything took more effort, then.
And even in the 1980s, things took more time.
Now, it’s faster.
And yet, I frequently feel the need to slow down.
Your dad, born in the 1970s, really works hard to keep you all grounded.
To keep you playing outside.
Often shoeless.
So, when things feel too fast.
Cast off those shoes.
Head outside.
Remember where you came from.
And slow down.
Dear Daughter,
Stay grounded.
Father
“This is my dad,”
I introduce my step-dad to my boarding school Headmistress.
“And this is my Dick.”
I introduce my biological father.
We all inwardly and outwardly cringe.
“I mean, this is Dick. My father. Dick Parise.”
Crawl in a hole. Die. I’m 15. Please, just let me go ahead and die.
Here they both are- a rare moment- both of my fathers.
The one who created me and the one who raised me.
A chuckle. A laugh. An inward mortification. We move on to pleasantries.
But then came my wedding less than a decade a later.
I’d always imagined both of them on each arm.
But then he said, after their divorce, “You know that would be hard for me.”
I paused and reconsidered the definition of “dad”.
And then, I walked down the aisle with my father.
The Golden Door
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
– Emma Lazarus
My father is first generation American.
Italian, born and bred.
So, when I graduated high school I asked for proof.
In other words, bring me to them.
My relatives.
We traveled first to Rome.
A hotel, he’d booked online.
We’d spent exactly two nights ever together in a lifetime and suddenly,
we were residing in a closet.
On to Naples, Pompeii and Calabria: the place of my grandfather’s birth.
Rich with olive trees, oil and seven-layer fresh lasagna.
Here, I bonded with my foreign relatives as I screamed “Aye! Aye! Aye!” on motorbike
through winding streets, experiencing food like it was the first time.
Eating “al fresca”, pretending I followed their animated conversation.
Next, to Sicily where we knocked on many a neighbor door
until we stood in the room my grandmother was born in 1898.
I looked around and wondered, “how?”.
And here I am.
Standing in my father’s hospital room wondering, “how?”
If there was ever a man to give to the tired, the poor,
Those that needed to breathe and required refuge,
He’s right here.
Beside the golden door.
And here I am.
Standing in my father’s hospital room wondering, “how?”.
Mr. Adler
“It never occurred to me until writing this essay that “normal” father-daughter relationships do not develop over talking in a restaurant.”
And herein lies the value of Language Arts.
It makes me wonder- were others lucky enough to have a teacher challenge them with the hard questions?
What happened to you?
Where is important to you?
Why do you write?
I attended an all-girls boarding school, whereupon 70% of the faculty, including my Language Arts teacher and his wife, lived on campus.
It was late, after dinner, when I witnessed him reading my very personal essay. It was both terrifying and exhilarating to speak my truth.
“My second chance lives with my future children,” I wrote “and their relationship with me and their father. I can use the lessons that I have learned from my family situation as a guide to how I will choose to live mine. For now, I will continue to meet my father on the corner of Shirley and Colley Ave. for some beef with broccoli and a two hour talk about how my life is going.”
I was seventeen.
And 21 years later, that’s exactly what I do.
I use the lessons I learn, through writing, to choose how I live mine.
Daddy
I feel the same, little girl.
You can touch him.
He’s real.
He’s not just the man of your dreams.
He’s your daddy.
And I chose him just for you.
He will show up.
He will know your favorite color.
He will teach you how to fish and how to garden and pass a ball.
He will tell you he loves you and even better,
He’ll show it.
He’s a good, hard-working man.
And he’s your daddy.
New Leaf Parenting 