The Jennifer Dispatches II: The Things That Make My Father Laugh (Make No Sense)

My sister sent this email to me today. I can only assume she wanted me to post it here, the curious phrase "off the record" notwithstanding.

"Hey.

Tim and I were up at Mom and Dad's last night. We watched several episodes of Dirty Jobs with Dad, which is a show that makes Tim and I laugh - when it is not about animal hides - then it just makes us feel . . .well, dirty.

So, anyway, we are watching it and Dad is laughing and saying things like "oh my god" - (you know in the way he does where his voice goes up at the end) and asking questions like "now why would he do that?" - (you know in the way that he does). He keeps saying how amazing it is that this guy would do all of these horrible things just to get on TV. He complains and complains, but I swear to god he was laughing so, so hard. Why do you think he pretends to not like things that he does like?!

Oh and off the record, while we were watching television there was a commercial for some random sitcom on TBS or ABC or something like that. I didn't see this clip, I just heard it, but basically there was some joke where the woman says two female names and I guess probably pointed to her breasts or something because then the guy says "You named them?!?!?!"

I'm not exaggerating; Dad laughed for five minutes, and in Dad fashion kept on loudly repeating "You named them?!?!" "You named them?!?!"

Tim and I just looked at each other across the room and tried to laugh a little so that we didn't draw attention to the fact that we were actually both paralyzed with awkwardness and laughing at Dad. It may not be as funny on paper, but I wish you had been there to share in the paralymazment.

Anyway I hope things are okay with you. Talk to you soon. Love you."

Rome: So Few Roads Seem to Lead to Our Hotel

After we were married, Chiara and I and some family and friends all drove down to Rome. We were numerous enough that we had to drive three separate cars and, with my father driving one of them, we were all but guaranteed to have problems of one kind or another.

First off, my father drives like an Italian. He drives fast; he drives aggressive; he drives with a kind of emotional certainty that every other motorist, every pedestrian, every feature of the road, and every traffic law is out to thwart him, personally.

I drive like an American who is extraordinarily nervous to be driving in Italy - and this is the surest way to incur the wrath and derision of every Italian motorist within a ten mile radius of my reasonably paced, turn indicating, hesitant-at-intersections automobile.

Now, add to this the either malfunctioning or sadistic GPS unit that we rented, along with the cars, from the counter at the airport. The device was one of those that could be attached to the windshield by a spittle-powered suction cup, specially designed to lose adhesion if you coughed, sneezed, changed lanes, or looked at it hoping to see a map with a helpful arrow displayed on it. It spoke in an antiseptic, rather snooty, English accent when it gave directions (which it only did when it was in the mood, and then often miles after they would have been useful) and because it had the voice of a woman, I could never escape the feeling that it was judging me, or nagging me to pull over and ask some GPS device on the side of the road for better directions.

Each of us had one of these aloof British women in our car, but only my father trusted her completely. He abdicated all responsibility for the operation of his vehicle to this prattling bitch and was content to follow her instructions off a cliff or through a field if she commanded it. It did not matter what highway signs told him or what we would scream into our cellphones as he barreled down some abandoned private road, if the GPS said left in 200 meters, my father turned left in exactly 200 meters.

Even this might have eventually led to a successful delivery of our personages at the hotel in Rome but for Rome itself.

Rome may be the loveliest city on earth. It's vivacious and alive, but also ancient and dilapidated (in the charming sense of the word, if there is one). It has more fountains than really seems necessary and enough churches to bore a nun. Every other building has a good restaurant and the shops overflow with an abundance of pointy shoes and orange pants. I love Rome. I'd live there. But I'll never drive there again.

First off, the roads are really just a warren of intertwining, cobblestone footpaths, seemingly rigged at every blind corner (and they're all blind corners) with some kind of large gun that expels Vespas at fifty miles per hour.

Then there are the street signs, which don't exist.

And finally there are the Romans themselves, who drive as though they are in a demolition derby but have been equipped with personal forcefields so that no collisions can ever take place - an astonishing technology that only seems to aggravate them further. They are a nation of formula one enthusiasts and they regard even a second's hesitation behind the wheel as weakness. The whole city is a wall-to-wall cacophany of honking and shouting over shaken fists. I felt like a hamster dropped into a rollerderby arena.

A Roman driver will cut in front of you if he or she is given roughly ten percent of the length of their car to work with. Inside three minutes, all of our cars had been split off from one another. The GPS was feeling especially moody it seemed and refused to speak at all once we passed the old Roman Empire era walls around the center of town.

I could sort of follow my father's low sedan up ahead when the road turned in just such a way, but when he turned down a street it was always a panic - would we or wouldn't we guess the right direction? Finally, four or five cars ahead of us, my father turned left, into a street blocked off with those heavy, saw-horse type road blocks and guarded by three carabinieri. I just screamed.

The carabinieri gesticulated wildly and hurled Italian at my father, who was speeding away down the closed street, and one took out a small notepad to write down the license plate information. I gawked for a split second and was jarred out of my reverie by the angry honking of the cars behind me. I drove on ahead, lamely hoping there'd be another way to get left right away to try to follow the spirit, if not the letter, of my father's driving.

Of course, Rome doesn't make half so much sense as that. Instead, we burrowed further and further into the city, past embassies and the river and monuments and the river again. Occasionally the GPS would chirp that I ought to take a sharp right turn into the Tiber or that we should drive a further 500 meters and then veer slightly right to plow headlong into an obelisk. The Cunt.

The final indignity, for me, was when, just at the moment I felt most frazzled and ineffective, we pulled up to a stoplight from which I had to either turn right or left and I didn't have a clue how to decide. I happened to glance to my left at the car pulling up next to me only to find myself mere inches from the smallest little red vehicle I'd ever seen being driven by a twelve year old boy. Another twelve year old boy sat in the passenger seat and, as I stared at them, the driver revved his engine (it sounded like an angry hornet in a jar) and quickly jutted his chin at me in what seemed to me to be a clear attempt at intimidation. The boy in the passenger seat just stared blankly at me - didn't even glance away when I caught his eyes with my own. I barked a laugh to keep from crying.

Finally, after several weeks and a brief consideration of cannibalism, we finally hit on the idea of hiring a cab driver to drive in front of us all the way to our hotel. Explaining this idea to the Italian cabbie required only a further six months.

Eventually, we pulled in front of the large former Russian embassy that was now our hotel, exhausted and full of sour hatred for the Eternal City. My father was there, waiting for us. Naturally, he was furious with me for not following him down the blockaded street.

And that reminded me of a particular detail of the whole ugly procession of the afternoon that had really been gnawing at me. Why had the blocked off street needed three carabinieri to guard it? Why, indeed, had it even need one? It had, after all, those big wooden sawhorse things. I asked Chiara and she screwed up her most quizzical expression and managed to twist it into one of derision smoothly - a feat managed, in my experience, only by Italians.

"Because otherwise," she began, staring at me like I was a rank imbecile, "otherwise, people would get out of their cars and move the barriers and drive down the street."

And this absolutely floored me, because I would have never even considered the idea of moving the road blocks. They could just as well have been something totally impassable, like a brick wall or a pit of lava or a strip of yellow tape that read 'do not cross.' I (and I imagine most Americans) see a road block and the message it imparts is crystal clear and invites no compromises:

"There is no longer a road here, you must go elsewhere."

But as much as it said something quaint and vaguely robotic me, it said something equally quaint and picaresque about Italians:

They actually had to position three police officers in front of two large wooden sawhorses blocking a street because, for an Italian, everything is just a puzzle to be solved or a game to be rigged. Imagine an entire civilization of schemers, wired on espresso and driven half batty by the inadequacy of their roads, and then imagine what that does to rush hour on a Friday.

My father, and Italy, it is not lost on me, has out Steve McQueened me.

At Least behind the wheel of a rented car in a foreign city.

My Father's Graven Image

Once, on visiting my parent's house, I found my mother working with some old boxes of photographs.

They were all from the early sixties - from the early days of my parent's relationship. In them, my mother is (I hesitate to say it) beautiful. She's thin and blonde and smiles like a sphinx with the head of Farrah Fawcet.

My father, on the other hand, is the dorkiest creature to ever pour himself into a pair of sideburns.

And what sideburns! They are like the eyebrows of a giant!

He looks like a contest winner who cut out enough UPCs from Boyslife Magazine to get to meet a real live girl. Actually, in this particular photo I'm remembering, he looks like the contest winner who won the chance to meet the girl, but really wanted the hovercraft made from a vaccum cleaner motor.

I laughed and laughed. I asked my father what kind of mickey he slipped her to get her to go out with him.

"What do you mean?" asked my father, in reply.

"I mean," said I, "Did you take a correspondence course in hypnotism or something? How on earth did you convince this girl to go out with you. Look at yourself!"

My father leaned over and looked at the photo.

"What sort of thing is that to say?" he asked me, his brow furrowed.

"C'mon," I said, widening my eyes and slumping my shoulders, "No way were you good looking enough to go out with a girl like this. What was Mom thinking?"

My father grew angry. Not smirk and roll your eyes and snort with derision angry, but actual, honest to god, hate you angry. He told me that was a terrible thing to say and that he didn't understand why I'd say something like that. He huffed off to the den to watch television.

He wouldn't speak to me for two days.

I wish to everything I hold dear that I had a scan of that photo to include here. Maybe one day I can pilfer it and upload it to this blog. Check back from time to time.

But all of this is just a way of imploring, through metaphor, any who should happen to read this blog to never, ever, explain to my father what a blog is, how to find one on the internet, or that his son has one in which he figures sporadically.

He would not understand.

My Father at Christmastide

He watches The Gilmore Girls. He Tivos The Hills. During the whole of Christmas afternoon he sat contentedly in front of the fire, watching lifetime original movies on his 50 inch TV screen while Tim and I stood nervously nearby, hoping to catch the first snore of his inevitable nap so that we could connect the Xbox and chainsaw some aliens.

He knows no sin greater than to serve salad at the same time as the main course. He has left a trail of bloodied and broken waiters and waitresses behind him in his never ending quest to rid the world of this most heinous of wrongs. Once he flatly refused to eat (or pay for) a large porterhouse steak that was brought to him whilst he was still eating his salad. He insisted, loudly, that the waitress must throw away the steak he had been brought and have another prepared for him to be ready after he had finished his lettuce. And woe be unto him who should suggest that he 'calm down' or that it is 'no big deal.' The road to disinheritance is paved with such blasphemies. At Red Lobster the other night (yes, I know), he turned heads when he almost launched into a scathing rebuke of our Croatian waiter for bringing the salads at the same time as out order of coconut shrimp. Only some fast conversational footwork to get him reminiscing about a particular black bean soup he used to get for lunch twenty years ago saved the evening.

While watching a football game on television, he saw a player who had just barely missed an interception clap his hands once, forcefully, in frustration. Apparently never having seen humans behave, my father insisted that someone explain to him why the player in question would clap about missing an interception. Was he happy? What's wrong with him? It was explained to my father that a clap of the type he witnessed was a common way to vent the feeling of 'almost, damn!' and that people did this all the time, ourselves included.

He refused to accept this. He insisted that he had never seen anyone do that ever and that we must be wrong.

But he works really hard to put together a nice Christmas every year. He puts up a ridiculously tall tree (mostly to satisfy my sister's arboreal penis envy) and is willing, bless his heart, to watch the same insipid films every single year just to soak it all in. And all he asks for in return is at least one gift which contains something black and leather.

Oh yeah, he seems to have some kind of poorly developed leather fetish, as well.

Hanga Roa: My Father versus Matt Lauer

Because my father is a walking menagerie of maniacal animals of the ridiculous variety, he has, it seems, an ongoing and bitter war with Matt Lauer of the Today Show.

It is a travel war.

I didn’t know about it until this past week, but apparently it has been in full bloom for some time, with casualties on both sides. It is an unconventional war, fought with frequent flyer miles and photo albums. Matt Lauer would seem to be winning.

Chiara and I flew down to Easter Island last Tuesday and my family took time out of their vacation in the Society Islands to meet us there. It’s a strange place, as mysterious and spooky as it is distant and hard to get to. It is home to a history unlike any other on earth and it is nearly impossible to photograph badly. All of this - at times - seemed entirely secondary to my father, so flushed was he that he had finally erased one of Matt Lauer’s stinging victories.

It seems Matt Lauer visited Easter Island as part of his ongoing “Where in the World is Matt Lauer” series for The Today Show. My father was always possessed of a keen interest in visiting the island himself, and was painfully stung when his travel nemesis beat him to the punch. When finally, last week, my father was able to even the score, he bragged of it to anyone who would listen.

As is his wont, my father told waiters, and Spanish speaking hotel staff, and tour guides, and family members. He told them that, though Matt Lauer had visited the island some two years prior, he had - he assured all of them with serious intonations - intended to come long before Matt Lauer had. It was only a coincidence - he would tell them - that Matt Lauer had gotten to it first.

We’d pause in front of some great stone moai, centuries-old and smashed on the turf, and he’d lean over conspiratorially and say: “When Matt Lauer was here, he got to stand right next to that one. Did you see him do that on the Today Show?”

I’d reply quietly that I have never seen the Today Show, that I am asleep at that hour, that I had never seen Matt Lauer actually being Matt Lauer. He’d continue on, “Should I go up there and stand next to it? You know, I would have beat Matt Lauer here if we’d come when I wanted to, but your mother . . . “

I’d just shake my head softly, stifling the sudden throaty noise that often precedes a laugh. My father would get that gleam in his eye and turn back to look at the moai.

“Now if I can just get to Antarctica before Matt Lauer does.”

Vancouver: I Cause an International Breakfast Incident

At breakfast one morning in Vancouver, I scanned the menu anxiously. When the waitress arrived to take our orders, I went last.

“I’ll have a cappuccino and the waffles,” I said.

“All right,” she said.

“And, do you have American bacon?”

“What?”

Now look: It’s Canada. They have Canadian bacon in Canada, no? It stands to reason that in Canada they are not going to call Canadian bacon ‘Canadian bacon’. Hell, I’ve ordered bacon in Britain before and received Canadian bacon. So I’m asking, you know? I mean, the menu just says “bacon”.

I mean, now I know they call that 'ham' or something. But at the time.

“American bacon?” I answered.

“What’s American bacon?” she asked.

“It’s just like Canadian bacon, only more arrogant and Iraq-invadey,” I said.

A good, healthy, tension-clearing laugh from all involved.

“You mean strip bacon?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure. Strip bacon.”

“Oh, okay. American bacon. huh.”

And everyone is looking at me with furrowed brows.

Well fuck them.

It is American-style bacon. It’s our thing. Our birthright, Goddamnit.

Inside the brain of every Canadian is a klaxon alarm that sounds whenever they hear the word "American." We’re Americans too! We’re Americans too! America is a continent, not a nation! it cries. But what are we supposed to call ourselves, United Statesians? I think she simply refused to grant us the adjective for our bacon out of spite. Strip bacon, indeed.

My father then tells me that he thinks I have insulted all Canadians because I said that American bacon was more arrogant, thus implying that Canadian bacon is some arrogant.

This is the kind of thing my father says at breakfasts.

I told him that I didn’t think so, that you could be more obnoxious than someone who was zero obnoxious just like I could have more coffee than Tim, who had none. My father grew hot under the collar and red in the face.

“Ridiculous!” he nearly yelled.

“No it isn’t, it’s perfectly reasonable to say you have more money than someone who has none money.”

“That’s idiotic. No one talks that way. If they did, no one would understand them.”

“Well, everyone here at this table understood.”

“I guess you think you’re a better lawyer than me, huh? A better drafter, is that it?”

“Apparently.”

“You’re an idiot, Jeff. A real idiot, you know that?”

“Right.”

Families are the best, amirite?

When the waitress arrived with my meal, she placed the plate in front of me and said “Your waffles with American bacon.”

“Mmm, awesome.” I said, “I can almost smell the county music.”

Canadians, by the way, really say “Eh” at the end of declaratory sentences.

I mean the accent is one thing. It’s normal to have an accent. have more accents. Accents complete me.

But peppering your speech with some sort of verbal hiccup like “eh" is preposterous.

So, you know, relax, Canada.

Cancun: A Difficult Dinner

Dinner last night began in the same way it so often does - with me feigning indignation for comedic effect.

My mother had ordered a bottle of pinot grigio for herself and, after receiving it and tasting it, declared that it was pretty good. My father asked to see the bottle and when he took it from my mother I leaned over Chiara to have a look at it myself.

The first thing I noticed was that it was not, strictly speaking, a pinot grigio at all, but rather a blend of chardonnay and pinot grapes. I slammed my fist down onto the table in mock disgust and cried out “A blend!? Mother, how could you!?”

I then asked my father where the wine was from. He read the back of the bottle and informed me it was from Vera Cruz. Again I slammed my fist down on the table, rattling the flatware.

“Vera Cruz!?” I shouted in faux consternation.

“What’s wrong with you?” my father asked me.

“Nothing,” I replied quietly. “I’m feigning indignation.”

“Why?”

“For comedic effect.”

Stare. Silence.

Later, while discussing the adoption of Children, Tim impressed upon me the importance of a child having a cool name.

“Like Kobe or LeBron?” I asked. “Yeah,” said Tim.

I offered to call an adopted son LeJeff or LeKobe. Somehow or other this led to a more earnest discussion of potential baby names. Jennifer volunteered that she and Tim had already selected baby names for their theoretical children. The top boy name? Finnegan.

I said I thought it was a terrible name with a great nickname: Finn.

My dad said it was a terrible name because it was Irish.

This, as you might have expected, was the screeching turntable of the evening and rather upset my sister. It also rather perplexed the rest of us.

We pursued the topic with abandon.

Turns out my father believes that an Irish name dooms a child to a life of prejudicial treatment because, and i quote:

“Everyone knows that the Irish are a bunch of drunks and criminals” and “No one would ever think an Irish name was anything but low-class.”

It should be noted, for the record, that mine is, of course, an (ethnically) Irish family. Indeed, my father's actual surname is O'Brien.

We tried to explain to my father (over Jennifer’s mild protestations) how dashedly pretentious and upper-crusty a name like Finnegan actually was, but he wouldn’t have it. Instead he insisted over and over again that we must be incredibly ignorant if we didn’t know what people thought about "the Irish."

Tim asked him if he still called it a paddy wagon.

You can guess how this all went over.

Later, my sister offered up the middle ground (and perfectly true) position that words and names change their meaning with time and use. She mentioned the etymological history of her own name ‘Jennifer’ and how it came originally from ‘Guinevere’ who, according to my sister, was a slut.

This really caught in my father’s craw for some reason.

“How was Guinevere a slut!?” he demanded in far too loud a voice.

“Uh, because she slept with someone who wasn’t her husband!” my sister replied, pitched over the table and pointing a fork at my father.

“A knight!” he replied, red in the face, bubbling with anger. “You can’t be a slut for sleeping with a knight of the Round Table!”

“Of course you can! Especially if you are married to King Arthur!”

Here I tossed in that maybe she felt neglected because he was always off somewhere with Merlin, playing cards and whatnot. Tim smirked and, looking down, stirred the food on his plate in ever-tighter circles.

From here things got progressively more ridiculous until, almost as if the weight of the conversation caused itself to collapse, the whole thing just fizzled away leaving little more than a smell of burnt ozone and a cloud of steam.

We ate more or less silently for the remainder of the meal.

Cancun: My Father's Jokes Go Unappreciated

At dinner last night, Tim and my father and I all ordered Margaritas.

I opted for the Cadillac with Don Julio reposado tequila. Those other two got the house.

Good luck explaining to them about the bottle of Pancho Villa-wouldn’t-piss-in-it tequila they ordered. Anyway.

The waiter brings the drinks: Pinot Grigio for my mother. Coke for my sister. Coke for Chiara. Then he places my drink in front of me and announces it (as it deserved):

“the Cadillac, Señor.”

When he goes to place my father’s leper of a margarita before him, my father chimes in loudly:

“Ford!”

The waiter pauses in mid-action, the watery concoction disguised as a margarita suspended mere inches from the tabletop. He looks at my father.

“Ford!” my father again cries out, beaming at the poor waiter.

We all sit still as statues, confused or petrified; no one has the foggiest idea what we should be doing.

“Chevy!” my father yells.

By now, people at other tables - human resource managers in town for conventions, families of Iowans just vomited forth from cruise ships, chain-smoking New Yorkers happy to have someone other than the waitstaff to sneer at - are all pausing in their conversations, forks arrested halfway to mouths, to stare at our table.

And still the waiter holds that drink above the table in front of my father, perplexed.

And still my father beams his toothy smile.

“Cadillac.” says my father, gesturing at my margarita.

“Chevy! Ford!” he exclaims, pointing at his, still hovering before him in the waiter's hand.

With a sigh of either final comprehension or relief, the waiter chuckles briefly if unconvincingly and quietly and places the margarita in front of my father and then hands the other to Tim.

I take a deep breath and resolve to eat quickly.

The Jennifer Dispatches: My Father versus Cheese and Bread

My sister relates a story of my father on Superbowl Sunday:

Halftime. The family sits around a coffee table laden with snackfoods and appetizers. My father voices a complaint:

“Next time, we should really make some plans for dinner and not just snack. We should have some protein for dinner. I’m tired of having Cheese and Bread all the time. We should have gotten those ribs at the supermarket.”

My sister responds: “We weren’t going to just snack for dinner. Mom ordered a pizza.”

“More Cheese and Bread! Why would I want more Cheese and Bread?!” cries my father.

“Well then why don’t you go to the supermarket and buy those ribs?” asks my sister, foolishly.

“I don’t want to go all the way out to the store to buy the ribs! I just don’t want to eat any more Cheese and Bread! All we ever eat is Cheese and Bread since you came here! This must be your doing!”

“Are you talking about the hors d’oeuvres? There isn’t even that much Cheese and Bread,” says my sister.

This is the last straw apparently. My father leaps from the sofa and hunches himself over the coffee table. Extending one of his stubby index fingers he points violently at a bowl of French onion dip and its companion plate of Ruffles brand potato chips.

“Cheese and Bread!” he exclaims

He jabs his finger at a pate.

“Cheese and Bread!”

He, predictably, stabs his thick digit into the wedge of jarlsberg.

“Cheese and Bread!!”

Even the bowl of sweet pickles is not immune from his wrath.

“Cheese and Bread!”

He punches with his finger at a bowl of Cheetos. He’s almost perspiring with the force of his hate.

“Cheese and Bread!!”

The twin bowl, filled with Fritos.

“Corn Chips! Just like Pizza!!”

My sister, always the glutton for paternal punishment, interrupts my father’s reverie of rage.

“How are corn chips just like pizza?” she asks.

“Shut up!” responds my father, “I’m speaking to your mother!”

My sister announces that she is going to go work on her art history paper. She goes to her room and does so. Later, when the pizza arrives, she leaves her room to find my father, perched stone-faced and alone at the dining room table eating the enormous porterhouse steak and gargantuan baked potato that my mother prepared for him.

My sister went into the living room and finished the game - and the pizza - with my mother.

Park City: My Father Explains a T-shirt

On Main Street last night, while taking an after dinner stroll, my father pulled Chiara and I over to a shop window and directed us to look inside. He pointed out a t-shirt on a mannequin and read its slogan to us with glee:

“Bike Naked . . . Show Off Your Rear Suspension”

I rolled my eyes and moved on up the street. Chiara (perhaps she was in shock) just stared at the shirt in the window while my father jostled her lightly, a silly grin playing around his John Ashcroft head.

“Get it? Get it?”

Chiara raised her delicate eyebrows and shrugged.

“You know bicycles have rear suspension?” My father went on, smirking. Chiara nodded and assented that she did, though I think she had no idea what he had asked her.

“And so, get it? ‘Bike Naked. Show Off Your Rear Suspension’?”

Chiara: “I theenk so.”

My Father: “Hahaha! That’s really clever. Rear suspension. Don’t you think that’s clever, Jeff?”

Me, from up the street, not looking: “Clever.”

He then nudged Chiara again and repeated himself.

“I think that’s really clever. Show Off Your Rear Suspension. You want a shirt like that, Jeff?”

“No.” I said, my eyes clinging by their fingernails to stay inside my head.

But I should have said ‘yes’ you will tell me.

You’re right, of course.

Park City: My Father and the Steak Diane

One of the things you do when visiting the family for the Christmas holiday is to bring your family out into public so that you can feel embarrassed not just at home, but in a variety of places.

While dining the other night at a restaurant in Park City, my father spotted Steak Diane on the menu. Like a bite of Proust’s madeleine, this sent him into a kind of reverie.

“It was while your mother and I were living in Northridge,” it began.

“We were driving to Sequoia or somewhere. Anyway, we were near Modesto or Fresno and we were hungry.”

“We were driving through this small town at night, and on either side of us there were scores of car dealerships - and I mean fancy car dealerships - Lincoln, Cadillac, Oldsmobile . . .”

(Chuckles from my sister and I. My father oblivious.)

“We followed the road until we found a little restaurant and stopped for dinner. We both ordered the Steak Diane. Maybe that was the first time I ever had it. The waiter brought it to the table on a cart and it was served flambé. He rolled up the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket and cut our steak right there at the table. It was decadent and it was just delicious. I always remember that.”

Later, after Tim and Chiara had been convinced (how?) by this story to order the Steak Diane, my father lamented the inferiority of the Steak Diane served to them - which did not come flambé.

“This just isn’t Steak Diane,” he said with a shake of his head.

Reflections on Seeing a Photograph of My Father

My father has the largest calves I have ever seen on a man of his hair coloring. My calves are weak and svelte and can barely manage to propel me up stairs. I often yearn for an ottoman while sitting in chairs. I am the diminution of a man who watches Sci-Fi channel original movies and gives awkward reminiscences about meals he has eaten to waiters. My father has no opposable thumbs. He cannot reach his thumb to touch his little finger. To touch the other fingers causes him physical discomfort. I had a long argument with him once over the process through which tea is accomplished. He insisted that it was not composed of particulates of leaves, but rather was created through some alchemy of hot water and plant extracts. He also added, almost as an ad hominem, that the words ‘dissolve’ and ‘melt’ had identical meanings when applied to sugar in coffee. I could have spit. I could have pulled off my own head like a tick. But the girls called me from the pool and insisted I swim. My father read an article from a food magazine to his travel magazine.