Southern France Part III - Uzès

After the potluck meal we got back in the car. I happened to mention to Sophie that the ride from Nimes had made me a little woozy; dad found it necessary to follow up with a story about me vomiting on a Swiss postal bus at six months old. We drove down another set of winding roads to Uzès, to Sophie and Brayton´s home that dates back to 1550. This house is twice as old as America, I thought as I navigated the stone spiral staircase that led to the guest room. It seemed that everything around me could be calculated in terms of how much older it was than the country I live in. We visited the Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct built around 19b.c., and olive trees that were 1100 years old. These trees are five times older than America, I thought as I looked at them.

Dad and I dropped off our luggage and walked through the cobblestone streets of the hillside town while Sophie cooked the first of several delicious meals - in the three days we spent in Uzès I don´t think we had a meal that didn´t include local wine and cheese. Dad and I walked past The Duchy of Uzès, where the red and yellow Catalan flag flapped in the wind, and I heard the sounds of a children´s choir practicing from a building somewhere nearby. The dramatic sounds of a pipe organ mixed with the children´s voices, and as they practiced it began to sound oddly familiar. I stood in my tracks for a minute listening, and then it came to me - through their angelic voices I made out the tune and the words to Beat It. My eyes widened, my jaw dropped and I rummaged through my purse looking for my audio recorder, this was one sound I wanted to remember forever. I quickly set it to record, and stood underneath the window where the music was coming from with my arm in the air as people walked past me with quizzical expressions. Unfortunately, in my hurried state I´d jammed the microphone jack into the headset plug, so I´ll just have to remember that incongruous meeting of medievel and Michael Jackson in my mind for the rest of my life.

To say that Sophie and Brayton were good hosts is an understatement; somehow they unlocked the secret to dad´s mannerisms, not just tolerating him but even managing to direct him at times: when dad interrupted me mid-sentence to announce that he´d found a store up the street that sold lavender sachets, Brayton stopped the conversation and pointed it out; when dad poured the last of a bottle of wine into his own glass that Sophie had just reached for, Brayton stopped the conversation and pointed it out; and when dad approached the proprieter of a vinyard to ask for a tasting while another customer was still being helped, Brayton stopped the conversation and pointed it out. I have discovered the secret to visiting dad, and it is to bring Brayton along with me. Perhaps dad has respect for Brayton because they are both mathematicians, or perhaps its the novelty of getting a reaction from someone who hasn´t been worn down from years of exposure to dad. Sophie´s kind manner and unending patience added a dimension of calm and tolerance to the experience.

The rare moments when dad wasn´t talking it was as if his voice were lodged in my head, I was unable to think of any normal topics of conversation, and remained silent for fear that I´d start talking about the history of dental floss or the particulars of my gastro-intestinal system. He remained strangely silent at the Haribo factory museum, where displays of candy, antique advertisements and Matthew Barney-esque videos of sugar being melted and poured into molds kept me and about three hundred kids enthralled. Dad claimed no knowledge of the brand, though I ate it constantly as a kid, and still indulge in the odd packet of gummy bears or raspberries. Dad´s view of sugar, unless its part of a rarified chocolate truffle, is rather preachy. He held back on paying entry to the museum, prompting Sophie to pay for all of us, and as I spent all of €9 on a gigantic box of candy and a refrigerator magnet, he hovered over the cashier and pronounced: "wow, that´s a lot of money for all that crap." His thriftiness didn´t stop at the Haribo museum, at The Medieval Garden he was willing to pay the €4 entry fee, but didn´t want to part with an extra €1.10 to walk to the top of the tower.

After three days together we parted ways at the Nimes train station; dad was taking a train back to Geneva, and I was headed south to Barcelona. There were cringe-inducing moments, to be sure - while walking to the Pont du Gard, dad asked if we could wait for him so he could step into a grove of olive trees to "do what men do", and his perennial inability to pass by a small child without waving and saying "hi", but I can´t think of the last time a visit with dad went this smoothly, and I have Sophie and Brayton to thank for it.

Southern France Part II - Languedoc-Rousillon

I went to breakfast at 7am, as soon as the dining room opened, to find dad already there in his running gear, his pale legs poking out from under a breakfast table like matchstick potatoes. His glasses lay on the table and he was absorbed in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. As I approached the table he said "bonjour" and then his entire body spasmed for a moment as if he´d been struck by lightning.

"I didn´t see that it was you!" he said, returning the glasses to his face, and then, as if picking up on a conversation thread from a previous discussion: "By my calculations, we´re number four and five in here for breakfast," and began a discouse on the wisdom of choosing hotels that cater to the business traveler on weekends, because that´s when the rates are cheapest. "I hate to tell you what I paid for our rooms," he said conspiratorially, his index finger resting on his lower lip. I stood up to get some orange juice and he stopped mid-sentence, continuing right where he left off when I sat down as if I´d hit a pause button on him when I stood from the table, "Eighty-Nine Euros." Two more patrons arrived, prompting dad to tell me that the breakfast count was now up to 7. Some mornings I have patience for his line of thinking, other mornings its like having breakfast with Rain Man. I finished my coffee and told him I needed to make a phone call. "Hold it, you´re not calling from the room are you?" he called after me.

"No dad, I have a calling card."

I walked outside and found a glass walled phone booth on a street corner. Nothing good ever happens in glass walled phone booths. At least once in every spy movie an innocent bystander makes a phone call from one, only to be mistaken by a hit man and killed in a drive-by shooting. I looked up and down the street for any suspicious looking vehicles before walking in. It was midnight in Chicago, and I spoke to M as tiny dogs on leashes stuck their noses underneath the glass and sniffed me as they passed by.

Sophie and Brayton, friends from Chicago who own a home in Uzes, picked us up at the hotel. We drove along a narrow, winding two-way road that was perilously close to a deep ditch that ran next to it, and looked like it barely accomodated a single car. I gripped the door handle of the passenger side seat the whole way, though I´m not sure what use it would have done me if we´d tipped over into the ditch or crashed into an oncoming vehicle. Our first stop was at the Languedoc-Roussilon Quaker meeting, housed in a building that dates back to the 1800´s and is surrounded by olive trees that get pressed into oil every year at harvest time. We were greeted by a woman who asked where dad and I were from; dad said we were from planet earth, I rolled my eyes and didn´t care who saw it.

I was glad for the silence, I haven´t attended Quaker meeting regularly in years, but I was tired and it guaranteed me one precious hour of being in the presence of dad minus his incessant patter. I´m not sure I´ve ever seen dad quiet for that long. There were 14 of us present, I was the youngest by at least 20 years. At the rise of meeting everyone introduced themselves; dad presented himself by saying he was born in a town that had not one but two periodic elements named after it - Berkelinium and Californium. I said I was visiting from Chicago and left it at that.

An outdoor pot-luck lunch followed with oysters on the half shell, wine, and other delectable treats that I´ve never seen at any other Quaker pot-luck meal. I watched as the aging Quakers around me absorbed dad´s eccentricities like wine to sponge cake, and realized that I´d hit the jackpot - Quakers always tolerate eccentricities, there are at least five eccentrics in every Quaker meeting I´ve ever been to, why hadn´t I thought of this years ago? I relaxed at the table, absorbing the late afternoon sunshine and the pleasant buzz brought on by wine from local vineyards, confident in the knowledge that I was in good hands.

Uncle Lloyd -or- How I Met The Funky Drummer

A couple weeks ago, M and I drove north to Madison to visit my aunt Mary and uncle Lloyd. My uncle had just started dialysis treatments, and we hadn't seen either of them in about six years so I figured a visit was overdue. I didn't know my uncles when I was growing up; my family lived in Switzerland when I was small, my uncles lived in Maine and Wisconsin, and neither of them ever visited us. The only childhood memory I have of either of them was the year my uncle Stuart sent us a huge package of American candy for the holidays. I was overwhelmed - while there was no shortage of chocolate where we lived, I had never seen such a cache of sugary bliss: candy corn, Tootsie Rolls, Razzles, Pop Rocks... it made quite an impression on me, and the irony that my uncle Stuart was a dentist never dawned on me. The night after my mother told me we'd be moving back to America I had a dream about all the candy that I would find upon our return; I wasn't disappointed.

Dad still lives in Switzerland, and he visits me from time to time. Not long after I moved to Chicago he visited me and we took an Amtrak train up to Milwaukee - halfway between Chicago and Madison, to meet Lloyd and Mary for lunch. On the train ride dad read a copy of the Wall Street Journal, folding it in thirds when he was done and holding it out into the aisle with an outstretched hand to the passengers seated across the aisle. The two men seated across from us were in mid conversation when one of them noticed dad's unsolicited offering. "This is for you," he said, "I'm finished with it." Amazingly, they accepted his gift. The train driver made periodic announcements, telling us about points of interest along the way. Dad found this unbearably funny, he laughed loudly and repeated the announcements as they were being made.

Dad only has one volume on his laugh - loud. It starts with an outburst, an uncontrollable exhale of air, and quickly devolves into a full body, rhythmic shaking with an accompanying noise that's similar to a saw moving back and forth on a 2 x 4, while his eyes grow wide and glisten with manic hilarity. It's a snakebite that has no antidote; once dad starts laughing you just have to let it run its course. I can't tell you how many times I've missed movie dialogue because of dad's laughing, and while I'd like to say that I inherited none of this, every once in a while something tickles my funny bone so hard that I find myself laughing until I literally weep. Dad's laugh attracted the attention of the woman seated in front of us, and she turned around so that her knees were on the back of her seat and her hands on the headrest. She was traveling alone and looked to be somewhere in her sixties, but carried herself like a seven-year old. "You sound like fun," she said to dad. I could barely handle the embarrassment of being in public with the challenging sixty-year old that I happened to be related to, let alone one who was just along for the ride. I gave her what must have been my deadliest stare ever because we made eye contact and she promptly turned around in her seat and stayed put for the remainder of the journey.

In Milwaukee we had lunch with Lloyd and Mary at a brauhaus, and during the course of our conversation dad asked Lloyd how his diabetes was going. This was the first I'd ever heard of it. "There's diabetes in our family?" I asked dad, my pulse racing, "why didn't you ever tell me this? For years I've been going to doctors and handing them blank forms that ask for check marks next to diseases that run in my family because I don't know of any!" Dad mumbled something about it being a "mild diabetes" that I shouldn't worry about. Our waitress cleared the plates and dad asked her if they served espresso. "No," she said flatly, "we just have coffee."
"Dad," I hissed once the waitress had left the table, "we're in Milwaukee, not Florence."

I left that lunch wondering: if there's diabetes in my family and I never knew about it, what else didn't I know? I began an email correspondence with Lloyd and Mary, and visited them several times in Madison. My aunt - a retired librarian, had cataloged every piece of information about the Cohen family that existed on paper, and arranged them in scrapbooks that lined an entire bookshelf. I stayed up until three in the morning the first night I stayed at their house, poring over news clippings about my grandmother, who died in 1957 and was a concert pianist; my grandfather, who died in 1962 and was a chemist; and childhood photographs of my dad and his two brothers: photos of them dressed in cub scout uniforms, wearing mortarboards and gowns at graduations, and posing with cars and girlfriends. It was at once engrossing and alienating - if I was a Cohen, then why hadn't I been indoctrinated in the family history years ago? What wasn't in the scrapbooks I asked my uncle about. I learned more about my family in one weekend at their house than I had ever learned from dad.

When we weren't busy catching up on family history, we had fun. Lloyd is a retired car salesman, and a classic car enthusiast. He had a cherry red 1957 Thunderbird that he kept in a garage all winter, and took for joy rides in the summer. He even has a mailbox shaped like a Thunderbird, with plastic windows that fog up with condensation in the morning. He took us for rides in the T-bird, one at a time since its a two-seater. We visited for the fourth of July and watched as choreographed music played in time with exploding fireworks at an annual event called Rhythm & Booms; we walked up and down State Street, Madison's shopping district; and Lloyd treated us to his famous eggs Benedict, and homemade gazpacho made with tomatoes and cucumbers from his garden.

My dad and both his brothers came to our wedding, and we saw Lloyd and Mary in Chicago once about a year afterward, but then somehow the fragile ties that we'd built began to erode. One year passed, and then five more without either of us making the effort to visit, until Lloyd sent an email saying he was scheduled to begin dialysis, and I picked up the phone.

We borrowed my mother in-law's Mini for the journey, and I found a mummified banana in the passenger side door that I'd left there the last time we borrowed her car - in June. It was completely shriveled and black, the moisture having completely escaped, and had an unused Band-Aid stuck to it. The ride to Madison was familiar; we drove up through Rockford and crossed the state line into Wisconsin, passing through Janesville and driving up Highway 14-18, known as The Beltline, past streets with names like Old Sauk, Rim Rock, and Fish Hatchery Road, until we pulled into my aunt and uncle's driveway.

Lloyd greeted us outside, and the first thing we noticed was that he'd slimmed down. He's been heavy his whole life, and had dropped 40 pounds in order to improve his health and qualify for a kidney transplant. He was drawn to the Mini, and asked M several questions about it before we entered the house.

New floors had been installed since our last visit, and Lloyd had bought himself a new, large screen digital TV as a consolation prize since his travel options were now severely limited - his dialysis schedule is three sessions per week, three and a half hours per session. He'd also adopted a friendly orange tabby cat named Fernando who's about two years old. Fernando was the name given to him by the shelter that Lloyd and Mary found him in, and they kept it because Mary has a great love of all things Spanish.

Lloyd served us homemade gazpacho for lunch and got us up to date on his condition, telling us everything there was to know about dialysis. Lloyd can talk for as long as you let him, a trait that he shares with his brothers and that served him well as a car salesman. The morning after our arrival a couple Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door, and he out-talked them. Lloyd's condition did nothing to dampen his spirits or his sense of humor; at a trip to Copps, the local grocery store, we walked through an aisle of sugary treats. "Do you want some of these?" He asked, pointing to a bag of mini-donuts dusted in powdered sugar. "I can't have them, but you can."
"No thanks," I said.
"Are you sure?" He asked, "I really get a kick out of buying them for other people."

We accompanied Lloyd and Mary to the dialysis center, driving along a stretch of road that was under construction and hadn't been repaved yet; it felt like we were driving on square tires. A woman wearing a t-shirt with the word: Single...ish stood at the front door of the dialysis center. Once inside, Mary, M and I sat in a waiting area while Lloyd got hooked up to the dialysis machine. An aide pushed a woman in a wheelchair to the seating area, she had a beehive hairdo and a cone of soft serve ice cream, which I'm guessing was a reward for having undergone treatment. I flipped through a copy of the dialysis center's newsletter and tried not to get anxious. Lloyd had explained everything, but something about being there made my pulse rise; we were surrounded by people with failing organs, and it made me nervous.

"Lloyd sits in the same chair every time," Mary said, "and the man next to him is a famous drummer, maybe you know him - his name is Clyde Stubblefield." M's eyes popped and he leaned forward in his chair.
"Clyde Stubblefied?" he repeated.
"You know of him?" Mary asked.
"Are you kidding? He's the one who invented boom-boom siss, boom-siss," M said, holding his arms out and playing air-drums as he sounded out the beat to Funky Drummer.
"Oh," Mary said. "He lives in Madison, and he still does a show every Monday night."

We walked into the treatment area, where Lloyd sat reclining in a chair. He was attached to a machine the size of a refrigerator via two tubes in his right arm - one taking his blood out, the other pumping it back in. "This is my kidney," he said, pointing to the machine. I could see his blood being filtered behind a circular glass window, like laundry in a front-loading machine. A curtain separated him from the other patients, creating a semblance of privacy. "I've got everything I need," he said, "right here's a TV and headphones," he said, pointing to a TV bolted to his chair. "And right next to me is Clyde Stubblefield," he said, lowering his voice, "he's world famous."
"Yes Lloyd," Mary said, "I told them."

On the other side of the curtain Clyde Stubblefield was being attended to by a nurse.
"Can I get you anything else?" She asked him.
"Just some eggs, grits and bacon," he joked. The nurse returned to her desk and Clyde put his headphones on, and turned on the TV attached to his chair.
"Hey Clyde," Lloyd said - loudly, since he couldn't see around the curtain. When Clyde didn't respond he called for him again, and then a third time.
"Clyde," the nurse on duty finally said to him, "Lloyd is talking to you." Clyde removed his headphones and asked: "Yes Lloyd?"
"Clyde, this is my niece and her husband, they're visiting from Chicago," Lloyd said, as M and I sheepishly waved and smiled from Lloyd's cubicle. "They know who you are," he added. M and I continued to smile, our eyes darting from the floor to Clyde and then back again.

Back at the house, Lloyd said he'd bring Clyde a set of drumsticks to sign for us.

New York, Part II - Dad

After washing up in Jorge's tiny shower, I pulled a towel off its rack without even fully extending my arm from where I stood in the tub. Raising my left arm to apply deodorant I banged my hand against the shower curtain rod. As we readied ourselves to leave the apartment, dad called my cell phone to confirm our plans to meet in Chinatown for dim sum. These were well made plans; dad had sent several emails to me over the past weeks confirming and re-confirming. We had tentative plans to go to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum afterwards, and I set my phone down for a moment while I went to find the paper where I’d written the museum’s address. When I picked the phone back up, dad was in full soliloquy mode; he’d been talking the entire time that I’d been looking for my piece of paper. It took me five tries before I could break in to the conversation.
“The Teneme… the Teneme…. the Teneme…. the Teneme…. The Tenement Museum is on Orchard Street,” I finally managed, “we won’t be far from there.”

We took the 1 train back to 34th street to drop off our luggage with Jorge before heading to Chinatown. A little girl with large brown eyes and long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail sat across from us on the train, her mighty cheeks drooping downwards. She fidgeted with a Metro card as her legs dangled six inches above the floor, her eyes meeting my gaze occasionally. I smiled at her, and she regarded me with a serious expression. She got off the train with her mother at 96th street.

The journey to Jorge’s office was rife with repeat experiences from the night before - the train stopped at 125th street, which was the stop before Grand Central on the Metro-North train from New Haven; we got off at 34th street, where M and I had met up the previous evening; and the same man who’d approached me with an empty Dunkin’ Donuts cup stood in almost the exact same spot as I’d first seen him, this time standing behind a card table set up for donations to something called the United Homeless Organization.

We found Jorge’s office building on 7th Avenue, which was staffed by a doorman who bore a striking resemblance to the actor Bruno Kirby and wore a bright blue jacket and black tie. In the elevator a sign reading “inspection certificate inside the super’s office” was engraved into a plaque on the elevator wall, and on the second floor Jorge greeted us wearing a bandanna that made him look like a gypsy. We dropped off our bags, and headed back out to the street. This part of 7th Avenue is known as “fashion avenue” due to its proximity to the garment district, and thin young models were everywhere. Two tall women in leather pants shook hands in front of us, then separated like parting waters as we passed between them. A few yards further, another tall, thin woman wearing small black shorts walked ahead of us.

Back on the 1 train, we listened to the garbled MTA operator announcements, which unlike the prerecorded announcements in Chicago, were live. At Times Square we transferred to the R train, and walked past a man seated on an upturned crate flipping through pages of a book, a sign reading “New York Times published poet" propped up against a stack of books in front of him.

We switched again for the B train, and exited at Grand. A fierce transsexual in white platform sandals stared at me as I got off the train, her face heavily painted.

On our way to the restaurant a woman’s voice behind us yelled:
“Jesus Christ, who do you think you are, King Tut?” Ahead of us, a man stepped close to another pedestrian and elbowed him gently. The man who’d been elbowed turned around and said:
“What - are you trying to run into me? I could take you.” Then they smiled at each other and shook hands.

When we surfaced from the subway it was 12:05, but somehow it took half an hour to find the restaurant. Dad doesn’t have a cell phone, so we just kept trudging along. I had visions of him standing on a street corner trying to pick us out of a crowd, saying over and over to whoever would listen:
“I called her this morning, I told her I’d made reservations for noon.”

“It took a long time to get here from the B train,” I managed to get out in the midst of a coughing fit once we found the restaurant and spotted dad's diminutive figure. I got a cough on Canal Street, and brought it with me all over New York and up to Boston the following week. Dad stands at five feet eight inches tall, and weighs no more than a hundred and thirty five pounds. He wears glasses, has a prominent nose, and has kept his facial hair in sideburns for as long as I can remember. There are pictures of him from the ‘70s when they grew to historic proportions, reaching a thickness of over an inch. They have become more subdued and greyer with time, and have turned white at his chin.

I needn’t have worried about him waiting for so long, dad had settled into a quiet corner of the restaurant, and being a Monday it wasn’t busy. He’d ordered a bottle of red wine, and began serving it to us as rounds of dim sum made their way to our table.
“Where are you coming from,” dad asked.
“A hundred and forty third street,” I said.
“Jesus Christ!” Dad exclaimed, “you could get raped, robbed, and murdered at high noon up there”, his voice rising on the word “noon”.

The food was delicious. The few times I've gone for dim sum the experience has been a heavily greased one, but I have to hand it to dad - he found a great spot. He's a foodie, and carries a red Michelin guide (which he calls "the geed meesh" after the French) wherever he goes. My stress dissipated as we ate, and I began to genuinely enjoy myself in dad's company.

When the bill came, M held a handful of small bills under the table as my dad worked out the tip. I motioned for him to put his money away.
“I’ll explain later,” he whispered. Our server took the credit card slip from my dad, and returned moments later, saying:
“Excuse me, sir,” and pointing to the tip line on the receipt. A three dollar tip had been left on a fifty nine dollar bill.
“Oh dad, that’s a terrible tip!” I cried, “you have to leave more, leave like... twelve dollars.” Dad pled ignorance, saying he’d been so distracted by our conversation that he’d miscalculated. He made the correction, and then apropos of nothing, began singing a 1950's era Tom Lehrer song:
“Oh the black folks hate the white folks, and the white folks hate the black folks, and the black folks hate the white folks, and everybody hates the Jews.”
At the next table a man in red spectacles and a grey ponytail looked over at us and made eye contact with me, I held his gaze.

We gathered our things, dad placing his signature blue beret on his head and grabbing his Michelin guide, and we headed outside in search of Little Italy for coffee and dessert. Dad overheard M and I discussing the fact that we needed to figure out which direction Bowery Street was in. We were halfway across a busy intersection when he approached a Chinese woman who was walking toward us, raised his finger in the air, and said:
“Bowery?” She continued on without so much as looking at him. He repeated this one word question, without providing any context around it, until we happened upon Bowery on our own. We stumbled upon Ferrara’s, where we indulged in espresso, a chocolate cannoli, and a sfogliatella.
“I think we're near Umberto's Clam House, where Crazy Joe Gallo got whacked,” dad said.
"Maybe you want to keep that to yourself dad," I said. When we left, he made a point of asking the proprietor if Umberto's was in fact the site of the Gallo murder while M and I waited for him outside.

At the Tenement Museum dad struck up a conversation with a woman behind us as we stood in line for tickets.
“This woman wants one ticket for the next tour!” he exclaimed loudly, and I whirled around, touched my hand to his shoulder, and shushed him. He shushed me back with a manic look on his face, and I left the building, the limits of my patience having been reached. M followed me, and we sat on a bench outside.
“I’m going to say something to him,” I said.
“Okay, but just calm down,”
“I’m not going to yell, I just need to say something because I can’t take any more of this.” Typically my limit with dad is about three hours; we’d made it to one hour and forty five minutes.
“Dad,” I said to him when he emerged, “I was having a nice time with you, and I want to continue to have a nice time with you, but it really embarrasses me when you talk to strangers, so I’m asking you to please just turn it down a notch,” Dad mumbled incessantly throughout my speech, saying:
“Yeeeeah, ooookaaaay, yeeeeeah, embarrassing yeeeeaah, oooookay, Iiiiiiiiii turn it down a notch.”
I wasn’t finished.
“It’s like babysitting,” I continued, “for a seventy year old.” The three of us were quiet for a moment while my catharsis passed, and then I said, more quietly: “ I just wanted to clear the air.”

The next tour at the museum wasn’t for another hour, and we had to get back to Jorge’s office before 7 p.m. to pick up our things. We decided to head to the west village to shop, and perhaps find a GAP store for M to exchange the pants and button down shirt I’d bought him the day before in Times Square. M is extraordinarily particular about his clothing, and I’d picked a shirt that was “too preppy”, and pants that didn’t match his shoes. We located a subway entrance, swiped our Metro cards through the electronic card readers, and walked through the turnstile.
“Where’s your dad?” M asked, and I turned around. He was nowhere to be seen. I stood with my arms extended outwards from my body, my mouth hanging open, and my brow furrowed for a long moment.
“Could he have walked down to the platform already?” I wondered aloud, “is he that fast?” We walked down to the platform and looked for him in vain, then walked back up to the turnstiles. We waited a moment and descended the stairs again.
“There he is, he’s on the other side of the tracks,“ M said, and I looked where he pointed. It took a moment for me see his beret-hatted form walking in quick, short strides on the opposite platform.
“DAD!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
“You can’t call him dad,” M said, “you have to use his name!”
“BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!” I screamed, but he continued on his trajectory. “BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!” I screamed again, with M accompanying me. We screamed his name a third time before he finally stopped, his body startled into recognition of his name as if from a dream. He raised his hand and waved.
“Hiya,” he said, and made his way to the staircase connecting the uptown and downtown trains.
“Where did you go?” I asked when he rejoined us, my adrenaline subsiding.
“Oh, I have to go to a station agent to get my senior citizen’s discount,” he began, “and only certain subway entrances have the personnel who let you pay the senior fare, and I have to show my ID…” He paid for each subway fare individually instead of buying a pre-loaded card, and did this each time he rode the subway.

We exited at West 4th Street, and found a GAP. M picked out some clothes and tried them on in the dressing room while dad deconstructed a display made from a jacket and button down shirt, and held a jacket sleeve over his arm for comparison. M made the exchanges that he wanted, and we headed out of the store, M’s goal of finding wearable clothes having been accomplished.
“What do you want to do now?”, dad asked.
“I don’t know, how about we explore the West Village?” I suggested. We walked for three minutes when M became suddenly incapacitated by a piece of debris that had flown into his eye. I handed him my compact mirror, but he was unable to locate or dislodge the debris. I walked into a Gristede’s food store and paid eight dollars for a bottle of Visine, which my dad pronounced “vee seen.”
“Maybe you should go back to where your headquarters and lie down,” dad suggested.
“I’ll be fine, I just need to put some drops in my eye,” M said.
“Yeah…” dad trailed off. “I know when these things happen to me it’s good to just go back home and lie down.”
“He’ll be fine,” I said. M sat on top of a newspaper vending machine by the sidewalk, tilted his head back, and began administering drops into his eyes.
“Once or twice a year I get an eyelid that flips up, completely,” dad said, his voice rising at the word “completely”. “Ooof,” he said, his face pinching into an expression of pain. “Yeah, what you want to do now is just go lie down”.
“I don’t need to lie down!” M said sharply from his perch, his left hand covering his eye, his right arm extended outwards with the palm facing up, and I suddenly laughed at the absurdity of the situation. M joined in the laughter, but dad stood firm.

We had to collect our bags from Jorge before moving on to Brooklyn where we had dinner plans with my friend Gabrielle, so we decided to call it an afternoon.
“Well, it was short but sweet,” dad said to me as we parted ways underground before M and I headed back to 34th street.
“What do you mean?” I asked, “you’re here ‘till Wednesday, right?”
“There’s simply no time!” Dad said, his voice rising, “tomorrow I’m going to MOMA, and Wednesday I have lunch plans with Richard.” I froze, dumbfounded.
“Um…. okay,” I finally managed, and watched as he toddled off to the other side of the subway platform. He turned briefly before disappearing and waved. I waved back.