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My dad is sort of known in the community by some people, so people often introduce me by saying, "This is Eliza. Her dad is ____." And people's eyes light up and they think that's cool. He has a pretty serious day job, but a wild and unique "fun" job, and people get a very big bang out of it. (Not as big a bang as he gets out of it, though.) He also has another job that he's started in the past few years and he won't take a salary for it because he just wants to do it for the sake of doing it. People also know and love him for that job. For as long as I can remember, my dad's taken really good care of himself. He was a jogger and then a swimmer and now he walks around the neighborhood and attends regular yoga classes. When the hardest yoga teacher left the yoga center, he followed her to her new classes. He calls her the yoga nazi. Under no circumstances will he skip a day of exercise. He eats really reasonably in a way that no one else in my family has ever been able to master. His favorite food is roasted peanuts, which he roasts at home by the billions and keeps in ziploc bags. He also eats a lot of those little cottage cheese and jam snack packs and a lot of Zone bars, which he fills a suitcase with to bring on vacation. His favorite drink is coffee -- with chicory, black, and always from the same coffee shop. He always stops and buys a big piece of bubble gum from those little machines that take quarters and sell the big balls of gum in different colors. He likes to put olive oil on things. He also puts peanuts and olives in his diet coke. He orders food in restaurants like Sally does, and he always leaves a really big tip. He is in love with Civita. My dad once appeared on the Oprah show. He was also in a movie that he still gets tiny residuals checks from every month. My dad is listed in the IMDb. My dad always took us to the beach for vacation. He loved to swim laps in the pool. In the past few years, he's really gotten into international travel for the first time. He and my mom have been to Taiwan and France and Italy. They keep going back to Italy, and they call me from every trip, drunk and laughing hysterically. It makes me very happy. (They don't ever get drunk in real life.) Soon, they're going to Spain, but of course they are also going back to Rome. My dad was a very "you're going to poke your eye out" and "never dive into water if you can't see the bottom" and "you're going to break your neck" kind of dad. I am very much this way now as well. I know it's just because he loved us and didn't want us to do anything stupid. He never let us have a pool or a trampoline because then the neighborhood kids could come into our backyard and drown or break their necks. And sue us. He never let us get a dog because he did not want a fifth child. My dad understood how much work dogs are; I did not and was heartbroken about this a lot. He let us have a cat though, or two sometimes, and he always really liked them even though he was allergic. He cried really hard when his favorite one got run over and died. When I was in college, I lived in an apartment owned by my father. He had an express rule against pets. One day I saw a flyer for kittens and decided it was a great idea to adopt one. He was black and white and tiny and tore the apartment apart. My dad came in one day to check on something when I wasn't home and saw the kitten and figured I was keeping him for someone. Then he saw that I'd framed pictures of him and said, "Self, I think this kitten lives here." And he wasn't even mad. The kitten broke every picture frame I owned, somehow managed to pull down a giant set of mini-blinds, and became infested with fleas. In 1994, I knew nothing of anything better than flea powder, which didn't work. I doused him with it to the point of sneezing and then combed through his fur and the fleas poured out all over my hands. I became hysterical, carried him to the car, and brought him to my parents' house, begging them to take him, let him live outside, and free me from the madness he had brought to my life. My dad agreed, and twelve years later, the cat lives a very content and obese life on top of the brick wall under the carport. My dad is a very good brother, and he was a wonderful son. My dad has a very troubled little brother, and he helps him however he can. He just flew out to spend a week with him to try and help him get on his feet. My grandfather, while a peach, could work your last nerve sometimes, but my dad was always patient and so loving with him. My dad has a lovely singing voice and sings loudly in church. He also says the prayers a beat faster than everyone else. He tends to bond with priests. They love him because they love things like jokes and sports and can talk to him about these things and feel like normal dudes, I guess. There really aren't very many people, if any, who don't love my dad. When the singing machine was a big deal at our house, which it was for years, he'd really rock the showtunes and the standards. My favorite number of his was "On the Street Where You Live." His favorite songs include "Jambalaya" and "Danny Boy." He has a deep love for John Gary and Andy Williams. He loves this CD of Michael Crawford singing religious songs. Like, barf. But he loves it. He also loves The Phantom of the Opera soundtrack to an alarming degree. My dad would rather be very early than a little bit late. We're talking about arriving hours early at the airport and relaxing with the newspaper and some coffee and enjoying that lack of anxiety about rushing and missing the flight. I get this from him. It annoys people who either tend to run late or who'd rather arrive at a more reasonable time. My dad is a very tidy and efficient packer of suitcases. My dad loves these teams more than anyone else who has ever lived with the possible exception of my siblings. I think he'd like his ashes to be sprinkled on the football field. When I, on a crazed whim, charged a plane ticket and a very nice hotel room in New York one weekend to his credit card when I was working at Disney World in college, instead of getting mad at me, he left me a message with my roommates asking me to give his regards to Broadway and remember him to Herald Square. My dad likes red wine. He also sometimes drinks tall ones of Coors. Not Coors light, but Coors in the gold can. This is kind of a special occasion thing, though. He loves my mom's tuna salad. I think my dad will end up being some kind of a preacher. He loves his serious and superfun jobs, but he's really just a preacher at heart. He wants to talk about God and the Bible and Jesus and stuff because that's what's really closest to his heart, I think. He gives talks and teachings at church and at prisons sometimes, and he's most excellent at it. My dad is sixty years old. He's been with my mother since they were nineteen. He proposed by asking her to cook his eggs every morning for the rest of their lives. He told her he could either buy her an engagement ring or they could have a car, and she chose the car. He gave her electric sewing scissors for their first anniversary, and she didn't even sew. They still buy each other shmoopy cards for any random occasion when the mood strikes. My dad is a Republican. My dad played King Arthur in his college production of Camelot and also starred in Murder in the Cathedral. He can still quote liberally from these plays. He graduated with the highest GPA in the history of his university, and he was the student body president. I think he called games for the local radio station back in the day. He's anchored news and sports on the television news and worked for U.S. senators and the governor. He has all kinds of wild tales from those days. My dad went to sign up to go to officer's school, I guess to go fight in Vietnam, I'm not sure, but they rejected him because of his hay fever. Watching my dad and my mom together is really sort of astonishing. Once, we were in Texas for my cousin's wedding, and we were sitting in the car, and my mom was walking around in the parking lot or something, and he said, "Look at your mother. Is she beautiful or what?" (She is.) They do pretty much everything together, and they make each other laugh. There have been periods when they've both gone to dark places inside themselves, and I watched them each take care of each other during those times even though they really had no idea how in the hell to help. It was a wonderful relief to see them both come out of those dark places. When I got my tonsils out, my dad sat in the room as the nurse could not get the IV into my hand. I was wailing and crying because it hurt so terribly. He held the newspaper in front of his face in a vise grip but I could still see his face turning red. He was practically shaking. (I had bruises on the tops of both hands for weeks.) My dad loves the movie Il Postino. He took me to see it at the university theater and lets me borrow his soundtrack. He went to the fishing village in Italy where it was filmed. I bought him a poster from the movie when I was in Italy, a black and white picture of the postman on his bicycle, and he framed it and hung it in his office. My dad tells stories and jokes better than anyone I've ever met. My dad loves my cats and dogs. He calls them his grandpets. He and my mom have gone to my house twice a day to take care of them every time I've been out of town for the weekend or on vacation for the past few years. I still cannot get over that they do this, but they seem to like doing it. They also often keep my brother and his girlfriend's dog at their house, but I make him promise that he still loves mine the best. He promises. My dad likes to wear pedometers while on vacation and report how many miles they've walked that day. He also thinks you should take your shoes off on planes and walk up and down the aisle in your socks. I am very proud to be his daughter. I need him to live forever. 
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2006 elb |
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