This and that

We’ve been in Houston for a week now and I’ve just been absorbing stuff like a sponge. It’s so strange to be here. Everything’s changed, everything’s the same.

It’s amusing to me that I’ve been asked more than once how I’m finding my way around, do I need directions, do I have a TomTom… the answers are just fine; no, thank; and yes, yes I do. It’s amusing because I grew up here, I learned to drive here, my mom lives in the same part of town and none of the major landmarks have moved, so why I would have a hard time getting around is beyond me. Concurrently, though, I haven’t been here in three years so sometimes if I have to get somewhere I don’t remember the most efficient route, I’ll think of the roads I would have taken from my old neighborhood but I won’t remember how to get there from where I am right now. That feels a bit weird. Also, some friends have moved to neighborhoods where I have never been before (Houston is BIG) so going there I do get lost, I’d probably get lost even if I had lived here all these years though too.

Readjusting to family life has been hard. This is the first time I’ve spent Christmas in Houston since my Dad died, this makes it strange for me on many levels. First of all, since my Dad died this is only the third Christmas I’ve spent with my family, the first one was in Rome the year he died – that wasn’t a very jolly holiday season – and the second one was at my place right before the boy was born as I was too pregnant to travel. This year we had Christmas with my Mom, her new husband and his children (which, incidentally, sounds weird as we are all adults, should I have amended to “his adult children” which would have been oxymoronic at best, or possibly I could have used the word offspring, which always sounds to me like we’re talking more of animals than humans). It’s mind boggling to me to have stepsiblings at this stage in my life. Thankfully we don’t have the whole room/bathroom sharing, who do you love more, I hate you, drama that we probably would have had had we been teenagers, but still, it’s odd to find yourself spending family holidays with a slew of new family members that you don’t really know.

I am remarkably set in my ways. I like doing things my way. I like the pace of my family life, which is totally incompatible with the pace of my mom’s family life. This was predictable, as I grew up with her and thus know how things work around here, and yet it surprises me every time. It’s particularly hard to be laid back and go with the flow with children (the small, young variety) in tow. I’m using compromise, some deep breathing and the concept of “no, today I’m going to do it my way hope I don’t offend anyone” to get through it. I suspect my mother’s doing the same on her end.

These are some random thoughts of the day and two cute pictures from Christmas morning (for your viewing pleasure). 

Toodles.

The Girl, the Husband and the Boy

The Girl and I

Linking up with Amy from Lucky Number 13 today for Virtual Coffee, although this isn't technically a coffee post it's still our last tuesday of 2011 and I'm sentimental about this kind of stuff!

Parenting, cigarettes and a fifteen year old

I realized that the previous post about my Dad got published on the 28^th, whereas it was meant to come out on the 27^th, his birthday. So, to atone, I thought I’d share a little anecdote from my youth.

As many of my peers I started smoking in my teens, as an act of rebelliousness, freedom, maturity or something to that effect. We thought we were the height of cool sneaking a smoke behind the annex building in high school. How we thought we were being sneaky when as a group of six or seven we walked into a classroom reeking of a speakeasy from the 30’s, I have no idea. In any case, despite all of our stealth tactics my mom clued in on what I was doing when I was fifteen and confronted me with a pack of cigarettes she had found, possibly hidden beneath my mattress or some other totally secure location like that.

Amazingly, she didn’t immediately blow her top as was to be expected, she gave me a devious smile and said and I quote “you are to tell your father when he gets home”. Gulp. Yikes. I definitely would have preferred a screaming mother to disappointing my father, but there was nothing for it but to wait until he got home, at eight, it was three thirty… I was looking forward to four and a half hours of angst. Great punishment by the way, Mom.

So my Dad walks in the door, and I was hovering at the top of the stairs and call him up to my room cause I had something to tell him. I was obviously nervous. He started getting obviously nervous, possibly wondering what the hell could have happened to cause the laden atmosphere at home. The tension was palpable. So I hand him the pack of Marlboro reds my mom had found, minus half the contents that I had much more expertly hidden in the battery compartment of my “boom box”. As an aside, it was the early nineties, and there was no minimum age to buy cigarettes in Texas though the next year they passed a law that you had to be seventeen to buy them, I was sixteen. Though surprisingly, that didn’t stop me smoking either.

Anyway, he’s looking confusedly at the cigarette pack and I whisper “Mom found out I smoke, occasionally, rarely, at parties, don’t get mad, she said I had to tell you.”

And my Dad bursts out laughing. Laughing. In relief. Because in retrospect I imagine we had managed to so freak him out with our little scene that he must have thought I was pregnant, or getting married with a biker from Fresno, or got a tattoo or possibly all three. The occasional cigarette? He could live with that. (Also, he smoked, so you know pots and kettles.)

This was without a doubt a massive lapse in parenting judgment, but from then on I secretly thought my Dad was the coolest. Except for when he wouldn’t let me go out, then he was a dictatorial tyrant with no heart.

My Dad, the smuggler

Today would’ve been my Dad’s birthday, or was my Dad’s birthday, or something to that effect. My Dad passed away in 2006, so though it technically still is his birthday to me, it really isn’t for him any longer, is it…

But anyway, a few words about my Dad today seem fitting.

My Dad was born in 1925, and you have no idea how much I would like to be a teenager again, just so I could roll my eyes at him and scoff “Dad, you are so last century!”.

Ba-da-da-boom

My dad taught me loads, and the older I get the more I realize how important many of the lessons he imparted actually are. He taught me the importance of family. I remember the torture that was dinner time at my house when I was a teen and young adult. I wanted to go out with my friends or eat dinner in front of the tv or while talking on the phone, but no, he insisted that the whole family eat dinner together every night. Every night. I can count on one hand the nights when I went out to dinner with friends (ok, maybe two hands…), I could go out after dinner, but not for dinner. Dinner was mandatory family time. Only now do I realize how important that family time was. We would talk (well, he would talk… my dad was a talker!), and we learned so much. Table manners for one, no phones, the use of all the appropriate utensils (you eat your salad with a salad fork dammit!), elbows in, chin up, shoulders down and fork to mouth for crying out loud! We learned patience, waiting for everyone to finish their plate before moving on to the next course, we learned to make conversation and to listen without letting our eyes glaze over. We got to know our parents and they got to know us, and we learned to be with adults and not just our peers. We learned respect.

My Dad was an optimist. He always found the good, even when things looked bad. He was a happy guy. He liked good food and good wine, he liked beautiful women and beautiful things. He was a geologist and though he worked in the oil business he still loved stones. He could sit in jewelry stores for hours talking about quality and clarity and color density, and amazingly, the jewelers would sit with him for hours even if he didn’t end up buying anything. He taught me that passion is infectious, so it’s important to be passionate about something.

My Dad talked me out of going to med school. Thank God! Cause I would’ve hated it, and been horrible at it, and if heaven forbid, I had managed to graduate from med school I would’ve been a truly bad doctor. Sometimes our parents really do know us better than we know ourselves.

He was a really smart guy. A scientist but, I think, a humanist at heart. He loved to read, he watched documentaries, he still remembered parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy memorized when in school (in the 1940’s). He was also a pain in the ass. He hated the music we listened to, and kept trying to steer us towards Puccini or Brahms, he thought most of the movies we watched were garbage and let us know, vocally and repeatedly, how idiotic he thought we were being and let’s not even talk about the sitcoms. He was, of course, always right.

I had the worst fights of my life with him, and he said some truly hurtful things, but he taught me to argue my point, organize my thoughts and present them properly, even in the heat of the moment. In fact, my husband rarely argues with me, because he says I always win in the end, even when I’m dead wrong. Thanks Dad!

He was a resourceful guy, during WWII my Dad, my Uncle and a friend of theirs smuggled salt and cigarettes from Switzerland to Italy to help support their families. My Dad, the smuggler. This story always made me laugh.

He was generous, always happy to lend a hand, always putting our material needs before his. He also ruled the house with an iron fist and what he said went, no arguments. He was a bit of a  sexist and raised my brother and I with a double standard, but only as far as what we were allowed to do socially, we both got the same education and opportunities. He was born in the 1920’s, but he was a forward thinking, modern man. I’m sorry if you didn’t get to know him.

He had a strong personality a charisma that is hard to find, he also had a knack for ticking people off, let’s just say he wasn’t the kind of man that went unnoticed. He was far from perfect, and he wasn’t easy to live with and yet I miss him every day. Because, you see,  despite his flaws, he was perfect to me.