For Dad

I just finished SKYPEing with my father. It was a clumsy conversation, one that ate up one-half of my internet usage -- but it was worth it. I got to look at Dad.

My father is notoriously cheap, and a hoarder. We have a garage full of old bicycles, rearview mirrors that have been detached from various automobiles, cans of paint, doors, doorknobs ... it is an unfathomable and endless list. I am embarrassed to bring friends home, knowing what piles lurk in our humble suburban house. But, now that I'm on the other side of the earth, those frustrations are silly.

It was a clumsy conversation not in what my father and I discussed, but how we discussed it. You see, the microphone on his computer didn't work, so it ended up being a video call where he would gesticulate wildly and mouth hugely while I tried to guess the topic. Being a Ph.D. and all, the idea to bust out a red pen and scrawl topics on a piece of paper burst into his head. It was ridiculous, but, in many ways, it is the epitome of my family: clumsy, but filled with love.

I think what I loved most about our conversation was its silence. Of course, there is the juvenile aspect of FINALLY being able to hold my father hostage and make him listen to me -- but that lasted for only about 10 (OK, maybe 15) minutes. Towards the end of the call, as the conversation began to tire bit and my megabytes of internet became fewer and fewer, I started to wrap things up. My father wrote more furiously. I watched him write.

I haven't watch my father really do anything since I was, oh, 4? I remember when he was writing his dissertation. We would go to Grandma Julie's (his mom's). I would sit at the white porcelain topped kitchen table in the lime-green kitchen, sketching (as my Grandma always encouraged me to do). In the bedroom just off of the kitchen was Grandma, typing -- my father would write or dictate and grandma, who was a secretary, would type. Cioci Stephie was cooking at the stove. Grandpa Ted was proofreading. I believe my mother was there proofing with Grandpa or watching my little sister. I can't remember.

What I do remember was the hive of activity. The instant coffee warming on the stove, the kilbasa and rice pudding that Cioci would make to fortify the efforts. I remember watching my dad, reading. Framed by the doorframe, he would stand in the bedroom, reading and thinking. All the activity swirling around me -- I remember being fascinated by watching my father. His face, his posture, everything.

My father and I, now, are growing more close; however, childhood and adolescence ... not so great years for me and dad. He's good with toddlers and adults. Everything in between - not so much. But today, like when I was 4, I got to watch my father. Perhaps it is the excess of champagne and white wine from the fabulous lunch I had that is making me so nostalgic, but I felt (for a moment) like I was 4 again.

In many ways, the whole reason I was a bit tipsy has everything to do with my father. His firmness with me, his expectations, his brutality (at times -- and I know I was equally brutal in return. Childhood, in my house, was psychological warfare, but in the most nurturing sense) have led me to Moscow. Maybe not led, but influenced.

At the fabulous lunch, we talked about a series in Britain where they interviewed a group of 7 years olds years ago, and every 7 years re-interview them. The children who went private schools tended to acheive exactly what they had in mind when they were 7 years old. Have I done the same? Maybe -- I wanted to be an actor, and I am (though, perhaps, embarking on an alternate theater career) and ... did I know about Harvard?

No, probably not. I barely knew about Northewestern, my father's alma mater; however, I knew about failure. I knew about drive and passion and those things I learned from my parents. As I sat in the very stylish apartment of my British chums this afternoon, a member of a party of fabulously international fabulous men, and we talked about this television show, I thought about my parents. Tonight, talking to my dad, again this memory of watching him popped into my head. When I was born, we were on welfare. My father would get odd jobs driving diaper delivery trucks and city buses so he could pay for school and for our growing family. His parents, the children of immigrants, helped as they could -- but we were lower middle class. We were not wealthy.

Today at the luxurious lunch, and tonight in the dorm, I realized how good I have it and how hard it was fought for. I look forward to going home and being frustrated by dad (and probably looking forward to getting the hell outta' Chicago come the end of my three months there this summer). For right now, though, absence is making the heart grow fonder; right now -- thanks to the presence of wonderful friends and opportunities -- this absent son wants to go home.