The Art of Parting in Parenting

My oldest daughter left for college today to start art college as a freshman. While she is only a short commute away, the distance could not feel further. Even though she has not lived with me since the divorce to her mother a decade ago, I got emotional at the send off. I did not want to leave her dormitory room and would have paid top dollar to buy just one more Ikea product to slowly assemble.

Alas, I was not expecting quite the reaction after we hugged goodbye. My feelings surfaced like a punch in the jaw. As I took to the dormitory steps, tears clouded my vision. I was happy for her declaration of independence but sad in a natural way. Leaving the college, I realized that the art of parenting is now only to the extent she wants and allows. She is considered an adult and living on her own in the big city. It was time for me to hit the pavement with both tears running.

Rubbing Salts

As my car idled at the corner of Broad and Snyder in South Philadelphia, I thought about the road ahead. Giving an old-fashioned technologically challenged Italian man his first ride in my loaded 2007 Nissan Altima would produce magic moments. My inner ear will bend to hold true the thick Italian accent from the old country, sounds that will encapsulate my father-son memories long after his passing.

Beaten by the hardships of life, a seventy-year-old man crossed the busy street. He is dressed in nice fitting slacks that his own gifted hands designed and tailored. If I were blind, I might smell his destitute loneliness to know the arrival of my estranged biological father. Before he even nestled down and back into the plush leather seats or took in the new car smell, he managed to air his first grievance.

“The car is nice, Guiseppe, but you-ah probably spent way-ah too much and dug a hole for yourself and you-ah gotta get your last name off of your license plate and-ah put mine on it.”

“I was adopted, remember? Both my mother and Motor Vehicles know that. Besides, I don’t want to confuse my daughters if I changed my name back.”

He accentuated vowel sounds at the end of long Italian names. “You are a Percaccio not a Tornatore. Everyone should know that! Now you-ah advertise the wrong name on your car too. This is disrespectful to you father.”

“It’s just a name not who I am.”

He surveyed the veiled cabin. “Whatta ya plannning a funeral in this car? The windows are painted funeral black?”

“The windows are tinted with Luminar film not painted.”

After some uncomfortable silence, he touched the protruding knobs on the dashboard the way a gruff man would grope a woman’s nipples. “Whatta these for?”

“Dual climate controls. Both the passenger and driver can have separate comfort levels. Mine is set at 73 degrees, your side of the car is registering a balmy 79.”

“Bullshit!” he interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I sneeze. You-ah get wet.”

I chuckled at his rigidity. “Apparently, six degrees of separation does not matter to you.”

He digressed with a rant about how the world has changed and how technology has left him behind. Soon a sultry female voice spoke through the six Bose speakers of my vehicle. I turned and could all but see his Italian blood percolate.

She instructed, “In less than a quarter of a mile, bear slight left at the three-way intersection.”

“Why is that wo-man interrupting ah-me? I no like-ah that. I could-ah go home and hear da same-ah thing. I was ah trying to tell you-ah something important.”

I explained, “The instructional voice on my global positioning system does not even know you are talking. But by all means, continue your story.”

“Is that wo-man gonna interrupt me-ah again?”

“According to the visual display for our route guidance, she will not interrupt you for another 7.8 miles. I’ll drive slow and you talk fast. Why don’t you just relax? What is so important that you cannot sit back and really enjoy my new car for a few minutes.”

He pointed his finger the way a father scolds a child. “I have to tell you-ah this. Very important. When a we go-ah out to eat today at the casino, no-ah table salt for ya.”

Sons of Italy

His heavy Italian accent barked orders over the corded telephone that I clutched in my sweaty conforming hand. My instructions were to meet him curbside on the corner of Broad and Chestnut in downtown Philadelphia the following Saturday afternoon at 2pm sharp. He promised to be in position early to wait for my arrival. Between the two of us, he was the only one who stood a chance of recognizing the other. He would look for my car, a vehicle he forced me to describe in nauseating detail. He would look for me in the clothes I signed on to wear that day without a single fiber of deviation. Before the receiver went dead, he cajoled me into promising not to be late. He did not want me to make him foolishly wait when I waited eighteen years. A few minutes leeway should not be a source of contention for an Italian immigrant who advertised all the Old School flexibility of Gumby set in concrete.

The meeting day came with much apprehension on my part. Bright sunshine and the clear visibility of blue sky stretched for miles. Traveling down Broad street by car, I could not get anywhere near my destination. With the area cordoned off with barricades and rope, I had to park several city blocks away from our rendezvous point. Frenzied people crowded the sidewalk to celebrate something other than my blessed reunion. The pedestrian traffic distracted my walk for everybody seemed to be heading in my direction. A clown, balloonist, and a big guy walking on stilts stirred my sense of irony. The gathering throng prevented me from even seeing the designated corner. My mind searched for other people’s description of him. I anxiously paced the street corner named desire. Minutes passed as I alternated pawing at my watch and panning the crowd.

From out of nowhere, a stocky man who looked and smelled foreign bear hugged me like a long lost relative. After obligatory contact, I awkwardly squirmed from his long embrace. Tears rolled down his cheeks while I paradoxically introduced myself. It is unfathomable a task locating the father you never met in a parade amidst a canvass of humanity. Informative years, puberty, adulthood, and emancipation should never pass before you meet your biological father. In a faceless crowd anywhere, he could have been anybody or nobody at all. That is precisely the point. Even a child knows that.

The Familiar Stranger

Send in the Clowns

Isn't it rich, are we a pair?

Me here at last on the ground, You in mid-air.

Send in the clowns. Isn't it bliss, don't you approve?

One who keeps tearing around

One who can't move

Where are the clowns?

Send in the clowns.

I thought about the indignities of yesterday. Let me count the ways. A prostate exam at one doctor’s appointment, my allergy shot in a hospital thirty miles away, and brunch with a familiar stranger in a foreign land. There is nothing like following an injection of concentrated venom with a prostate probe to rule out swollen property. The day actually ended on a high note with the venom and cavity search. Before the medical maneuvers, I must turn my attention on my guest.

I drove my wife’s minivan to the rendezvous point because her vehicle owned a CD player. Music would serve as a mood stabilizer in the event of getting lost in Philadelphia. True to form, I got lost in the maze of one way streets revealing anonymous rowhouses. A sporty older model coupe pulls up next to me at the corner of Broad and Snyder. We smile to one another. The driver waves a sigh of relief then gestures for me to follow him to a municipal parking lot not far away.

We exit our cars, he a little faster than me. It is his custom to exchange the rousing Italian wet kiss on the cheek followed by a grizzly bear hug. I did as expected of me. As we walked to the restaurant of his choosing, I watched him stop to talk to a brick layer, then a city sweeper, and finally a jaywalker. He turned a two minute walk to the restaurant into a layover at an airport terminal. I bore witness to a man who knew only broken English talk so freely to complete strangers in a heavy brooding Italian accent. He seemed to overvalue his conversations with the strangers considering I was his scheduled company. He went out of his way to talk to these strangers while I stood a quiet familiar stranger before him. Our time was limited so I found his public outreach a heresy of time management.

I believe he had the restaurant open early for us. It was either that or he overthanked the owner in Italian about getting such good seats. I never spoke his language to say the least. The walk to seats of his preference revealed that we were the only two in the fully staffed restaurant. Even before the menus arrived tableside, his voice carried and I complied by listening. I am a good listener. Since my silence has always made him uncomfortable, he carried not only his deep voice but the conversation too. I zigged and zagged with the topics of conversations rifling out as many words as I could before interjection.

The familiar stranger never changed a single diaper of mine or wished me "Happy Birthday" but he felt the insurmountable need to mentor. He voiced parental tones early and often. I fielded his parental tones like an injury plagued first baseman. He began his ramble by letting me know that now as a retiree he detested that I lived my life by a calendar and a wristwatch. I told him appointments and scheduling was how I had to answer to the responsibilities of the day, how he had to once answer to the day. My obsessive compulsive features only took managing life to a synchronization to the minute, every minute.

Somehow the conversation somersaulted. He told me I was not allowed to eat the potato that came with my meal. When I refused to relinquish control over my dining fare, his metal fork resoundingly tapped my plate. Ting. Ting. Ting. He noticed a 42 year old man’s change in expression and he backtracked to a position of concern about my weight gain.

“You are starting to look like a baro.”

I figured that to be Italian for “middle aged guy fallen from caloric grace” but I didn’t press for further explanation. Consider me enlightened. Through further name calling, I realized he was mispronouncing the English word “barrel.” Upon learning that I was categorized as well-rounded did not make me feel any better. My fork stabbed the chive potato with newfound reckless abandon. Hey, let’s roll out the baro and have a barrel of fun. But there was no infectious laughter because he proceeded to tell me how many slices of Italian bread I could have. I dismissed the indiscretion as small potatoes. So I ate double the allotment of bread that he rationed out for me. I hate to break bread but I felt it necessary. After he ordered us another one of his appetizers, he told me we would be skipping dessert. I can take a hint. Waist not, want not.

He asked me about my relationship with my wife. He prefers to go back to the genesis of relationships so this I did. After I reminded him I first met my wife on the job, he reminded me that he never would eat and shit in the same place. I have to believe him since he did not use the bathroom the whole time we were in the restaurant. He also told me he would never have a wife who worked out of the home. He told me a lot of things that only applied to the Old World. The conversation digressed when out of nowhere, he told me he hated the theatre of my creative answering machine messages at home. Apparently, my entire home life was repugnant to him. He demanded a return to a more puritan recording the next time he called a few months from now. He stipulated this while throwing back succulent mussels in red gravy. But it wasn’t all gravy because our conversation inevitably returns to relationships. His frenetic hands seemed possessed telling me that women destroy men’s lives. He then went on a rant about all the women who had ruined his life.

“Joe, you betta watch you back.” he warned with a scowl.

When an Old World Italian man issues you such a warning in a South Philly restaurant cleared of other patrons, one might wonder about a Mafia hit. I knew that wasn't the case here. I differed, “I can't see anything with this baro belly so I can’t make you any bold promises.”

At any given time, I could have stormed out of the restaurant and left him high and dry. He had nothing on me. These meetings are his chance to get to know me. This is what he chooses to do with our time. The truth is our interpersonal relationship was little more than a broken record. The prick of a sewing needle should move beyond first blood. This meeting ended no different in dynamics than any of the dozen impersonal ones before it. I took the conversation like I did my meal- with a grain of salt. I held my ground until he searched for more common ground. Our impasse has always been the treacherous footing. This is a man who denies responsibility for his first failed marriage to the extent he named his second son the identical name as his first born. It was as much a part of my destiny as happenstance that I first met him the year of my emancipation while I was standing on a Philadelphia street corner in the middle of a grand parade. Emerging from the many strange faces in the crowd, this man called me son. He is then as he is now; the enigma of my biological father. Send in the clowns, maybe they are here.