Date: June 28, 2007
Age: 30
This must be very familiar territory for you. It is just as beautiful as ever. Today we have tickets for the Uffizi.
Love, Dad and H
Love, Dad and H
It is familiar territory, because I did a semester in Italy when I was in college. So nice! An eccentric English businessman bequeathed his estate to NYU once he died. His life is the stuff of novels--there are 5 villas in the estate, a few from the 15th century, including the one he lived in with his parents and brother. His father had secret passageways built within the walls to escort his mistresses to his bedroom, and his mother was either crazy or extremely ill, I forget which. His brother killed himself. Then when this guy was an adult, he had many young male lovers, and when he died, he left behind some rather weird stuff in the main villa, like a wig collection...perhaps his last lover was a drag queen.
This is actually the most recent postcard I have from my dad, and maybe the only one from 2007. I was extremely ill last year and in and out of the hospital, scaring him to the point that he canceled vacations he and H had planned, because he didn't know what was going to happen to me. Perhaps if he was only planning on vacationing in, say, San Francisco, he would have traveled, but they intended to go to Marquesas, and then a remote island in the Caribbean. (A lot of opportunities for me to receive postcards.) By June, I was at my sickest, but I had surgery on June 14, and after that, it appeared I was out of the woods. So they decided to go to Italy, knowing that if they needed to return to the States quickly, they could.
My parents saw each other for the first time since 1999 (my college graduation) at the hospital on the day of my surgery. My mother was struck by how old my father looked. He was 67--I guess I don't really notice how old he looks because I've seen him age progessively through the years, whereas she's only seen him maybe twice in the last twelve. She thought he looked old, and in a bad way.
He was terribly uncomfortable at the hospital, so much so that my mom and my brother believe he was doped up on painkillers, which I've mentioned before. He wasn't just worried about me--he was very uncomfortable to be around my mother. She was from another life ago, I guess.
She said he cried a little. He was a little accusatory--he told her he didn't understand why I had this disease (ulcerative colitis), because no one on his side of the family had anything like it, which implied that my mother's genes were to blame. I really don't think I got it from anywhere, except bad luck.
But he also once said that as a 67-year old man, he was more healthy than his daughter, which "scared him shitless." Ironically, though, that's not true--three months later he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which the doctors surmise he's had for years, and it wasn't until September did it rear its ugly head and knock him down. And this is why I don't have any postcards from 2008.
This is actually the most recent postcard I have from my dad, and maybe the only one from 2007. I was extremely ill last year and in and out of the hospital, scaring him to the point that he canceled vacations he and H had planned, because he didn't know what was going to happen to me. Perhaps if he was only planning on vacationing in, say, San Francisco, he would have traveled, but they intended to go to Marquesas, and then a remote island in the Caribbean. (A lot of opportunities for me to receive postcards.) By June, I was at my sickest, but I had surgery on June 14, and after that, it appeared I was out of the woods. So they decided to go to Italy, knowing that if they needed to return to the States quickly, they could.
My parents saw each other for the first time since 1999 (my college graduation) at the hospital on the day of my surgery. My mother was struck by how old my father looked. He was 67--I guess I don't really notice how old he looks because I've seen him age progessively through the years, whereas she's only seen him maybe twice in the last twelve. She thought he looked old, and in a bad way.
He was terribly uncomfortable at the hospital, so much so that my mom and my brother believe he was doped up on painkillers, which I've mentioned before. He wasn't just worried about me--he was very uncomfortable to be around my mother. She was from another life ago, I guess.
She said he cried a little. He was a little accusatory--he told her he didn't understand why I had this disease (ulcerative colitis), because no one on his side of the family had anything like it, which implied that my mother's genes were to blame. I really don't think I got it from anywhere, except bad luck.
But he also once said that as a 67-year old man, he was more healthy than his daughter, which "scared him shitless." Ironically, though, that's not true--three months later he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which the doctors surmise he's had for years, and it wasn't until September did it rear its ugly head and knock him down. And this is why I don't have any postcards from 2008.
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