88. Barcelona

Date: July 11, 2002

Age: 25

Barcelona has been great, and the Prado in Madrid was really good. We also had many different kinds of Paella.

Love, Dad and H

Last Friday, my brothers, Dad, H and I had paella for dinner in Miami. Twice my father told us that when he and H visited Barcelona, they had paella every night--but this place from where we bought the paella in Miami was "better than all of them."

Later that night on the plane going home, C said to me, "I thought the paella was good, but nothing spectacular." I agreed. My mom's paella is much better. He thought so, too.

So, my dad's physical condition:

Despite supposedly receiving confirmation that he's living on borrowed time, he is much stronger than when we saw him in March. He moves slowly, but he can walk on his own (sometimes using a walker). He has an appetite. He gets through morning to night with only a short nap in between. He bought himself a new Cadillac, with features he couldn't stop raving about, even though he leaves the driving up to H. ("Not that I'll be around long to use it," he apparently told C, and we found his fatalist attitude humorous). We went out to dinner, saw Star Trek, even went to the zoo. That last outing was strange--the zoo was his idea, and pushing your father in a rented wheelchair while little camp kids are running all around in a frenzy over the tigers was unsettling. We didn't see much of the zoo, because we got a call from H saying to come home, the doctor called, Dad needed another transfusion of platelets. The transfusion he had received two days earlier was supposed to last him for ten days, but that wasn't happening.

C thought the trip went well, because Dad seemed in such good spirits. He wants to come up for a Mets game this summer if he's well enough. It was a collective moment to look forward to. Dad was talkative, regaling us with stories. And then I slowly became aware of something that C and B were completely oblivious to, and that's when the trip went all to hell, from my perspective.

All the stories Dad told were about B and C's childhood. Nothing in relation to when I was a kid.

The three of us accepted a long time ago--at least in our minds, if not our hearts--that our Dad never acknowledges his life before H. So why now, has he chosen to wax nostalgic from C and B's early years?

I think it had to do with location. C and B spent their childhoods in Brooklyn and Miami. Except for one year in Miami, I lived in Delaware. My dad cannot identify with Delaware, despite having lived there for eighteen years, but has much to say about Brooklyn and Miami. So I got to hear lots of stories about when my brothers were young. Hell, my dad even talked about their mother's brother and father.

My brothers were able to initiate many of these memories, playing off each other with intros of "remember when..." I'd sit there mute at the dinner table eating that goddamn paella, hearing stories from before I was born. I couldn't even grasp how to throw in my own "remember when" story. I was sitting in the middle of a boys club, and no girls were allowed.

I don't take issue with my brothers for this. As soon as I unleashed my anger at the airport at the end of my trip, they understood what I was talking about. They also noted that our dad exercised some revisionist history, too--in some of the stories he told, their mother was a part of the scenery, but he erased her entirely. Also, B pointed out that when we visited in March, he set up Dad's Christmas present--a digital photo frame that presented a slide show of his kids. This trip, he found the frame had been stored away again. (I told B, "Maybe if you replace the pictures of your kids with photos of Dad's new car, he'd leave it up.") So it's not as if Dad has taken a sudden, newfound interest in their lives but not mine.

They assured me it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with how disengaged and fucked up our father is.

That may be. I certainly didn't cause him to be that way. But I also can't help but feeling that I'm also at fault for being born a female. I don't think he holds women in very high regard and doesn't understand--or care--that some things are just not acceptable. (Note to fathers: don't use the word 'cunt' with your daughter when describing a woman you don't like, ever.)

After I said my piece at the airport, there were a few seconds of silence. Then from C:

"Still, you've got to admit, it was a better trip than the last one, right?"

That was pretty funny.

I don't want to visit anymore. I don't want to be H's support system when Dad's gone. A few good friends told me I was being a good daughter while I was visiting, but now I just want to be the bad, bratty daughter and be done with all this.