Time to Say Goodbye
A letter to my number one fan.
Number one fan
Andrea Bocelli’s voice sounds like a lullaby and late-night pesto. It feels like a tight hug and looks like a pink princess nightgown. I didn’t know what Quando sono solo meant, but “Time to Say Goodbye” was our song, Dad’s and mine. He played it from a cassette, on the big black boom box, on our counter. He knew all the words and spun me around like a princess, like the Barbie doll with messy hair I let trail in my right hand.
Dad had dark hair with streaks of white above the ears and dark eyes that absorbed everything that was happening and nothing. I would sit at the worn kitchen table that creaked as I leaned in, mesmerized as he juggled his silver wedding band between his fingers. It seemingly slipped independently on and off from pinky to thumb. Sometimes he let me try this, sometimes he just sat in thought.
Dad had lots of books. They came in brown USPS packages which was always a let-down ever since I’d learned that’s where Christmas gifts came from. The books were green and blue, with hardcovers and small words. They had glossy pages and scary pictures. I didn’t like the pictures. They were harsh, graphic, with red blood, white bones, and pointy metal instruments. Not like the pictures in my coloring books — which I had lots of — Dad had masterful coloring abilities. Soft hews, deep lines, the shading on Raggedy Anne and Andy…you’d have no idea it was done with a crayon.
He also had a black pager that beeped late at night.
One time I padded down the short hall and peeked my head down the stairs. It was dark. But I could see the outline of his green scrubs. He had on a funny hat that made his head flat. Strange and alien, but familiar. He and my mom were whispering. It was two or three a.m.
We both loved stories, he would sit next to my bed and tell me ones about Peter Pan. I was always Wendy. We always went to Neverland. I laughed and looked up at the glowing stars stuck to my ceiling. Never grow up, honey. And I would promise not to and ask to make sure mom came and checked on me.
I remember peeking out the window on a night in June after being put to bed. Dad had just gotten home with Steve, my uncle by proximity, a fellow resident. It was eight or nine and they were tired. But my Dad waved up at me in orange jogging shorts and headed down the cracked gravel street.
Two more babies came, we moved two more times. But Dad still had long hours, and mean bosses, and resident friends. We would sit with them when Dad was on call. Eat dinner together. Celebrate New Year together every year. “My Dad is a maxillofacial surgeon” I would say. I didn’t know what that meant, but it impressed other kids, and it took as long for me to learn to say as it took for him to officially be done with school.
He had long trips, all the time. I bundled up for the Upstate NY winter and went with Mom and my three siblings to the airport. We had created “welcome” posters and stuck them to the door at home, we were getting pizza, with wings and blue cheese. I watched for him through the glass looking for a long black coat. I saw him, jumped up off the plastic cushion, around the glass door, and through security. I didn’t know about security, I was seven.
My dad looked at me embarrassed, “Honey! You can’t do that! I could be in big trouble; I could go to jail!” he profusely apologized to the guard. I put my hood over my head, I shook away angry tears. I didn’t cry. Not when I fell, not the time I fell off of a swing and ripped up my entire arm, so it left a scar. Not now.
The divide
Dad was the star goalie in high school, he even played in college and could juggle a ball and catch anything I shot at him. I wasn’t good at soccer. But I wanted to be. I wasn’t good at math either, but Dad told me I could do anything I put my mind to. So, I got flashcards, I worked on them. But I still had C’s in math.
“Why are you kids always inside?” he’d say.
I read books. I wrote stories. Lots and lots of stories. He didn’t understand. I watched baseball with Dad and my brother, big Yankees fans. I kept up with the names, I even collected baseball cards and could tell you stats on Derek Jeter and A-rod and Jorge Posada. I always got bored around the 4th inning and pulled out a book.
When Obama became president, the house was staunchly anti-democrat. The world was ending, and I was scared. Obama became president again. The world hadn’t ended, but it would any day now. The Right was the only right way. This was an unnegotiable fact. As factual as to how people with weird piercings wouldn’t go to college, and make-up made you slutty, and people who smoked pot were lazy.
When I told my parents I wanted to study history, my Dad thought for a bit. “Okay, well I have a friend who did that and now he’s a lawyer — you can go to law school when you’re done.”
I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but I agreed because it was better than being a pharmacist, which was the previous plan. I got an internship in journalism.
“Writing is useful for the law.”
I agreed and proceeded to write. I wrote political pieces, but suddenly realized I wasn’t as right-wing as I had thought.
“Why don’t you believe in climate change,” I asked.
“Because it’s a hoax.”
I didn’t argue, Dad thinks I’m special and smart. We both like quiet. We both like to think. But I think about the stars and he thinks about procedures gone wrong.
One day I went to the tattoo parlor and got my belly button pierced. A spur-of-the-moment decision, “I don’t want to be a lawyer, I’m independent, I can write and be free,” the classic rebellion sort of thing.
I thought I’d regret it as my Dad told me people did. But I liked it, it was cute and different. I was still in college…I decided to keep it. He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know that late one night with my friends I decided that maybe smoking wouldn’t send me straight to hell, and in that high, I realized that maybe I needed to let loose, maybe it was okay if I were…me.
I felt bad when I saw him and gave him a big hug. I felt guilty and understood all those times when he thought he worked too much and would say, “I’m sorry I’m not a good Dad”. I’d shake my head, upset that he would say that to me, not understanding, cause I was thrilled that we were playing chess, thrilled to be dancing, happy to have him at my soccer game.
“You’re the best Dad to me.”
Now I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that I am not the daughter he wanted me to be. But it’s okay. He told me last week that he knew someone who worked for the Associated Press, and even though that’s the Yale of internships, I assured him I’d apply.
When I was ten, he told me we would dance to our song when I got married. I agreed because it is our song, danced around the kitchen a thousand times. Sung in bad Italian, over and over again. But now I know, when that song comes on the lyrics will hold a new meaning for two daydreamers: When I’m alone, I dream on the horizon and words fail… and for once, when the chorus hits I will cry as the melancholy voice sings, Time to say goodbye.
