I remember:
- your prickly clean shaven face
- the scent of your cologne
- the only time you ever raised your voice at me: we were in Montauk and the water was rough and you told me not to go in but I did anyways until the next thing I knew you plucked me from the shore and said "what's the matter with you!"
- when you'd say "you don't attract bees with vinegar" every time I was being a little punk
- your tan Thom Browne suits
- when I exploded the glass door to your closet in a fight with Louis and the disappointment you felt - I'm still making up for that
- your love for surf
- pizza before we left Montauk, on the way home, the kinda crappy slice but the pie still had to be made fresh
- the 2006 World Cup final when we were a house divided and of course I was with you and Italy 100%
- your office on Varick street with the garden and the locksmith outside
- driving around and taking weird roads to go look at houses you liked
- dinners at Lolivo
- when you'd throw a party at the house and that meant bedtime was a little bit vague so I'd stay up as long as I could before you'd notice
- when you ungrounded me the day you told me you had cancer
- your focus, even though I had no clue what you were doing, what work meant for you - I knew it was serious, and that you were serious about it
- your belief in me and Eva and Louis and mom
- your belief in yourself
- the time you told me "you can do anything you put your mind to" and I said "I want to wrap my arms around the whole world" and without hesitation you responded "you can"
Today you would've been 61.
We're doing well Papa. I don't think I ever got to the age where I called you anything else. I can't remember.
Every year I decide whether it's worth something to post my dads picture on his birthday. Most of you who follow me never knew him or met him. Perhaps you unknowingly know parts of him, through me.
And every year I come to the same conclusion: my dad wanted so badly for me, my brother, my sister, my mom to move forwards with our lives. He had created a life for us and it would be worth nothing if we didn't live it.
And loss and love and hurt and suffering and joy and passion and remembering - it's all a part of it. So today I suffer a little bit over his loss. I hurt thinking of what life would be like if he was here. And I rejoice in thinking of his embrace and I take inspiration from his passions and the fierceness with which he followed them.
And finally I remember him and I remember him here, where everybody can see, so that you can remember him too -- even if just in a picture of a person you never encountered.
Live on Dad and Happy Birthday. Today would've been 59. Love you forever.
I realize today, on what would've been your 58th birthday, that this year creates a line in my life.
I'll have lived longer without you then with you.
And yet, I can still feel your five o'clock scratching my face, the calm in your voice, the upsetness when Louis and I broke your closet.
The memories I look at fondly, and the regrets -- they're like medicine, if I close my eyes.
