I loved everything about last week in Paris, but the light, the wine, the oysters, the conversations and company, the bread and the butter and the people were particularly brilliant this go around ❤️🔥
Papa ❤️ He was the sharpest, most pragmatic, level-headed, straight-forward man I know, but also believed in Santa till he was twelve and punched the boy who told him otherwise. He was low-key psychic, but when I’d mention it he’d say “no I just know how to use my brain.”
He wasn’t born into any material privilege whatsoever, but through pure grit and intuition and maybe some spite but most of all genuine hard work, became a three-times over business owner (I’m counting the first as his flower delivery business, going door-to-door with a wagon, to pay for summer camp 🥲). He was successful enough to live at the beach and in the mountains, travel the world with Gagi, pay for his grandchildren’s education, and become a killer tennis and golf player. Famously he made 7 hole-in-ones (hell yeah). He carried a briefcase around long after he retired, which convinced both me and Willis that he was in the CIA (obviously). I opened that briefcase two weeks ago to find, amongst important documents, the piece of paper documenting my Gagi’s first marathon, where she was the only 50-something to complete it. He was the most dedicated husband.
He was humble and shrewd and tough and sure of himself. A true gentleman, learning/remembering/knowing the names of everyone everywhere he went.
While ever-present in our family, I became closer to him in the last 15 years of his life, where age softened him and I couldn’t help but just be fully myself with him (aka saying ‘fuck’ without skipping a beat—he’d giggle). Whenever in Atlanta, Sunday dinners with him were the most reliable part of my week.
He got to live in what he deemed paradise for 30 years, and yet in the final years of his life, he was happiest around the kitchen table with mom and Edward, talking and eating dessert. I feel so lucky I got to be part of many, many of those hours-long conversations with him there.
No caption or really any amount of words can sum up who he was to me, my mom, our family, and anyone who had the honor to know him. He will be forever missed, especially on Sundays ❤️
