I associate mail order food with my father. When I was growing up, he
and I had very few connections. He took me to only one professional
football game. He never came to Back-to-School Night and had no
interest in any of my hobbies. I remember him as dour, not very
talkative and disapproving. I was part of his second family and he
was, I’m certain, just a bit too old to have a young kid running
around.
Added to that, my father was burdened by tragedy. He was the eldest son of a prosperous Jewish family in Odessa on the Black Sea. Unfortunately when the Russian Revolution swept across the country, Bolsheviks rampaged through his neighborhood, lining up and shooting many people, including my father’s family. Being Jewish and well-to-do were two strikes too many at a time when “line them up against the wall” was taken literally.
Luckily for my father, when all this happened, he was studying at the University of Kiev. He learned later that his mother had survived because she had very thick hair. When she was shot at point blank range, the gunpowder was apparently so weak that the bullet merely lodged in her hair, knocking her unconscious and otherwise leaving her unharmed. My father never returned home to Odessa, having been told that he needed to flee the country, which he promptly did.
First off, I need to explain going bowling in France was never on my wish list, top or bottom.
There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics." - Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
Fall has arrived in San Diego. This morning on our hike Jeff and I could see our breath in the blustery morning air. We loved it.
My mother, having fallen down the stairs and broken her leg on June 8, has left the hospital and moved to something called a Sub-Acute Rehab Facility. I believe, based on keen observation, that that means “not as bad as being in the hospital but we will still wake you in the night to take your vitals and you will still have a roommate who watches game shows all day long at a volume calculated to shatter Plexiglas.” It also means that the food is still bad.