my father turned 90 on saturday, march 24th. there was a formal black tie party in his honor in ATL. complete with a four course meal, old family friends, footage from family reunions past, and of course pictures. ramon and i serenaded him. nothing elaborate. just a few standards that he would have heard as a young man in the 2os and 30s. i think a lot of my not-so-distant family members were genuinely surprised that i could actually sing. at the time, i was more amused by that than annoyed but it was definitely a mixture of both.
my father grew up in the deep south -- south Georgia to be exact. interestingly enough, he made the first wave of the great migration north in the 20s and eventually the first migration south in the 70s. i don't know very many people who can make that claim.
i don't even want to think about the trouble he's seen. but believe it or not, sometimes he actually tells us about it.
just so you know that he's not hobbling around in a diaper with a drool cup around his neck and talking to himself: here he is the next morning after breakfast on his excercise bike.
the day before i got to ATL, we had this long wierd argument about debt and how he thinks it's better to pay things off over time than all at once, in one lump sum. i mean, really. he practically drew a flow chart for me over the phone. not that i needed one. i had to keep reminding myself that he was about to turn 90. he sounded like his usual self. remembers absolutely everything. still thinking everything through, still scheming. and even though he's calmed down a lot since i got work, he's still arguing with me about my future, my finances.
that's his job, i suppose. God knows he's good at it.
2 comments:
aw, gotta love the parents, eh? i mentioned something about my salad tasting like the Olive Garden- and my Grandpa said to me "The Olive Garden? How can you afford to eat there- geez, I hope you don't go there a lot." I just smiled and said, I've got a good job Gpa but I won't go out too much.
oh, how funny. in his head, it's probably still 1934. nevermind the cost of living and the way it rises over time -- he can remember when a hamburger was a nickel so of course he thinks he's getting ripped off now.
if i ever paid a nickel for a hamburger, i think it'd take me awhile to forget about it.
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