At the end of a 3 hour play-date on a crisp, windy winter day in the park, where soccer moms in shiny late model SUV’s and weekend dads in stylish sedans - freshly detailed at the nearby carwash - bring their kids to run and play and learn how to be good little boys and girls that may or may not tell them to "shove it" once they hit 12 or 13, 14, 15, 16 or in my case 17, just shy of 18.

In the meantime and until rebellion and disdain become an un-moveable gorilla stubbornly refusing to vacate his seat in my living room – one more irreparable casualty of a turbulent relationship with your mother, I still prefer a play-date with any of you kids over anything.  

We're in the park today, like any day.  The only difference being that today, Martin Luther King Day, not to mention Grandma's 82nd birthday, the wind is racing unpredictably in every direction and temperatures are relatively cold.  We are practically alone in the expanse of this 17 acres of baseball diamonds, soccer and football fields, the Olympic size pool, courts for tennis, basketball and handball, the kid-friendly jungle gym surrounded by grass and the smaller one for toddlers, where young parents are often seen aiming cameras at their firstborns (primarily).  Aside from a handful of diehards - joggers and walkers (mostly) who make their way around the western field noticeably clockwise, alone or in pairs, heads attached to electronic blinders - cell phones and ipods being devices invented to further alienate people from humanity. In Los Angeles, this has special meaning mainly because of the make believe world that is created here and who’s “heroes” reign in this concrete “Potemkin’s Village”.  The proliferation of personal electronic devices is the end of “community” as my generation knew it. Beneath dark sunglasses, behind walled stucco shacks, plugged into an ipod, or talking to someone on a cell phone, no one here is “out” to be social in any way.

Latina nannies huddle on the edge of the sandbox watching their employers' children play in the sand, bundled up like it was Boston cold and not southern California cold which is Boston perfect for this time of year.  Like I said, no one here but us - armed (or toyed) to the gills with the kind of toys; kids my age (now hitting 50), all learned to play "play" with.

Shaded spots in this park seduce couples from other zip codes to meet discreetly and talk out loud and laugh and kiss and do what couples in love are supposed to do, while exiled dads like me surgically removed from “home” find great solace because this is the last ground I can claim as my own, especially now, with Max, who at 5 understands the power of love.  It won't be long when I am no longer part of the weekly rotation from my cell on Burbank to the house I helped make into a home on Cedros and the closer I get to June 29th 2007, the more I realize how much I will miss you kids. The more I think about that, the more I realize how much you will miss me. The cycle of sadness that accompanies these thoughts is often unbearable, but for the sake of my health - mental and physical, I can no longer continue living here.  The routine of picking up Zoe and Max from the closed gate and then dropping them off without a word - despite my documented efforts to settle and be reconciled and to have you children alive and well and the clear of this emotional minefield, all my efforts have been met with the same intransigence I had to live with until the day it ended. Never relating to you children as human beings with feelings and needs, emotional, educational or physical. Only after I put expiration notices on these offers did she reply, and then it was usually an attack, a threat, a “no”.  Never a simple, polite, thoughtful response unencumbered by hate or anger, just more haggling and more denial about what really happened in our relationship that brought it to an ending less dignified than a fish suffocating on the edge of the sand, inches away from the water it so needs.

She has exhausted me and you children who breathe all that hate in the house I broke my back (literally), building.  Out of embarrassment, I have been unable to maintain friendships with people who have long lost their interest in this saga.  Leave people out of your troubles and they lose interest in you. You don’t have to answer. You embrace the truth, by keeping it to yourself.

The end of the current routine will herald a new one, and with it, new hopes and new life challenges.  Getting out of the house on Cedros, away from the constant humiliation was the first step. With no chance to see any resignation, reconciliation, or accommodation, I refuse to continue living – still – playing by her rules.  It is a matter of survival.

 

Tired and cold we began walking towards our dented mini van just as an object criss-crossed the darkening sky at lightening speed.

“Look, Max” I said.  “That’s a two handed kite.”

And for a moment it was you and Zoe and we were leaving the “hof”, tired and sandy and hungry.

”Can we go to the chicken man”, your little mouths watering from the thought of the greasy, delicious barbecued chicken ‘n fries dinner we would have once a week – on a special day.  You little angels spent your entire childhoods, laughing it up with your Abba/Deddy and had plenty of opportunity to fly kites, play in the park or with friends – or just tool around the crowded city on the bike with your dad who everyone knew and who spent every minute of your afternoons tending to you like a little flock. Kite flying was a favorite afternoon pastime; it involved little running, and enabled us to establish a healthy (private) perimeter.

The kite whizzed back and forth and the sight enthralled Max.  Only two hours ago he had flown his first kite. The day before he had taken another first step - into a first Karate class, like his big brother and sister before him, at my initiative.  Every day is another day for more first steps… new experiences.

“Max” I said. “Look over there and see that dad and his kid - with his kid standing right beneath the two handed kite - and look carefully and tell me if you don’t see Ben and me or Zoe and me, in their place.”

With a quizzical look on his round face, nose running he said:

“You’re here Abba, and Ben is sleeping”.

“I know Boo-Boo, but what you are seeing over there is something that happened a long time ago, when Ben and Zoe were your size.”

Getting on my knees in the parking lot next to the car I showed Max how I would hold you or Zoe between my legs and how you would firmly hold on to the steering mechanism while I held your little hands in mine, letting you feel the wild wind.  An act of love, lost in the shadows of time.

And then the most remarkable thing happened.  Max turned to me and said:
“Abba, don’t cry“.

“I’m not Boo-Boo.”  But I was.

That was 5 days ago.

I’ve been bleeding for 8.

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I've had a fascination with watches ever since Grandpa gave me my first watch on my 6th birthday.  I can't recall the wrapping it came in or the ribbon or the card but I vaguely remember the smell of it's leather strap, and the way one of the porcelain Mickey ears broke at it's tip and that I too cried like Zoe would cry: convinced that I had caused all of it's organs to escape and it's eternal hollowness was a direct result of my negligence.  In time Zoe would lose a cell phone in the same manner, and in time I would realize that most gifts have a life expectancy in direct proportion to the excitement quotient of the recipient divided by their approximate age.
I heard on a game show once that grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies for he fact that they share the same primary enemy, which explains why I had such enormous love for Grandma and Grandpa.
Grandpa was a fixture at 139 and more than often came by on his way home to 28 David Rd. from the market after getting getting off the pike at Exit 17.  As he sat down at the kitchen table my mother would go to the wood veneered cabinet where the milchekeh plates were stacked and she'd pull out the bottle of VO7, a shot glass, and with a L'chaim he would send the schnapps (he called it) down his throat, the glow would kick in, his raspy voice softened, he would begin an account of the day.

Today or yesterday it didn't matter, they were all the same; and as he would tell his stories, sitting like a puppy at the edge of the table with my hand holding his left hand down on the table mesmerized by the gleam of his gold wristwatch, I would trace my fingers over it's finely cut edges and he would utzel me with a loving touch; a twinkling eye and with the smell of Old English Leather blending with the VO, his thick accent mingled with the yiddish he used to make up for less than perfect english or to protect my ears, or to punctuate and animate some point in the formica countered world of my mother's kitchen, seated at the table; "so he says to me he says" being my all time favorite expression, as was he my only favorite grandpa…

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