Dear Michael,

You terrify me. Don’t know who else to put it, don’t know how else I can say it. Let me tell you a brief little story:

As you know, or might remember, I used to smoke. Not a lot, half a pack a day. Terrible habit, the kind that will kill you. And don’t tell me vaping is smoking because it isn’t. it doesn’t compare. When you smoke you literally feel something in your lungs stopping you from getting enough air. But I loved it, it made me cool, it was romantic: I was killing myself slowly. This is the sort of stupid thing, as a teenager, right about your age, I used to think. Anyway, when I started dating your mother, she said the cigarettes bothered her. So I quit, instantly, I was in love, this was the woman of dreams. Fast forward seven years, we felt very pressured to get married and well, I wasn’t making much money and somehow I had to make it, and I started smoking again. Irony right? Can’t afford to get married but you can afford some cancer-sticks. Anyway. Fast forward a year, Mommy was preggers and we found out it was a girl. I insta-quit. No question. Got myself some Nicorette and chewed away. Now the time in between her and you, I wont get into, but it was rough, but I was smokeless nonetheless.

Until we found out our next child, you, was going to be a boy and yes, right away, I went to the 7/11 and picked up a pack. You see, before I even knew you, I was afraid of you. What kind of father was I going to be not having grown up with one? The only father figures I knew in my early years were uncles that had little time for me and even less pity. The father I did know, well, you’ve heard the stories. I never learned how to play catch, I could barely dribble a basketball. The things I was good at was football which, when you think about it, was easy: grab the ball with two hands and plow through anyone that got in your way. I was already husky by the time I was 5. And handball, which was basically slapping a small ball and making other people run around instead. I remember sitting on the porch and thinking to myself, I have nothing to give this kid, this boy, my son. The only thing I knew was violence and disappointment. Of not measuring up to the other boys in the neighborhood with messed up ideas of being macho, being bad ass, being tough.

This is the me you knew when you came into the world, into our world, into my world. A father who didn’t know who to be a man, let alone pass down anything worthwhile to a son. I did not, and still do not, know how to connect. To be frank with you, it might not seem this way, but I have no idea what I’m doing, I only know where I went wrong and how I don’t want you to make the same mistakes. How people hurt me and how I don’t want anyone to hurt you. But you were precious and delightful, stalwart and stubborn. A miracle to a great degree. You were both quiet but would burst on a dime. Much the same way you are today. Like I had said, you’re heart was just too big for your body. Because every day you are more and more like me, in good ways, in better ways, so much so that it’s not like me at all. You’re you, evolving into something greater. Sharp and insightful, cautious but silly. I love everything you are becoming.

Done stop scaring me.

Love, always,
me

dear ioanna, first born,

daughter of mine, heir to my neurotic obsession with human behavior and near impossible to contain depths of empathy, what am I to do with you, with my inability to let you go and yet my insistence on pushing you further and further out into the world?

this year has been tumultuous. So much has changed, nothing has changed. You’ve left and everything has changed. You’ve left and nothing has changed. And I struggle with the anxieties and pride of you having left. I struggle with the delight and trepidation of when you come home. But this isn’t home. Home is over there. But over there isn’t home either, it’s over here. I wonder if you are ok, I fully imagine all the horrible things that could happen in order for them to not happen. I try not to imagine your return. I try to imagine desperately your life outside of my care. I imagine an apartment in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan, all the places but never home. I try, but it sneaks in, like a mouse finding a crack in the foundation and wiggles its way into someplace warm and safe. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair to see you grow and embrace the world with such wonder and confidence. It isn’t fair that in order for you to be all the things you want and are meant to be has to be at away from us. It’s not fair that this is the cost to see you flourish.

But I’m willing to pay it, even at a distance.

love, always,
me

my love,

it is so difficult to explain, this life

on the one hand, there is worry and stress and planning and juggling and conflict and disappointment and noise and hardship and grind

on the other, on the other there is tenderness, laughter, kindness, consolation, quiet, music, excitement, confidence, trust, understanding and love. above all else, the safety of love, the comfort of love, the warmth of love

i’ve said it hundreds of times: this is not the life I was supposed to live. it was not supposed to be this, bountiful, this full. there wasn’t supposed to be this many people in it. there wasn’t supposed to be anyone in it at all

even I wasn’t supposed to be in it

but then there was you. and you made me real. you made me present. you made me responsible for myself and my life and my living. you made it worth living. you made me worth living

i don’t know how you do it, i don’t know how you, everyday, on any given day, make it delightful. that’s the right word for it

you bring, after everything else, you bring delight

delight, of the light. yes, yes indeed. you are of the light

you are the light in every breath I take and i can’t stop breathing you in

Thio Ari died. I don’t understand the details, the language barrier, the clutter of my memory, I was told he was in ill health. I was told broken hip, I was told maybe cancer, maybe his lungs, over the years. Forgotten. Because I thought he would be there the next time I saw him. But he died, and it sounds like complications from a stroke he had recently. That he couldn’t talk, that he was trapped, and he went. Maybe overnight. Maybe he closed his eyes at some point when no one was looking and a nurse, an orderly, noticed he was gone. Maybe he had company and he was just exhausted waiting for them to leave the room so he could let go without any fanfare or hysteria.

He was my mother’s first cousin. When I was young, he pulled me aside and toured Athens with me, talked to me about Hellenism vs modern Greeks etc. How one thing was not the same as the other and to know the difference between national and ethnic pride. He taught me the legacy of things and how to share it, not horde it for yourself.

69. and I’m right there, 50, and it slams me, bowls me over, right in the middle of the day. Io’s lifetime and that’s it. relive everything I’ve had with them, then gone. And I can’t fathom it, I can’t accept it. I will not die, you will not die, she will not die, we will not grow old, we will remain timeless, and it’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie. I have yet to see it. yes, wrinkles around the eyes, greys in the beard, slightly at the temple, but the skin, the skin still supple.

But it will happen, it will happen because time has always been the enemy, and I cannot stave it off, I do not want to die but I know I have to. And I don’t know how I want to die, even if it’s, ok, I go to sleep, do I want to know it’s the last time? Do I want to witness it? is it better sudden? but then, is everything in place for them? For her? Will they be ok? When will I know they’ll be ok? When I do know, will that be the time? I can never relax, I cannot die, she cannot die, over and over, you will not die, you must die.

Dear Michael,

This is who I see when I see you, this right here.

This is how I see you. Expectant, shy but confidant. Even with the crooked haircut. Already turning away. All, every bit of you, ready for the camera, for what’s ahead. Not fully smiling, not fully enjoying it, hint of a smile, eyes clear and deep, almost endless. One arm still hooked back around my neck. As if steadying yourself, finding that last moment of purchase before leaping, before finding yourself. You have no idea who you are, but you don’t care. Not quite reckless, not arrogant, just literally head strong.

This is what I hope I mean to you. That last bit of holding on without looking, a touch stone you can remind yourself is there even without touching. Of knowing I am there to fall back on, I am there for you to push off of, to gain momentum.

I love you and adore you and admire you. I will always protect you, I will always let you go when you need me to but I will always anchor you when you feel untethered. Just reach back and you will find me there. I might be the launching pad, but you’re the rocket.

always,

me

The one thing I have noticed over the years, as you and I get older, is we’re getting softer. And I don’t mean this in a bad way, I don’t mean we are getting weak or feeble or absent minded. What I mean is, we laugh easier. We forgive easier. We look around us, and while we still worry, we are finding it easier to relax. I think that bothers us on some level. We still feel that urgent need to get things done, to protect and plan, but’s different, it doesn’t have that same do or die taste to it. Instead, we look around us and see what we have built, what has come out of the toil and hard work. We’re actually having a chance to admire it, to breathe it. Sure, we still want more, we still want to grow and secure a future, but at least, now, we can take the time to reflect and to say, despite all the things we could’ve done differently, and I want you to know this, to understand what I telling you, despite all the regrets and could’ve would’ve should’ves, you have given us so much baba, so much you have taught us and given us and prepared us. I do not deserve the father you are to me, I truly don’t and sometimes I don’t know quite know how to measure up, other than to try to do what you do, think like you do, prepare the foundation for a better life for my kids, and hopefully, their children. Like you have baba, like you have.

Happy birthday

Always,

me

my love,

There is no place without you, there is no breath, there is no hope or joy or -wait. This is crap. This is drivel. This is beneath me. This is not what you signed up for.

This is not what I promised you. This is not what was on my mind on the tram over Randall’s Island. This is not what was on my mind when I kissed you for the first time in November. This is not what was on my mind when we walked from Lark St to the Blockbuster on Colonial Ave. This was not what was on my mind when I wrapped my arm around you for our first dance as a married couple. This was not what was on my mind in Paris avoiding the hustlers at Sacre Coeur. This is not what I promised you when we looked at the bones of this house and thought we could raise a family here.

You were never hope or a place or a fleeting thought. You walked into a room and we went outside and never came back. You walked into a room and everything became something. You walked into a room and I disappeared.

You walked into a room and we were, as if we had always been and will be, always and forever

happy twentieth

me

Not a day goes by, every day that goes by, once a day, not since that day, but some day, it will happen all in one day and it will be as if that day never happened and we will sit and say, as the sun filters through the alley, do you remember back in the day?

While watching the movie, sudden horror of my mortality. Not sure what it was, but it was sudden and there and solid. In the middle of the living room, after an indoor jog, I tell her, how much longer can I lift 400 pounds. My little girl is in Arlington on the phone telling me how a fortune teller told her she’s an old should and has lived 47 lives.

47, a star trek favorite. It repeats. Does any of this repeat? No, it’s all at once, only once, then it ends and I cannot face it, still. Yesterday was the first day it invaded during the day. I’m a ticking time bomb. There are very few things I know, and this is one of them. The finality of death. I believe in quantum physics. I believe in high probability and the beauty of chaos. That is how I know that death is an end that is total and complete.

The best I can hope for is a quiet end of a long life, alone and she has been taken care of, I’ve seen her off and she will be buried close enough for the children to visit her that I won’t know it’s coming, it will not be on my mind, it’ll be a night like any other and everything will be taken care of, but I won’t know it.

Was there ever a time, this time, some other time, time and again, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

Running into parents we’ve known throughout the years but never quite clicked and the ease of it, the shared songs and fears of growing children and aging pains. And just the night before, with a completely different group, we were the geriatrics at the dinner table, the senior couple, the ones with the most miles in. Not quite sure how to feel about that, if we’re a success story or not with so many variations of a common theme, people trying to do more than just get by in a world that was determined to constantly escape their grasp.

And again and again, I’ve met you all before, I’ve known you and listened to you and ignored you and befriended you and abandoned you and resented you and it’s the most important moment in the world and also the most trivial.