What Does Papa Really Want?

Father's Day.  The cat has done nothing for me.  She is just that way.  She simply mews her milky, "me. . . me. . . ."  It is O.K., though, as I am old and practical.  Almost.  Last night I got lost emailing a woman who was going to some sort of entertainment thing in a theme-ish park, none of which I understand in the least.  What I do understand is that she can't text lest someone checks her phone.  But she was emailing from her phone?  I guess I don't understand at all.  She was drinking champagne in the back of a Mercedes, she said, then later Riesling/Vodka cocktails.  I didn't even know there was such a thing.  The more she drank, of course, the more provocative the emails became.  As in "to provoke."  We moved further from "wish you were here," it seemed.

I told her I would buy her a copy of "West With the Night" by Beryl Markham.  I sent her this, then downloaded and began reading Cheever's short stories.  I sent her some links to songs before I realized with horror that I was in essence making her a mix tape.

Later, she was drinking doubles, she said.  In the morning, it would be Father's Day.  As my old friend C.C. likes to tell me, "What could go wrong?"

"April is the cruelest month. . . ."

But I digress.  Mothers and children are busy now making papa his favorite breakfast and playing his favorite songs.  If they are lucky, he likes poached eggs with toast and fresh mangos with sweet coconut milk.  And if they are even luckier, his favorite song is "The Girl from Ipanema."  With the best of all possible luck, of course, he would be me.

Later everyone will do just what dad wants to do.  No, wait, that isn't possible.  How does this work?  When I was a kid, I think my mother would buy my father a bottle of Old Spice Aftershave or Cologne and we'd eat breakfast, and then we forgot about it until dinner when we would remember it again.

But what does papa really want to do?  I'll have to go check an old Steve Martin movie to answer that.  The answers to all Perfect American Family Dreams lay there.  Of course, Steve Martin became a father for the first time at  age 67.  His tribute to his own father's death is fairly heartwarming:

“In his death, my father . . . did something he could not do in life. He brought our family together."

Steve. . . you give me hope.