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Driving West Side Highway. With Chip off the Old Block (not).

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It’s 5:40 a.m. An early jump to beat the morning rush to mid-town Manhattan. I’m in a 50 mph zone, and traffic is blowing by me as if I were standing still. No matter. I’m not chasing them, not today.  I’m on the West Side Highway. Manhattan condo’s tower overhead on my left. Hudson River flows silently on my right. Sun is rising and casting a dreamy glow over all things. Passages from Richard Powers’ new book (The Overstory) flick through consciousness:  It’s morning like the morning when life first came up on dry land.

And the mind panned from Now to yesterday. From Richard to Rachel. To my Rachel.

Rachel’s birthday was yesterday. She took the day off and came home. “You don’t expect me to work on my birthday do you Dad?” With Mom and Dad both working, she was going to spend the day alone at home. Now that doesn’t seem right.  I cancelled meetings, worked from home and scheduled lunch with Rachel at the Rowayton Seafood restaurant.

She orders the Lobster Roll (butter poached with lemon on brioche). Plus fries. Dad orders the blackened salmon on a bed of corn, tomatillo and asparagus. Plus fries.

Waitress asks her if she’d like a glass of wine with lunch. “No Thank you. Ice water would be great.” I watched her interaction with the waitress, her unfolding of her napkin and placing it on her lap, her straightening her dress over her knees, her ease in the surroundings, her comfort in her own skin. Wow. Look at what you’ve become.

I managed to avoid offering beauty tips on hair color (snow white), the number of wrist bracelets (many) and the number of earrings (many). Tanned, wearing a tasteful sundress that she found in a budget shop in Manhattan, she was glowing. Strange. You managed not to pollute a wonderful lunch playing Dad to your 26 year old daughter.  Well done. Conscious?  No. Strangely, it all seemed right. She seemed all right, very right.

We’re in the car on the way home and she’s talking about the family trip to Michigan later in the month. Her love of travel. Her genuine anticipation for the trip. And then there’s her Dad, sitting next to her.  Quiet. Thinking. Same genes. Same bloodline. She surging into Prime. You’re on the backside of it. A tweak of envy, she’s passing you by and then some.

The prospect of travel (for me, eight miles from home to the Rowayton Seafood Restaurant or to Michigan three hours by flight) is described by Joseph Epstein as “more effort than pleasure” – and akin to “Philip Larkin who when asked if he wished to visit China, answered yes, indeed, if he could return home that night.”

We pull up to the driveway at home. I feel the pressure lifting, the unease burning off.

She reaches over to give me a kiss on the cheek.  “Thanks for lunch Dad. It was great.”

Home Sweet Home.


Notes:

  • Post inspired by Zach Baron, from “In Praise of Being Washed” (GQ, July 2, 2018): “They’re all attempts to remedy the same thing that plagued me at 16, and at 25: Relax. All Friday afternoon, in increasingly strident tones, I am telling myself: Relax… I think about all the dumb Fridays in my life. High school: drugs. College: alcohol. Twenties: Let’s not talk about what any of us did in our 20s. And now the dumb Fridays of my present arise in front of my windshield—all my flaws, my corny pastimes, the great things I’ve left undone and will never do. I…am consumed with thoughts about how some other, younger version of myself would be so terribly disappointed at what I’ve become. But what I mostly think is:Damn, I wish I’d known about this earlier. And in that moment, I finally relax.”
  • Photo: Rowayton Seafood Restaurant

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