by katz on February 17, 2012
Hasidic Napoleon Dynamite?
Last summer I went back to Miami to visit my dad and prove I could be my own therapist. I had been seeing a psychiatrist for no less than a dozen still unresolved issues. Like with most other things, I ignored her advice and, in return, I gave her tips on how to treat me. I decided that I should retrieve old footage of myself as a kid for reasons reserved for another blog posting. Basically, I wanted to bear witness to myself as a child to prove to there was something there that remained familiar.
So, on my trip back home, I had my dad transfer old vhs tapes to DVD for me. He asked me to log each disk as I viewed them and note the events they documented and the people at each affair. I’m watching the videos now and, as I’m writing this, the Hasidic equivalent to Napoleon Dynamite just came on the screen, half closed his eyes, and chanted in Hebrew. This part I labeled “Tony and Yehudit’s wedding.” [Read full post...]
by katz on November 22, 2011
In a few months my dad will turn 70 and my brother and I will usher him into this new decade in with a PAR-TAY! My dad goes dancing several times a week so we plan on having this celebration at Round Up, greater Miami’s country dancing hot spot. We will invite all his dancing friends and later that night they will gossip in hushed tones about me and why, on this of all nights, his daughter didn’t bother to show up and instead, this weird little man jumped into the family pictures.
My dad is kind but guarded. Reserved, but well known to be eccentric at times. He is both conservative and as untraditional as it gets. Have you seen Curb Your Enthusiasm? My father is essentially Larry David if Larry David didn’t golf and instead took figure skating classes when he went through his mid-life crisis.
It has become a silent agreement between me and my dad that, while I am not around, he gets his old life where his family is nuclear and I am not his transsexual offspring. Let me state for the record that my father loves me intensely. He would gladly give his life for mine and concerned for my safety, he was the person who drove me to and from my mastectomy. Before the surgery, I prepared the meals that my mom used to cook for us in the hopes that they would be comforting to a man who just took his daughter in to get her breasts lopped off. On the Daily, I alternate between extreme guilt for what I have put him through and frustration that he is so resistant to accept me fully as his son in all aspects of his life. When I go back to visit him in Miami, I pull my car into the side driveway and, keys in hand, I race to the back door hoping that the neighbors on our cul-de-sac won’t see me and ask my dad about his visitor. He didn’t request for me to do this, but still, I want to protect him from the difficulties of explaining me.
That’s what it feels like to me, protection. I want him to get to keep his old life. In a way it’s both horrible and so cool. Elizabeth (my former me) gets to live on. Elizabeth travels for work, calls on holidays, and leaves notes in his car reminding him to buckle up for safety. Elizabeth is not so photogenic though. Pictures of me around the house have acquired the Peter Pan syndrome, forever stuck as my 10th grade school picture image. My dad ran into the parents of an old buddy of mine and when they asked what I was up to, my dad said “she’s in entertainment”. Elizabeth is quite the mover and groover and I hope wherever she is in my dad’s head, she is happy. [Read full post...]
