Dear Ether,

Ahhhhh.  The joys of literature.  Of a good book.  I’m a self-confessed bibliophile.  I’m always caught with my nose in some sort of bound beauty that takes me away from the mundane drudgery of everyday life.  In the future I want to write a few reviews of some of my favorite titles that have stolen my heart (and breath). I’d also love to talk about the authors who have shown me the true art of being a writer.

However, today is about judging a book by its cover.  I wanted to recommend a beautiful set of books by Penguin Classics that have hit the shelves and revamped some of the most famous pieces of fiction in history.  These are amazing presents to give for the upcoming holiday. Not only are they great for collectors of books, but they’re a neat way to jazz up a tired bookshelf.  They’re also a fun way to get a novice reader excited about literature and maybe not see these great tales as just dusty, old relics.

Coralie Bickford-Smith, acclaimed designer, created splendid foil patterns stamped on linen cases with colored endpapers and a lovely touch of a ribbon marker. You’d think these would cost a lot of dosh, but they’re only $20 a piece and worth every cent.  The eight classics are: Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  My favorite covers are The Picture of Dorian Gray, with white peacock feathers adorning its delicious cover (the dandy author would be chuffed, I reckon!) and the ultra-feminine Sense and Sensibility in pink and blue with girlish flowers climbing all over the cover.

Now tell me you wouldn't mind flipping through these beauties?

Give all eight to a fellow book fiend.  Or, give a carefully chosen title and get a hungry collector started.  With me, I’m chomping at the bit to buy The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Even though I own several copies already, it’s one of my favorite novels of all time, and I couldn’t imagine not owning this oh-so-special edition.  The books are available EVERYWHERE and so easy to grab.  Hassle-free shopping!

Thanks for hanging out at my literary corner and instead of giving ANOTHER crummy holiday jumper or thoughtless gift certificate, give this a shot.  I promise you, it’ll make quite a statement and won’t cost you a bundle.

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365

The words highlighted above are the perfect summation of how I feel about my father. However, we are bound like a book, and I believe our words, like a novel, are already written. Read this post which is so dear to my heart and let me know your thoughts. I think anyone with a father can relate somehow to this piece. Maybe Ethers, you can give me SOME hope? If we keep using the book analogy...and the picture above....the page is not fully printed. Maybe there's time to add more text to it.

Dear Ether, 

The first man I ever fell in love with was my father.  I suppose you could technically call it love at first sight. 

He was born in Longmeadow, MA (a small, peaceful town where homes are from the 18^th century and have plaques proudly boasting their build dates on their spotless facades).  He was the eldest of three boys and since this is an anonymous blog, I will attest to the fact that he was by far the smartest.  He excelled at everything he did and when it came time to go to University he was courted by every Ivy League school (Harvard even offered him a yearly stipend for his pocket money).  He became one of Eli’s men and went to Yale on full scholarship, became a Skull and Bone and sailing through college with perfect grades and varsity sports under his belt, went to Yale Law School.  If you look at notebooks from his time at college (this was before laptops) his handwriting is in perfect script and there is not a cat-scratch in them.  Of course after graduating from Yale Law, he went to one of the finest firms in the country in Manhattan, got a stunning apartment in a brownstone on the Upper East Side and worked for five years, toiling away being told he’d probably be made the youngest partner if he kept up his fervor.  However, he was unhappy.  He was a writer through and through.  And, lucky, brilliant Dad, and his writing partner, wrote a script and sent it to Hollywood with their fingers crossed.  And guess what?  They landed a job on a TV show immediately.  

Oh, of course there are many more things about him.  That he was perpetually youthful looking which would serve him well as he aged (people often ask him where he hides his portrait).  That he has never had a health problem in his life (knock wood).  That he has always had a love of cars, so much so that when my grandparents, in the 1950’s bought a pink Cadillac (yes indeed) with white leather seats and, amazingly, a record player (the latest and greatest in technology—if they only knew what the future would hold) he sat for 7 hours in it mesmerized.  He says when he closes his eyes he can still see his feet not being able to touch the ground and can smell the interior. 

And so, the tale continues.  My father comes to L.A., works on very famous comedy shows, meets my mother, 2 years later they get married, a year later they have my older brother and then 2 years later I’m born—and my love affair begins.  It’s unfair, really.  It was my mother who gave up a hugely powerful job as a producer, rare for a woman in those days, to become a stay at home mom, and become the bad guy.  My dad worked 12-hour days trying to squeeze out jokes sometimes at 2am (not an easy task).  Often I wouldn’t see him at all.  But when I would hear that car pull into the carport, I would run downstairs and throw my arms around his legs.  

This is what I remember.  He always had a brown briefcase with gold numeric lock keys and never wore a suit.  He always had a stern look on his face and disappeared upstairs.  It was only later did I find out that he was so stressed out and filled with anxiety that he needed to be left alone and decompress.  As an adult and a writer I understand this now.  But then, it wounded me.  And that made me want him more.  And this could be why I have so many attachment issues with men.  But that’s a whole other round we can discuss another time Ethers.  Through the years and his many styles of eyeglasses (whoa, there were some beauts’) I sought his approval.  My mother was so hard on us and was the school marm while my father was the hero who swept through and was quiet and calm.  On weekends we would go to the beach or he would read “The Arabian Nights” or Dickens to us.  I had a canopy bed and he would sit in the dark improvising the most masterful tales until he lulled me to sleep.  The only requisite was that I give him a topic.  

As I became a teenager and he became a very successful drama writer and producer (and eventually and Emmy Award winner) we became wealthier, he calmed down, but no matter what I could do, the man I was in love with never indulged me with pride.  He always was a critic.  I would show him my writing and it would be scarred with red marks.  I’d be talking to him and he’d correct my grammar.  I’d be playing soccer and  could see him peripherally on the sideline with a puckered look on his face and screaming “Come on One of 365, get in there!”  He did always tell me how beautiful I was—even when I had braces, bad eyebrows, spots and frizzy hair.  But I never felt like I was ever going to be good enough.  I was never going to be a savant like him.  I’d already failed and I wasn’t even 18.  I certainly wasn’t going to get courted by Ivy League schools or become a lawyer.  I tried everything to make up for that.   I killed myself in school to the point of exhaustion.  I forced myself to become a straight-A student when it wasn’t natural for me.  I went to summer school and did extra work to make up for, god forbid, a B or B+.  I joined every team possible and became a varsity tennis and soccer player.  But my math failed me and I failed my SAT’s in math.  2 hours of my life, after 13 years of school,  and I didn’t get into any of the colleges I wanted.  I ended up going to a top 25 small liberal arts college in CT (a pathetic attempt to try and re-live what my father had in New Haven) and fell apart there.  I became angry and depressed and slept all day and never attended classes.  I had bad relationships with men who I didn’t like let alone even love and was pained and lonely.  That’s when I bolted for England.  You’ll know the rest of that story eventually.  This is about my dad.  

To this day we bang heads at every occasion.  He’s retired now and is always around to judge.  He’ll comment on everything from weight to writing.  He’s yet to ever look at a piece of my work and ever say it was good; he always has a qualm with it.  He’s even sent back an E-mail I wrote him with corrections for me to fix.  When we fight we are both so similar.  We’re cutting and mean.  But it’s so funny…….I try to be intelligent when I fire at him because even in an argument I want to earn his respect.  So Ethers, you must be asking, “This is the first man she ever loved?”  Oh yes.  And I compare everyone I ever meet to him.   Even myself.  Because to me, he is what I would have liked to have been.  He is a constant reminder of, what I see, as perfection.  Yes, of course I’m no fool and see that he has so many character flaws.  But his achievements and his health and his wit and ease with himself–I would have dreamt for that to have been passed down to me.  Whenever I meet an old colleague of his or a college mate, they always say he was the greatest guy they ever met.  My friends all swooned over him.  I once asked him why he was so easy going to those he didn’t know as well or care as much for and he said, “Because I don’t love them.”  I guess that’s why I have such a fucked up view of love too.  He feels he has to be the bad guy to get the point across and get the irons in the fire.  I just wish instead of irons being in the fire, that there would have been just a tremendous glow and warmth exuding from it.

I don’t know what I will do when the time comes when my father is out of my life.  He’s so intertwined with it.  My brother resembles my dad AND my mom.  But I’m a spitting image of him.  It’s funny, everyday I have to look in the mirror and see the man who I love more than anything.  The first man I ever loved.  But also the man who will probably always haunt me.  When I close my eyes and I picture my father I see him sitting in the backyard on a sunny day.  He’s tan with dark hair, trim and in one of our lovely wooden chairs with the dog at his feet.  As always, he’s immersed himself in a novel.  I stare at him through the French windows of our sunroom and I see him look up from time to time putting his finger in the page where he’s left his last paragraph, and he closes his eyes.  Is he soaking up the sun?  Is he worried?  Is he thinking about life?  Thinking, possibly of ME?  And then I see him give his head a small shake and open the book again looking down once more to read.  This is the first man I ever loved.  And to my dying day, even when I am old and he is dust, I will always wonder what he really thought of me.  

If he could read this, which he never will, I would beg for his forgiveness for failing him and I would tell him that the only reason I ever stood up to him was to try and earn his respect.  But inside I was crumbling.  And if he had said the word or just put his arms around me, he would have silenced my vicious tongue.  Every year that passes I know that we are too far-gone to ever be what I had hoped for.  He really has always been the old dog that can’t learn a new trick.  And part of this is my embracing being an adult and learning acceptance.  But I still look at him through the same eyes I had as a little girl, for he hasn’t really changed much, and I walk around haunted by my first love. 

Dedicatedly yours, 

—One of 365