Happy Birthday Dad - Goodbye Sylvia

Today's my dad's birthday. He'd be 98 if he were still alive. He was born into a totally different world. Before electricity, cars, airplanes had taken over the world. His father was a wine merchant who would travel around Europe filling up people's wine cellars. He lived through WW I in Germany, often hungry. Then, without going anywhere, he landed in pre-Nazi Germany. He was lucky. He had an aunt in Chicago, a sister of my grandmother, who sponsored him to come to the United States. After several years of working on this, he arrived in 1934. By the time the US got into WW II, my father was a citizen and in the army. He got a good break, not sure why, and was stationed in Key West, Florida. So my mom, whom he'd just married, could go along.

After the war they moved back to Chicago and then to LA where my mother's brother had ended up. But the marriage between two German Jewish refugees didn't work out. But they maintained very amiable relations for the rest of his life and I stayed with my dad many weekends as I was growing up. When we were together, his time was totally spent on me and we had a lot of great adventures, especially when we went off for two weeks in the summer. He introduced me to so many things that are still important parts of my life - the outdoors, foreign films, art, theater, critical thinking, to name a few.

He's been gone 21 years now. And tonight, as we are getting ready to go visit my mom in LA, we learned that another close family friend (relative through marriage on my wife's side) died in her 90s. You can't be surprised when someone dies in their 90's and logically you can't be too upset. But it still tears a hole in your soul when anyone important in your life dies. Sylvia had a good and rich life til the end. She was bright and caring and alert and someone I always looked forward to seeing. I did stop by and visit her and Mose on my last trip to LA. I'd been hoping to see her again this trip.

I've got a little more to do before going to bed and taking off tomorrow. If all goes well, we'll get to visit with our daughter for a couple of hours at Seatac.