travels with my dad

‘Remind me to call your mother’

Friday. 9 p.m. My father and I are taking a train to New York in the morning for a father-and-son weekend. My mother decided it would be safest if my father slept at my house the night before — just in case.

He is now at my door, suitcase in hand and travel fanny pack cinched tight enough to make any would-be train bandits think twice.

As a family, we never really vacationed much, so this is serious business. One of our only trips was to Los Angeles where we stayed at an Econo Lodge. I remember sitting by the pool listening to my parents yell in the motel room three floors above. They weren’t fighting, just naturally loud people — a race of angry giants who’d been shrunk into the bodies of little Jews on vacation.

During our stay, we visited my mother’s high school friend and her family, the Butmans, and all together, we went to Disneyland. While the Butmans were a family that communicated through slaps on the back and neck rubs, the Goldsteins, as earlier stated, communicated though yelling and, when particularly impassioned, finger-wagging, kitchen-counter pounding, and recriminatory, teary-eyed looks.

It was the year the massive roller coaster, Space Mountain, had opened and the Butmans were excited to ride it. Since my father refused to wait in line like a sucker, the Goldsteins instead went off to watch a film about all the peoples of the world at an educational pavilion.

(Years later, confusing Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain for the novelization of the Disneyland roller coaster ride, I’d attempt to read it — to recapture all that I’d missed — and after only three pages, I would put it down and never pick it back up.)

Afterwards, the Butmans seemed reinvigorated and bonded by their experience while the Goldsteins were able to yell hello in five languages.

7 a.m. I awake to the sound of yelling coming through my father’s cell. In the kitchen, I find him zipping the phone back into his fanny pack. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Your mother was angry because I woke her,” he says. “Why’d you call so early?” “She made me promise I would.”

8 a.m. As we enter the metro to go to the train station, my father produces a ticket. It is wrapped in a sandwich baggie, and the baggie is inside a change purse, which is in his travel fanny pack. “I don’t think they use those tickets anymore,” I say. “Your mother gave it to me,” he says. He hands the ticket to the young man at the booth who turns it over in his hand, inspecting it as one would a pottery fragment from an ancient ruin.

“We haven’t used these in over 10 years,” he says. “I’ve never actually seen one.”

I swipe my father through, and he chases after me with a fist full of coins.

“Take my money!” he yells loud enough to make several people turn around.

“You’ll get me back in New York,” I say. “We’ll have some fun there.” He nods in agreement. “Just remind me to call your mother before we get on the train,” he says. “She made me promise I would.”