Part 3 (1/2)

The same goes for portion control. I'm careful about my portions, but not at the movies. All movie candy has one portion size. Two hours.

Movie popcorn isn't food, it's gambling. You never know if you'll win or lose. Most often, you lose, because movie popcorn can taste like blown-in fibergla.s.s insulation or paper, salted. Sometimes you win, and get a bag like I had the other night-a lovely canary gold, freshly popped, tasting of real Jersey corn. That's one win in forty-odd years of movie popcorn. Yet, gambler that I am, I know that I'll hit the jackpot again someday. That's why I keep playing movie popcorn.

In contrast, the appeal of movie candy is its very predictability. If movie popcorn is a date, movie candy is a marriage. It always tastes the same, so much so that you can have a certain go-to movie candy for years. Raisinets has been my favorite movie candy for the past decade. It never disappoints. It always tastes chewy, soft, chocolaty, and vaguely healthy. My relations.h.i.+p to Raisinets has lasted longer than both my marriages, and cost me far less.

Before Raisinets, for me there was only Goobers, again for almost ten years. It wasn't cheating to switch from Goobers to Raisinets, because both are in the same movie candy food group, namely Chocolate Contaminated by Natural Foods.

The decade before that, I always went with Whoppers, which were from a related food group, Chocolate Contaminated by Unnatural Foods.

I used to love Whoppers, chocolate-covered malted milk b.a.l.l.s that come in a faux milk carton, a reminder of their fauxdairy origins. I stopped eating Whoppers only when I kept encountering what daughter Francesca calls the Dead Whopper.

The Dead Whopper looks alive on the outside-smooth, round, s.h.i.+ny, and almost brown. But as soon as you bite down, you know. The Dead Whopper collapses instead of crunching, and flattens to a gummy rock. It doesn't taste like chocolate, it just tastes brown. And there you are, stuck with a cheekful of Dead Whopper and no napkin. It takes trust to eat candy in pitch darkness, and the Dead Whopper breaks its vows.

So I divorced Whoppers. I aim for quality control in my candy marriages.

Back in my youth, my movie candy came only from the High Maintenance Group, composed of Jujyfruits, Dots, and the immortal Jujubes. This group contains fruit plastic pressed into unrecognizable shapes and tinted the color of unpopular crayons. I used to love candy from this group because I was younger and had more time to deal with their candy drama. into unrecognizable shapes and tinted the color of unpopular crayons. I used to love candy from this group because I was younger and had more time to deal with their candy drama.

The High Maintenance Group required a do-it-yourself dental scaling, right there in the movie seat, with your fingernail. It was labor intensive, not to mention disgusting. Picking your teeth and eating what you retrieve is acceptable only for eight-year-olds and under.

The High Maintenance Group also required you to hold the candy up to the movie screen to determine its color/flavor. I can't tell you how many movies I saw through a Lysol-yellow Jujyfruits filter. I liked only the red and black Jujyfruits, so I had to perform the ritual of finding them by the light of the screen, then dumping the orange, green, and yellows back into the box. In no time, only the colors I hated were left, so I had to rank them, then eat them in descending order of hate.

It required a lot of decision-making, for a candy.

No candy was more high maintenance than Jujubes, the founding candy of the group. I think they may be defunct now, because I never see Jujubes at the movies anymore. I admired Jujubes for their moxie, not to mention their enigmatic name. They weren't people-pleasers, like Raisinets. Jujubes dared you to like them. They made too much noise, as if they wanted out of their narrow box. They could crack a molar. Their colors were profoundly ugly. They tasted like drill bits.

And you know what?

I miss them.

I Miss My Father

You know that Mother Mary is extraordinary. Father Frank is, too, though he has pa.s.sed away. The fact that he is gone seems simply beside the point. I'm still a daddy's girl.

Let me tell you why.

Oddly, I'll start by telling you what Father Frank was not. He couldn't fix everything; he didn't have all the answers. He wasn't one of these all-knowing, omnipotent fathers who solve all problems, handle all situations, and generally stand in for G.o.d or, at least, Santa Claus.

He wasn't a tough guy, either. He couldn't even bargain for a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Once we ended up paying $50 for the Charlie Browniest tree on the lot. The asking price was $35 but he gave the tree guy a tip for las.h.i.+ng it to the car.

Nor was he a sugar-daddy kind of father, granting all the requests of his adored, and only, daughter. In fact, though I was always adored, I found out at midlife that I wasn't even his only daughter.

I learned I had a half-sister, whom he had fathered while in college at Berkeley. She had been put up for adoption in California and eventually came to find him. He opened his arms to her, even though my meeting her was like a bad episode of her, even though my meeting her was like a bad episode of The Patty Duke Show, The Patty Duke Show, which may be redundant. which may be redundant.

So he made mistakes, some with blue eyes. By the way, before you feel sorry for my half-sister, she got a wonderful adoptive family. I got The Flying Scottolines. At least I wrote a novel about it-in fact, several.

My family is a miniseries.

Above all, my father loved life. He liked everybody and he ate anything. I cannot remember him not smiling. When he found out my brother was gay, he went down to South Beach to help him open a gay bar. I'm not sure who got the first dance.

He was agreeable and easy. I remember once he told me he'd seen a certain movie, and I asked him why, because it had been badly reviewed. He said, ”That's where the line was going.”

He was a reliable man, too. An architect, he never missed a day of work for sickness or any other reason. He loved his job, always. Any trip in the car would take us somehow past a construction site, and he'd get out and explain how the building was being constructed. He was always home at 6:15 for dinner and he always fell asleep on the living room floor, afterwards.

Sleeping on the floor is a big thing in my family.

Of course, he was most reliable about me. We talked all the time, about everything. He always asked what I learned in school that day and listened carefully to my answer. He helped me with my trig homework; he taught me to read a map. He drove me and my friends everywhere, both ways-no trading off with other parents for him.

He clapped at every high school play, whether I had a big or little part. When I was older, he beamed through every book signing. At one of my signings, someone said to him, ”You must be very proud that your daughter is an author.” little part. When I was older, he beamed through every book signing. At one of my signings, someone said to him, ”You must be very proud that your daughter is an author.”

He replied, ”I was proud of her the day she came out of the egg.”

And he was.

I felt his love and pride all the time, no matter how I screwed up. When my first marriage foundered, about the time daughter Francesca was born, I quit my job and went completely broke. He didn't have much money, but what he had, he offered to me. When I found a job part-time, he babysat for Francesca every morning, made her breakfast, and took her to school. From him, she learned that it was possible to toast a bagel with the cream cheese already on top.

She will never forget that.

Nor will I.

Sometimes I feel sorry for fathers. And I wonder if they feel sorry for themselves. It's as if they're the supporting actor of parents, or second-best. It's like we have a Father's Day only because we don't want them to feel left out after Mother's Day. In a d.i.c.k-and-Jane world, it's moms who get top billing, and fathers who are simply, at best, there.

But may I suggest something?

There's a lot to be said for simply being there.

My father was always there. And whenever he was with me, I knew it was exactly where he wanted to be. There.

And I feel absolutely certain that, even in this day of cell phones and BlackBerrys, he wouldn't be checking either of them when he was there. In all my adult life, I have never met anyone who was so completely there.

There is underrated. There is a sleeper. There doesn't get much hype, but there is about love and devotion. About constancy and sacrifice. much hype, but there is about love and devotion. About constancy and sacrifice.

Here is my wish for you: On Father's Day, may you be lucky enough to have your father there.

Baby Bird

I am a woman who likes routines, but now that daughter Francesca is home from college for the summer, the times they are a-changing.

By way of background, she is my only child and I'm a single parent, so it's just the two of us. Even so, I had gotten used to the empty-nest thing. I liked everything being in order, or at least in my favorite form of disarray. I had my own hours and habits. I walked in the morning with the dogs. Worked all day. Cooked something simple and light during the evening news. Worked at night or read, guilt-free. Showered as necessary.

But my baby bird is back, and she's wrenched my life out of shape. For example, I had to move all of my winter clothes, boxes, and books out of her room, as she insisted on having a bed.

Annoying.