Though he’d been a lawyer when he was younger (he was 48 when I was born), my father owned a bunch of properties—a beach club in the Bronx called Shorehaven, part of the Miracle Mile in Manhasset, and a golf club up in Greenwich called Green Hills—and he worked at both Shorehaven and Green Hills. The way I saw him, he was kind of the Ambassador of those places—he was always tan, and he would wear spiffy, pressed clothes, and he was social: he walked around talking to people, smiling, shaking hands, like that. Maybe I see him that way because those are the times I saw him at his work; I didn’t see him much in his office. (I wonder why?)
Anyway, one time at least, I drove up to Green Hills with my dad, just me and him alone. I remember sitting in the front seat beside him. Though my mom was the kind of parent who talked to her kids, my dad, from my memory, was the kind of parent who didn’t talk much. So I remember driving that long drive from Long Island to Connecticut in silence. I was very small—below window level—so I spent the time looking up at two things, my dad, peacefully driving, and the blue sky, filled with puffy white clouds and the tops of tree branches, passing by.
Deitch 