"Oh, come on, it wasn't that bad," he'll say, when he reads this. "I was fine." Which he was. He always is. He did complete the Hudson swim a month later in New York, but told me over the phone that next time he'll make sure his wetsuit fits correctly (in haste, he pulled it on backward) and buy new goggles. (They filled up with water and he bumped into Pete Seeger's moored sailboat—the folk singer is the race's organizer。)
If you ask my father whether or not his life has been hard, he will say he is a lucky guy. Not in a Hollywood way—he means the kind of happiness that comes from sharing a well-cooked family meal, taking a good long run or growing a perfect tomato. Did I mention that he used to run marathons before his knee replacement surgery? He's the one who convinced me I could do it, too. "Anyone can run a marathon," he said, "as long as you put in your time training."
My father was born in 1933. His London childhood took a turn at the beginning of World War II: His father enlisted in the French Army and was captured by the Germans and spent the war in a prison camp. My dad and his mother and sister were shipped off to New Jersey to live with relatives. His mother suffered from depression, and Dad went to boarding school in New England from the sixth grade on。
Yet in all Dad's dinner table stories, and there have been many, he turned them into great stories。
These days the favorite saying of the family patriarch his grandchildren have dubbed Papa Bob is "And so it goes," from the writer Kurt Vonnegut. He repeats it often, especially when he has suffered a setback—anything from spraining an ankle skiing to facing my mother's death. During her illness (she had leukemia) he did his best to cheer her up. My sister, who lives next door to Dad, sometimes complained that he was in denial。
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