“Dad! Rosa just told me you said I was gross.”

“What!” Exclaimed George, who at that moment was busy reading the Sunday Sandpiper Daily sitting in his favourite chair on the balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. “I never said any such thing.”

Timmy had walked up to his father and stood next to him looking for an explanation. “Yes, she said because I was listening to rap music, I was gross.”

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” shouted both Julia for whom that was unusual and Rosa for whom that was standard, as they ran through the front door of their nest, bypassing George’s open wings and throwing their school bags in the direction of the far wall closest to the kitchen, where Sybil stood to avoid any collateral damage from Rosa flying into her father’s arms. But on that day, it was different.

“Mummy, daddy guess what Yehuda got for Christmas!”

Sybil and George simultaneously put down their knives and forks and looked aghast at their eldest daughter, Julia. George looked at Sybil and Sybil returned his lost gaze. It was up to one of the two adults at the dining table to ask the simple question. “Who’s Yehuda?” followed by the other obvious question asked by Sybil, “I’ve never known a Christian boy with the name Yehuda!”

Over the course of the two weeks I stayed with him, I watched him begin to eat more and to begin to enjoy life more. He was like a child waiting to open a Christmas present when I bought some beer. He always had a drink in the evening around 6pm followed by dinner at 7.

“Is it 6?” He asked the first day I bought the beer.

“No, dad, it isn’t.”

He thought for a second, “what time is it?”

At the urging of my sister, I left my home in Pennsylvania at the end of January 2019 and travelled to my father’s home in a small village which lay in the foothills of the Himalayas. Burdened with the daily stresses of Western life, I had last visited him in May 2014, nearly 5 years ago.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy I’m on fire!” cried Rosa dramatically as she threw herself at her father as soon as he walked in the door from work.

“What?” asked George looking over at his wife who as usual stood in the doorway of the kitchen, even though it was a place that was off limits to her due to her inability to boil water without burning it. “Rosa, you feel fine to me,” George was still baffled by her behaviour. Sybil merely shrugged her shoulders. George put Rosa down and held her at wings length. “What are you talking about young lady? I don’t see you on fire.”

“Mummy tells me you had one of the bagels Pawo’s wife baked.”

Rosa turned up her nose at the mention, while Timmy smiled and Julia replied, “yes dad they weren’t bad, but yours are much better.”

Something George liked to hear, obviously. “Why didn’t you like the bagels Rosa?”

“Well first of all, they had bugs all over them and who’s heard of a Buddhist baking bagels? They have to be Jewish……”

“I see you’re left-handed.” Ralph looked at Craig a little confused. Craig continued, “you, you, put your car keys in your left pocket.” He hesitated for a second. “I notice these things especially because I’m left-handed as well,” and without saying another word, he reached into his left pocket and pulled out his keys, “see,” he proudly waved the keys in front of Ralph, who happened to be standing in a small crowd in the foyer of their office building busily discussing their relevant team scores from the weekend.

“Once upon a pasta noodle…..”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, surely it should be once upon a time, not once upon a pasta noodle, Rosa dear, who told you to write that?”

“Nobody daddy. But once upon a time doesn’t make sense.”

“And once upon a pasta noodle does?”

“Exactly daddy! If once upon a time doesn’t make sense, then I’d rather write once upon a pasta noodle.” George shook his head and laid back in his chair.

Arthur was never quite sure what his goals were in life. They seemed to be a moving target. When he was very young, the daily commuter train which rattled at high speed behind his home held his interest, until he heard the whistle sound one day and put an immediate end to that goal.

“Where’s Rosa?” asked George sounding rather perturbed when he walked through the front door of his nest, dropping his briefcase and extending his wings wide open waiting to greet his youngest daughter. As always, he expected to see Rosa run into his wings with her greeting “how much did you miss me today, Daddy?” It was a routine that had stood the test of time, and with the exception of a few occasions was welcomed by both.

“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!” wailed Rosa as she flew into her parents’ bedroom and then with a loud affected sigh, collapsed backwards on the bed spreading her wings wide open. “My life is over,” she continued to the amusement of her father who found it difficult to contain a laugh, while Sybil rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Mummy burnt the challah bread!” George, who had just walked in the front door after a tough day at work, stopped dead in his tracks. It wasn’t the customary greeting he was used to from his youngest daughter. Usually it was, ‘daddy, daddy, daddy, how much did you miss me today?” followed by a regular routine ending up with Rosa flying into her father’s wings.

“Friday is Chanukah!” shouted Rosa to anyone who was within earshot, and she added while jumping up and down on the feather couch in the living room, “and, and, and, it’s my firstest Chanukah ever!”

“No, that’s not quite true,” reminded her mother, Sybil, “you’ve had 6 before this one.”

“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!” shouted Rosa taking a flying leap from the doorway of her parents’ bedroom and landing between them, something she had perfected over time, much to her parents’ dismay.

Sybil groaned when Rosa rolled on to her. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” she continued as her mother didn’t seem inclined to wake up. George, who was in the middle of dream number three, slowly opened his eyes and looked around him

“What’s a turducken Mummy?”

Sybil lowered her very expensive pair of ray-ban sunglasses she found on the beach, or so she said, years ago and decided to keep them for herself. She looked at her youngest daughter, “I have no idea” she replied pushing her sunglasses back up and laying down in her lounge chair and letting out a sigh.

Nobody could quite understand why the legal eagle of the Blau family, even though her last name for Richman and not Blau, Elizabeth, did not show up for the highlight of the week’s festivities, Shabbat dinner.

The family was concerned because she had never missed Shabbat dinner in all her adult years. Even when she was away at law school at North Carolina State, she always managed to fly back just in time for dinner.

“Why is it called Wacky Wednesday mom?”

Esther had just finished reading her little daughter Emma, the Dr Suess book of the same name. She was about to tuck little Emma into bed, give her a kiss on her forehead, as she did every night and then join her husband in the living room, where he was busily updating himself with the news. That was something Esther didn’t like to see him do when he came home from work every evening, because it never failed to change his mood.

“Did you have a bumpy flight down from Brooklyn?” asked Sybil of her gym loving hunk, thinking back to the Buddhist family who flew in from the same general direction and had a terrible journey.

“No,” replied Rocky in his deep voice which sent Sybil into a tizzy. “We fly at higher altitudes. We can go above bad weather, to where the jet stream is not as unpredictable as it is at lower altitudes.”

“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!” cried out Rosa as she staggered into the living room making sure she didn’t trip over the magical unicorn hair rug in front of the couch as she turned, placed her wings over her heart, closed her eyes and collapsed on the feather couch.

There was no one else in the living room. Rosa realised that as soon as she opened her eyes and looked around. “Mummy I’m dying,” she shouted and that did the trick.