He was into some truly weird food. Things I've never been able to stomach like borscht and herring. I don't even know how he did it, but he could get macaroni to cook up the size of your hand. And he had this recipe for chicken paprika, which he showed me one day, when I was eleven, but that I still haven't been able to replicate.
When I was really young, maybe about my daughter's age, we used to go to the flea market every weekend. I looked forward to that. He would give my brother and I a dollar, which seemed like a lot of money at the time. It was definitely enough to buy an armful of nonsense.
That flea market was a great place to pick up endless streams of used transformers and he-man toys in the worst possible condition, but we loved it. Every sunday morning, that was what we did. You could buy just about anything for a quarter.
Most weeks, after the flea market, we would go back to his house, and watch Fraggle Rock on HBO, and drink soda, eat candy, and get all riled up with my little brother, who was about four at the time.
Once, my grandfather took me to work with him in San Francisco. He owned a tailor shop a block from Market Street, in a spot that's an ATM now. I remember how skinny the building was, it was like a really tall closet with two floors and a metal staircase.
The place was alive with foot traffic. I'm not usually claustrophobic, but I was there. In that shop, full of smiling foreign men on sewing machines. Pins, needles, transparent white packing paper, and pinstriped material fragments everywhere.
When he got older, my dad took him in to live us. I was an asshole teenager. I knew everything. My last conversation with him was about the holocaust, a period he lived through, and experienced first hand. It was also something he absolutely never wanted to talk about.
But, seeing as I knew everything, I pushed the issue. Religion was always a big topic in our house. My parents are both active believers. Naturally, I had to grandstand on the subject. "Where was god then?" I asked. He didn't argue. He just sat there, and let me be a snotty teenager.
The next day, I got arrested for smoking pot with my loser friends, and I spent three weeks in juvie.
He passed away while I was there. I never got to say goodbye, or even attend the funeral. It was awkward moment. Nothing was ever resolved.
I think if there's one thing I could ever take back, it would be that.
But I did say Kaddish for him, and I have every year since. I don't know what it's worth, but I feel better when I do it.
He was one of the wisest, most intelligent people I've ever known. Someone I didn't appreciate enough.
This man knew everything about everything, without so much as even a moment's pause for recall. It was all right there, on the tip of his tongue. He spoke 16 languages, several of which he learned as an adult. But he wasn't arrogant about any of it. He was quiet, kind, good natured, and approachable.
I'm nothing like him, but I wish I was.
