My Dinner with Tanya

by Julia

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my dad lately, even though it’s old news. It could be because I’ve been in places with picket-fence family pictures and happy endings. It could be because of Tanya.

Tanya is a boho lawyer with a turquoise nose piercing, younger than my mom, but with more wrinkles. Probably because she smokes cigarettes. We don’t often see her, but when we do, we do two years worth of catch-up. She’s always been flaky; this weekend in particular. She has just moved in with her dying parents.

It’s her night off, and she’s treating us to dinner at a restaurant where we are seriously underdressed. We eat an incredible meal. “Divine,” she spells it out for emphasis. “D-VINE. Absolutely divine.”

Her idea of a girl’s night out is different from mine; she interrogates us about the past year. It could be habit, it could be circumstance. She is a lawyer, after all. She stares people down as they talk. She frequently interrupts herself to tell me how much I look like my father. My eyes. My hair. The bridge of my nose. She blinks excessively and is extremely apologetic. About everything.

She interrogates us about the winter of 2002. She wonders out loud what it was like to live in a house with someone so big. And then not to.

Throughout the interview, my mom and I tell Tanya stories we had never told each other. Memories we didn’t know existed until Tanya draws them out of us. She’s a good lawyer. A lot of mine are bits and pieces: how he put me in the bathtub feet-first, with my socks on, for laughs. Remembering when he licked chocolate pudding off my baby feet, but not remembering how the pudding got there. How every morning walk to school he would sing, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” and every night we would sing me to sleep with my namesake song, “When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind, Julia…”

I remember his last raucous Christmas Eve party, blasting live music in our too-little, too-loud living room until houses down the block complained. The following day, posing for painted portraits on Christmas morning after gifting him paints and blank canvases. He left ten days later.

When we dropped my dad off at the airport on January 3rd, he was flying to Tel Aviv to make a documentary about peace, the lack thereof. Before he left, he kissed me on the forehead. I told him, “I love you daddy. You’re the best daddy ever.” I don’t remember this. He journalled about it.

The four years of my life that preceded the 11th were a living documentary: moments captured on labelled VHS tapes and filmstock, excerpts of dialogue recorded in journals. The pocket-sized Moleskine from that winter is decorated with charred corners. Most of the pages are still intact.

My dad did not survive the attack, but his journal did. And from that moment on, my memories became what I held on to, and hold on to.

These days, I journal, like my father. Chronicling my moments is primordial, instinctive.

So after my dinner with Tanya, I return home to document everything, because it frames all of my memories, all that I hold on to. During this meal, I discover more about my mom and what she held on to than I have in my entire life. She tells Tanya I am the reason she soldiers on. She held on to me.

Over the three-hour cross-examination, I realize how essential memories are to who I am. I also realize that’s okay. To know me is to know this.