On the heels of last week's post, let's take my father-in-law, Nick, who visited Miami this past January.
Back home in Colorado, during a typical Sunday afternoon at Nick's house, my husband and his brothers would poke fun at him for various reasons that only an offspring can get away with, such as his style of dress. Yet, his clothes aren't old and ragged; he wears regular "guy" shirts, like from Old Navy. What brings on the good-humored mockery is the ensemble - his eclectic manner of dressing: Birkenstocks with wool socks, whilst wearing shorts revealing his "extra lean" legs…and speaking of socks, paired with every sandal or sneaker are the calf-length variety with the tops cut off, because he complains that the ribbing is too tight on his (extra lean) calves. He also wears perfectly good sweaters with the collar [jaggedly] cut off (and sometimes, cut down the middle to make his own "v" neck), and in the coldest weather, the shining jewel: his authentic moon boots, circa 1970 of which he is quite proud, with jeans, sweatpants, or Old Navy exercise pants stuffed into them. Definitely not a dapper dresser, yet in Boulder, he blends in. Transport him to his visit in Miami, and even I was stunned by how differently I viewed his appearance here. Place a man in one city, and he's perfectly normal; drop him in the middle of a city bedazzled by labels and image, and the residents think he's homeless.
I had a very interesting outing with him to a local, Whole Foods-style grocer's market. A lover of good, crunchy bread, he wandered around the store asking this employee or that where the bread was, and after being sent to the bread loaf isle, he asked another employee, describing exactly what he was looking for. The second employee sent him to another part of the market, and I could sense the uneasiness of the employees and shoppers by this ex-hippie (or is it hippie for life?) searching desperately for ciabatta bread, like a man who hadn't eaten a full meal for days. (In the end, he settled for buying the ingredients to make his own bread at our house - molto deliziosa!)
At a glance he was, perhaps, donned in the same fashion as one might see from a Miami man "without abode," but the good people of the market did not take a closer look to see that he was freshly showered and that his clothes were completely stainless. The looks of perplexity were quite obvious - and now even, rather absurd. Before that day, my husband and I told him that the people of Miami might mistake him for a homeless person. Perhaps after that outing, he began to understand what we'd been telling him, and I think at some point he probably just wanted to escape from this Oz and go back to his real world of Boulder, Colorado.
Here is the piece I wrote on him, shortly after that visit. I originally planned to use his story and likeness for my thesis project, but it has since taken on a different form, and so he no longer fits. So I share it here, instead:
Meet Nick. (Nicola as he now prefers it.)
I didn't have to interview him. I already knew him. He asked me what he should wear, what he should say, what he should do. I told him, "Just be you."
A retired architectural engineer. A tailor. A hippie. In Boulder he blends in. In Miami they think he's homeless.
He avoided the draft to 'Nam. They told him he was too thin.
He can punch a line from a song into any conversation. It's usually a blues song. The oldies. The goodies. Real Blues.
His laugh is infectious - unique. His pauses make you wonder: has he finished? Nope. Just thinking.
He is from Campobasso, Italy. He lived there until he was three. Moved to Canada and loved it there. Then moved to Detroit, and hated it there. "What was 7 mile in Detroit like?" "I wanted to go back to Canada. I cried to my mother everyday. Finally one day she said, 'We ain't goin' back.' And that was that." And she said it in Italian. She didn't speak English.
I asked him to tell me some stories. The real stories, ones I'd heard many times.
I asked him to talk about his friendship with Kanjuro Shibata, Sensei. The official bow maker to the Emperor of Japan. Nick had been a guest in Sensei's home. Nick had Sensei as a guest in his home. Sensei's yumi and ya are hanging in my home. A wedding gift.
"Tell me about the time you were sent to deliver a message to the Dalai Lama."
My father-in-law met the Dalai Lama.
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