The repeated pa, pa, pa eventually became Papa. Every summer, Papa went back to Greece to run his bar. He spent the winters living with Angie, his youngest daughter, in a trailer park off of Route 70 in Pennsauken.
As a kid I would sleep over there, falling asleep watching old movies with my aunt. I ignored him, in order to act offended, but then got myself to the table for my breakfast. Eat, eat. Bravo, bravo. Logistics, like time, money, and distance kept me from a farewell.
It was all for the best though, because I wanted to remember Papa in my own way. For two more years, until I could get to it, the tie hung on a hook in his room with all the others At last, in , I boarded the plane for six weeks in the Mediterranean sun with only a long narrow piece of fabric on my mind. The thirteen hour trip exhausted me. I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the lumpy bed in the house that Papa had built but my mother and her siblings now owned.
From the cool of the dark long windowless hallway I knocked tentatively on his closed bedroom door as if he were still in there. I opened it and looked in. I only wanted my souvenir of his journey. I opened the door further and saw the hooks full of ties by the master suite bathroom door.
There on top was the tie, my tie, the one I was after. It hung so neatly and was still knotted as if Papa had loosened it from around his neck, pulled it over his head, and hung it there the night before.
