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Papa

       Choices are made in life, good and bad. Most of these stories in your hands are about choices. Seeing the result of these choices, and almost everything I have done, and seeing all the experiences that led to making me a papa and a parent.

       30 years ago, I was wandering downtown in the jewelry district. From across a large showroom there was this very large older man with a long, very gray beard rushing at me. He comes up to me with tears in his eyes, he points at me, and he bellows, in a heavy Eastern European accent, “You are a papa?“  Yes, I said, and he said,

 "You look like my papa."

        That year maybe half a dozen older people told me the same thing. Something must have happened in my face that identified me to the world as a papa.

       In writing this volume it is obvious to me, in all truth, my only accomplishment, the biggest part of my self image, the most important thing I’ve done in my life, is being a papa.

    Over the years, this papa identity became more real in me.

    Then came the shock of the empty nest.

@ Find the beginning of that experience in this story on page. Patch)

     When Enzo was born, Joe and Frannie asked me what the boy should call me. A beloved cartoon character is Grampy in Betty Boop cartoons. I wanted to be called Grampy. I’ve even used it as a password a few places online.

      But when Enzo started talking,  Grampy wasn’t my name, he called me Papa. Why? Because Frannie and Lily called me Papa.

     Now, to these new someones, I am papa.