Dad, your son eats nuts.

Being on a desert island of sinus infections and falling faces, one tends to think about weird stuff like deceased dads and peanut butter.

I lay on the couch after using a sleeping mask (secret's out!) for a triage eyepatch to watch TV and started thinking about my life. I thought about what if I had a great job and a cool 2 bedroom apartment in Manhattan and my dad was alive and came to visit. I thought about meeting him at the airport all grownup son-like and putting him up in his own bedroom and then I thought, "Then what?" He would be all about the Giants/Eagles game and I would be all flustered about remembering to record the Golden Globes. (His eyes are rolling over in his grave...)

This got me to thinking about Common Ground and that every two people have to have one, no? Sports, root beer floats, theatre, girls, boys, anything that moves?

What would dad and I talk about or DO for this entire visit?

Then I smile the half smile that I now have. No seriously, half a smile. And I thought we would both LOVE reliving HIS New York. The New York City where he grew up. "Here is where I beat up Saul Levin so I could use his bike." "Dad, show me which window your dad threw all your clothes out of when he didn't like your zuit suit." "Where was that Horn and Hardarts - or however the hell you pronounce it -you took me to when we were here in the 80's?" I would say "hell" because I would feel that close and grown up. We would go by his old high school and I would want to know any stories he had about any of the places I now know and what they meant to him.

We would have eggs creams.

I kept on about this while I lay with a cold washcloth over my eyes and became so sad with loss. I had to figure out a way to move him out of that second bedroom in my head and just leave him as a New York City spiritual guide of sorts in my heart.

Then I was on to peanut butter. My sweet and knight in shining Fairway grocery bags landlord got me food, and like a pregnant woman or a deathrow meal order, I asked for very Weight Watchers unfriendly-if-abused peanut butter. I haven't had peanut butter in ages because I can drink eat and use as cold cream the stuff.

But I am a sick child and here I have a jar and a loaf of bread!

Did dad eat peanut butter in New York?

Peanut butter is so adaptable to everything: bread, bananas, apples, sick urban myths.

I had three peanut butter sandwiches today and watched movies DVD while looking all Elephant Mannish.

Today I miss my dad and I eat peanut butter. Nice.