Page 5 - You can't Make This Shit Up!

My Dad
June 14, 2017
Father’s day is Sunday. I am so grateful to be married Skee. He is the BEST daddy I have ever
known. My dad, Neil Norris Hofstetter, died when he was 67. Too young. I was with him when he took his very last breath. Our relationship was complicated, stained, loving, sad, and disappointing. This blog entry is dedicated to all the little girls who longed for a relationship with their own fathers. We are strong, we are resilient, and we mourn.
I had a door that didn’t slam. My dad was NOT handy and had apparently hung my door himself. It was hung crooked, so it never shut completely. This really made my teenage rages anticlimactic. I would go to my room and my door made zero noise when I slammed it. Even more pathetic, the harder I slammed, the faster it popped right back open. Out of desperation, I finally convinced my father to install the hook and eye type lock, so that I could at least keep the door “shut”. Years later, when I visited and took a tour of my old house, the doors were all replaced in the upstairs bedrooms. No one else noticed. I did.
Oh, and we had ladybugs everywhere. I mean, everywhere. My dad painted ladybugs on the walls in our garage. He painted large ladybugs on the wall in our bathroom. His motto with them was “don’t bug me”. True story, and I swear there HAS TO be a picture of it somewhere, he bought a car and painted ladybugs all over it too. The car, it was purple, a gremlin (go on, look it up. It exists, and is a step down from lets say... a pinto?) and had YELLOW ladybugs painted on it. He drove this car. We ALL drove IN THIS CAR. The scariest part is...I didn’t even think it was weird or strange. I was little and I guess I assumed everyone’s dad painted ladybugs on their cars at some point.
Not only did my father paint ladybugs everywhere, but he then took the white wall in the one room in the house we weren’t allowed to play in (the forbidden room) and painted some abstract geometric situation on it. That room was where we had our piano, and where my parents entertained their friends. It was circles and lines and clearly he was stoned when he painted it. That design lived on that wall till the day we sold the house. My dad, his acrylic paints, and his artistic prowess could not be tamed. Eventually when he had no more rooms to decorate he took up charcoal art, sculpting clay and drawing with colored pens. I still have a few of his doodles. They were very abstract and repetitive. My father, if he was alive today, would need a fidget spinner in a serious way.
I couldn’t sleep a few night ago so I tried to think of 10 memories of my dad. I came up with 6: 1.He had this loud and contagious laugh. He would tell a story in his thick Brooklyn accent and make us laugh, but it wasn’t the story that was as funny as his laugh. 2. He took me fishing. I would dig the worms up in our yard and he took me to the pier. We would sit in silence, so as to not “scare away the fish”. I remember the fishing, but I can’t even remember if we ever said one word to each other. 3. There was a pet store and I loved going because there were beautiful fish and two monkeys! The monkeys were in cages in the back area. I don’t even know if they were for sale or for show. Thinking of that now it makes me sad, but as a kid it was amazing. He took me all the time. 4. He taught me to love to read. His books were truly his passion. He felt that books were the best friends. He was so right. 5. He would toss a football around with me in the street. I could really not throw, or catch. He was patient. 6. He taught me kindness. To help others who in turn could do nothing to help you. He took me with him to NYC to show me where he worked when I was about 8 years old. There was a homeless woman with a child when we got off the train. People were ignoring her. It was really cold out and my dad and I walked to get egg sandwiches for breakfast and he ordered four. Then we took the other two to the woman and her