God Father

Marlon Brando as The Godfather

My father’s favorite movie was the Godfather. I remember he made me watch it one afternoon, sitting on his bed in one of the immaculately furnished apartments he rented after my parents divorced, one of the lovebirds he used to keep perched on my shoulder as the grisly horse head scene played out before my eyes. I was 12, maybe 13, and I remember feeling like I was in a mafioso family as well, because my father was just as intimidating, just as imposing a figure to me as the Godfather in the movie. When he was angry, he would fix you with one eye, the pupil quivering in the eye socket, with such a glare that you felt riveted to the spot and couldn’t move. You just waited for whatever horrible fate he decided to assign you to be issued, for your punishment to be meted out with the coldness and impartiality of a judge, for all that his visage spoke of such anger. And yet, I was my father’s daughter – I saw in the Godfather what he loved so much about it. It was the music. I think the theme from the Godfather was probably one of my father’s favorite melodies, and I would often hear him humming it to himself as he went about his day.  And when I hear it now, I am gripped by a many-faceted melancholy: for the passing of time, for the passing of opportunity, for a misunderstood life, and for the finality of death experienced and inflicted.