My Father's Day - Umberto Tosi
My father, Renzo and I in Boston, c. 1941 My father, shows up this time of year, visiting my intermittently lit memories in the same way that he drifted in and out of my childhood with his bag of contradictions. Renzo Argentino Tosi would be 100 on June 9. Then there's Father's Day , third Sunday in June – still a Mother's Day greeting-card afterthought when I was a kid. I always gave him ties. He disdained gifts and the commercial sentimentality of holidays, but loved festive gatherings – big family dinners, Italian-American picnics . Plus he was an inveterate skinflint – also a narcissist with empathic talent. He was a successful businessman who scorned the financial system as a con. Life was a game of one one-upmanship most of the time – whether in relationships or playing golf or dominoes (which he loved.) He was a misogynist who admired women of substance, attracted to strong-willed women with whom he had stormy relationships. He was pro civil rights and an...