I'm going to England. And France.
I'm going to England and France tomorrow with
my father, who is 80 years old -
for two weeks on a bus. Don't ask why.

We've both been to England before. And France.
We've each been to places the other will never go
and we've both been to other places in common -
to Berlin, for example:

I was there before the Wall was torn down;
he before it went up - an open city.
When my father was in Berlin he sold black market watches
he brought back from Paris under the Brandenburg Gate.

I was cruising men in the park and was threatened with arrest
by the East German guards at the Brandenburg Gate
and brought crabs back to Paris.
It was a different kind of concerto.

When my father was in England, he was the same age
I was when I lived there - more or less. Five years.
My father went to England to make the world safe
for democracy; I went to get away from him. And her.

When my father was in England he was waiting to see
if he would get home alive; I was learning to be who I am -
gracelessly. When my father was in France he was learning
how to get off Omaha Beach without being killed;

I was missing Clark at the Musée d'Orsay
and trying to get Luc to fall in love.
My father was successful.

We both have vivid memories of Normandy
(beaches strewn with bodies). We both remember
bunkers sunk in the sand bluffs.

In my father's day, they were wet with German blood.
My mother's parents were German. They died the same year
my father was in England. And Germany. And France.

Next week, we'll both be back in Normandy,
my father and I - where I fell for Luc as he played piano
and sang in the foyer of a Norman-esque hotel.

A thousand years ago, some Normans left this coast
and went to conquer England. Some of them eventually
became the ancestors who eventually became us,

a father and a son both named for a Jewish èmigrè from England -
and for the angel of Mont St. Michel. Soon, we'll sleep in its shadow
in a second - class tourist motel. In the aftermath of dawn,

we'll climb the Medieval mount - slowly, breathing heavily
in concert - as the golden angel who gave us our names
starts gleaming through a fog (as thick as Whistler's pigment)
from his perch atop the abbey spire, flying close to the sun.

We'll sleep in the same room...
Tomorrow, in London, we'll sleep in the same room alone
for the first time in our lives. I will be alone with my father
for a full day and night - fourteen times.

The first time we were alone all day we went to see
Ben-Hur at Radio City Music Hall. It was 1959. I was 12.
I was in love with him. The next time was in Palm Springs.
It was in the '70s or '80s. I forget.

By then, he was a bit in love with me - or in awe.
When I was a child, he used to beat me.
I used to think it was because he hated me.
He used to think it was because I was misbehaving.

We were both partly right. We're not close. We have nothing
"in common" - but he's my father: The need to be a Good
Son hasn't died just because he was angry when he was young,
swollen then on the same rage that runs and ruins me now.

So we're going to England together - and to France -
and we're both looking forward to it. I don't know why.
Maybe now that we're both old, we can love each other
for two full weeks without hating each other at all.