Elena Kaplan Got Politics In Her Blood At This Refreshment Table

I was telling Monkette about Charlie Zarzour and how my daughter, her older sister Elena Kaplan, used to love to go to city council meetings. At the age of three, four, or five it wasn't politics that fascinated her. I'm not sure if it was the cake and cookies on this table or if it was Charlie Zarzour that was the bigger atraction.

Charlie's main city job was a code enforcement officer but he earned a few extra bucks setting up the table and the coffee pot, just one, no decaf back then, and laying out the tray of cookies, cutting the cake, and HANDING you a plate of cake and pouring the coffee for you. And he managed to get around, drive a car, set up the refreshments, and so on with one leg and crutches.

Elena was only too glad to help him put out the napkins and paper plates. Then she'd get to sit on Charlie's lap. He insisted that she call him Charlie. Then he'd want to know all about what was happening in her life, how nursery school was going, and so on.

Now Charlie has gone off to that place in the sky. Elena has completed law school and is an associate for a big national law firm's Atlanta office

Robin reminded me the other night about that it's been seven years since I was getting ready to drive up to visit Elena again. I'd just broken up with my long time girlfriend Vivette, a dozen year relationship down the tubes, and was very depressed. I was very much in love with Vivette. The last thing I expected was for her to tell me that it was over. Finished!

I was really looking forward to spending a week with Elena. She always managed to cheer me up. We spoke every week on the phone. She'd come down to Miami to visit. I'd go up and visit her. A really ideal father daughter relationship. Then about two weeks before I was planning on making the trip I got The Letter! Essentially it said "I never want to see or hear from you again!" She blamed me for being the cause of everthing wrong with her life. I tried calling her. She didn't want to talk about it. I called her mother. "Oh, give her a few months. She'll get over it."

I went into a major funk. My doctor put me on an anti-depressant. I had a major reaction to it. It became a matter of just gritting my teeth and getting past it. I suppose I have, although every morning I get up and think of her and wonder "why?".

A few years ago she ran for office, Georgia state legislature. Her campaign literature told about her getting interested in politics when she was a little girl and her daddy used to take her to city council meetings. She lost. She needs to realize that bad karma begets bad karma. And that's what I think about every time I see this table with the coffee pot and the plate cookies