The Easter Bunny and The Count

I once spent the day with Count Roffredo Gaetani. His date was a 25-year-old Swedish model who appeared in that months Vogue magazine. My future husband picked them up in the West Village (where ALL the models live) before picking me up in Yonkers, where I lived.

They were both impossibly tall, stunning, and interesting. In the few hours we spent in the car driving between Yonkers, New York and Limerock, Connecticut, the two of them conversed non-stop in the back seat in several languages while my future husband and I seemed to have already run out of things to say in the front.

By the end of the day I literally had a headache from their blinding beauty and interesting-i-ness. Roffredo went on to date Ivanna Trump before his early death in a Ferrari in Italy, no doubt a convertible, while rocking a scarf.

At the end of the day, we were heading to the Tarrytown train station to drop Roffredo and his model off to put them on a train back into Manhattan. There were a few women sitting at the station and they took one look at the statuesque duo and cupped their hands over their mouths as if they had just witnessed God almighty, THAT is how impressive these two were.

On the way to the train Roffredo spotted a Mexican restaurant and wanted to have dinner there. It was one of my favorite places but I was secretly happy upon discovering the restaurant was closed that day. I was happy because their jet-setty glare coupled with the fact that my future husband 'surprised' me with this trip, only allowing me 20 minutes to get ready - - not nearly enough time to load on the necessary ego fortifying make-up, hair, and clothes and to compile a list of conversational topics & tidbits to not feel like an ugly idiot next to them was exhausting. I felt like a slug with a salt cloud drizzling steadily above me all day.

As we drove away from the restaurant toward the train station, the back seat got very quiet. After a long pause Roffredo said, “I bet they had delicious enchiladas.” I can still hear that one sentence in my head in his sexy Italian accent.

Roffredo was a count, and nephew of Gianni Agnelli, the richest, most influential man in Italy till the time of his death in 2003. Roffredo dated a string of gorgeous models as well as Ivanna Trump and at the time of our outting was starting to build his own empire one Ferrari dealership at a time. Still after that day, in spite of contentious power struggles and deals between Roffredo and my now past husband, the thing that first comes to both our minds when Roffredo's name comes up is, “I bet they had delicious enchiladas.”

There was something so cute about how disappointed Roffredo was. Maybe that's why this moment, that one sentence lamenting the enchilada he would not have, is the imprint he left me with. He was the embodiment of what every man wished to be/have and every woman wants in a man - - he even greeted women with, “Hello Miss” as he kissed your hand with nary an eyeroll in sight.  Still the void this missed enchilada created in him made him an every man right then.

There is just no telling what your lasting imprint will be in anyone else's mind. I see people all the time on Facebook putting tremendous effort into presenting a certain image when it's clear that their imprint is 180 degrees away from that image.  I wonder what mine will predominantly be, and if my father is surprised at the one he left behind...

My father's biggest imprint in my mind is Easter.  At 23, while living in a tiny apartment in White Plains, I woke up Easter morning, looked out of my tiny window to see a big Easter basket sitting on top of my red Hyundai. I'll never forget that feeling because it was just as exciting as any Easter morning as a child when I would suspend my then* rudimentary understanding of physics to gleefully accept that a bunny rabbit hopped into my house with six Easter baskets, each about three times his/her own size, in the middle of the night before finishing his/her deliveries to the rest of the children of the world.

My father was a psychiatric social worker who taught me how to analyze dreams. I learned because he would patiently analyze mine whenever I asked. He would analyze them and explain how he did. That is a very valuable tool I still treasure but it's second to Easter. My father would take all six of us kids to the beach on summer weekends to give my poor mother a break. All-in-all he was a great father. I really miss him, especially on Easter Sunday.

He'd answer any question and typically hand us a book along with it. He tried to teach us lessons and was a stickler for no elbows on the dinner table. He taught us all to drive. I'm sure as a father he had some sort of a Top Ten list in his head of the skills, morals, knowledge, habits, etc. he wanted to impress upon his children by word, example or both. I wonder if he had any idea his biggest imprint would be his job as the Easter bunny. I guess the reason his Easter duties stand as his number one imprint is because although he left many valuable imprints in my mind, Easter is one he left in my heart.

* It's still rudimentary.