For years, I lived under the firm belief that my father worked for the CIA. I believed it not only for the purpose of bragging rights at school, but also because if you knew my father and the fascination he seems to carry around with him in his briefcase, it’s actually a completely plausible theory. After much analysis, I decided (circa third or fourth grade) that he was definitely the James Bond type, but perhaps, in his later years, had graduated to more of the man-in-the-big-swivel-chair-giving-instructions-to-field-operatives-on-speakerphone type. In any case, I’d done my 007 homework and knew which crucial elements were required in being an international man of mystery. Thus, over time, I collected specific examples to support my premise. The final list looks something like this:
Reason My Dad Is Definitely in the CIA #1: From Russia with Love
My father always had the allure of the world written all over him. You could sense it, sniff it out, even. I feel this allure is crucial to his line of work.
Even before he got into the spy-business, my father was a world traveler. When I was younger, I loved to hear his tales of faraway lands, stories tracing from Kenya to Oslo to St. Petersburg to St. Paul. Each story felt like a precious thread strung into the intricate tapestry of his life. There were the summers spent on sea with my great-grandfather, Captain Saamen Saamenssen, the years as a Lieutenant in the Marines and Vietnam, the months spent driving from European city to city with his best friend, in an old Volkswagen with the stick shift he could barely operate.
In later years, even though I was never kept informed of the details of his missions (strictly code, I’m sure), I always knew him to be an extremely hard worker. “Work” took him on frequent business trips to the likes of, well, everywhere (cough, cough, secret missions) and his travel stories continued. As a young girl, I could only imagine that someone with so much explored territory under his belt had to be some form of super-spy, and I lived for his stories.
Reason My Dad Is Definitely in the CIA #2: The Man with the Golden Tongue
In my early twenties, when I began to notice a few holes in my theories, it only took a trip with my dad to reaffirm what I’d really known all along: he is, in fact, an undercover spy mastermind.
Example: when I was twenty, I moved to Italy for a year to study. Before my first day of Italian school, my father and I had ten glorious days to travel around, just the two us. We were making our way from Zurich to Paris and had stopped for the night in a small town in the south of France. While perusing the menu at dinner, I was reminded for the eight-billionth time that day how greatly I spat in the face of the French language every time I attempted to so much as order a cup of coffee with milk. My father insisted that the waiter would appreciate if I just tried my best (clearly his missions had never included getting to know the French) and so, with red cheekbones, I tried ordering my fish in French. Quelle surprise: the waiter had no idea what I was talking about. As I quickly tried to reorder in English, my father smiled and ordered for me … in French. The two had a pleasant laugh, probably discussed the nice year of the wine we were drinking (although how would I know?), and the waiter trotted off to place our orders. I am forgetting to perhaps mention the missing detail of this anecdote. At twenty years old, I had no idea my father spoke French.
In contrast to my dad’s class and apparent sophistication, the first words out of my gaping mouth were: “What the hell was that?”
