From my Father, #2

                                             My  Dad (1927-2010)


From my father, I learned how to survive my mother.  This meant adopting behavior my mother screamed at - silence, withholding, depression.  Only recently has she been able to name it.

From him, I learned the quiet habits of work.  I learned that you get up early every morning and whistle under your breath because you are about to leave the house till late that night and have a valid reason why. I learned that if you put on a business suit and commuted to work, everything should be all right.  On the train, you bought a newspaper which contained so much information that it had to be artfully folded into small sections and before you went into the office, you stopped off at a counter, had a cup of coffee with Sweet and Low and a danish.  I learned from my father that golf is Republican and we're Democrats who respect the working person and think that all things are her due.

I learned from my father that America gave markets to everyone in the world and people are grateful.  I learned that America is still the greatest nation in the world even though everyone but the Asians want to leave work at 5:00 PM.  From my mother I learned that more words suffice than less.  From my father, I learned the value of pithy description.   Confused" - his estimation of what is wrong with America today.  "Fucking confused" and he looks hard at me as if I'm responsible for the country's slide.  I learn that property values decrease if you don't mow your lawn.  Capitalism is better than communism but there is still something to be said for socialism.

From my father, I learned emotional distance and a marked disinterest in anything to do with psychology.  I learned that problems might go away if you don't talk about them.  I learned quick reflexes - replace it, throw money at it, fill'er up.  I learned that the newspaper and the baseball game on TV were convenient places to hide when at home.  Insurance will protect you.  Assets, if wisely invested, will appreciate.  Cars on the other hand depreciated no matter what.

From my father, I learned that memories are a way to escape the present.  He told me about the old country, what little there was left that anyone remembered.  How my grandfather always managed to find work during the Depression.  How my grandfather was bandy-legged and spit in the street when he saw someone he didn't like.  How he cried when he couldn't get his way, ate pickled herring in sour cream with lots of onions, ran his own tailor shop and had a secret affair for years after my grandmother died.  How he never considered my mother a part of his family.  My father paints pictures of the past, his voice takes on the sing-song lilt of Yiddish.  His stories are heavily colored by seeing Fiddler on the Roof too many times.
  

I am crying for Japan

Snapshot of my father

Springtime on a park bench in New York City.  Black and white emphasizes the harsh lines of this city.  There are no fanciful West Coast purples, no wild pinks, no terracotta.  Life here is much more serious.  My father stares into the camera with a hard, tight smile.  Both fists are unconsciously clenched.  Soon, he will rise from the photograph and walk on his short legs to the subway station.  If he wanted to, he could easily travel to the Bronx where he played stickball as a boy in a vacant lot.  He could easily see the building where he grew up, easily imagine the couch in the living room where he slept, see the old, cracked linoleum on the kitchen floor, the floral curtains, the overstuffed armchair with its massive claw feet.  He could easily smell the lingering odor of salty chicken soup that permeated the building, easily imagine the anxious, hunched-over attitude of his people nursing and guarding their chance of survival.  For my grandfather, a Russian Jew fleeing from pogroms - the streets of New York were surely paved with gold.  To this day, whenever the glint of glass or metal assaults my eye on the dirty streets of New York, I think of my family's poor beginnings in tis country, of how hard they worked to make a decent life.

From My Parents #1:

Early on, without naming it, I learned to secretly applaud the oppositional child.  That was Dr. Spock's advice and my mother's own wish.  Spoke said to cater to the whims of the child, to find the genius in every utterance.  He said the emotionally liberated child resulted in the emotionally expressive adult.  His teaching must have struck a deep chord of longing in my mother who was raised by strict, immigrant parents.  When Spock said the child needed fresh air and my mother didn't feel like going out, she'd put on my winter coat and to my grandfather's guttural dismay, stood me in front of the open window and let me hang onto the bars.  Ours was a madhouse of play therapy before anyone thought of that term.  My mother looking for her identity in dolls with messy hair, in the sandbox, in the bathtub with rubber duckies.

"Dr. Spock ruined you," my mother informs me.
"Damn Spock," my father says.  "We might have avoided the sixties if it wasn't for him."

I learned that my bed was made a long time ago in collusion with Spock, my mother and 1950's affluence and the sheets are now soiled.  I learned that I have no choice but to lie in them.  And if this is the way I want to look at things, then my mother says her hands are tied.  She says she never told me the world was fair but I say she never taught me how to fight dirty.

Ancestors

I search for ancestors in long forgotten shtetls
in a country that changed borders
in towns that have been razed

I have a photograph of a gravestone with my family's surname on it
"Raphael", it says, "beloved father"
My grandfather's father

The photo is curled around the edges, sepia toned
from an era when cameras were just beginning their reflection
of life's surfaces

Where is this gravestone and how many ancestors have none?
Fallen back from the shot in the head or the heart
into the trench they had dug
with their own hands
just like them to clean up

Maybe my great grandfather is buried in that huge graveyard
by the freeway on the way to New York City
We never stopped in the Ford station wagon
Traffic whizzed by on all sides
My father said his mother was there
My mother said her father was there

The fence had spikes
Inside gravestones upon gravestones
broken, fallen pieces, jumbled, strewn
the field of my ancestors in America

The light changed and my father picked up speed
pointed fence blurred into
one grey wall
of forgetfulness

My mother says when she dies, she wants to be cremated
My father is not sure, he stares ahead
at traffic, road blocks;
Winter is coming

A great day at Catherine's collage party