Happy 79th to my father

Happy 79th birthday to my father, his second birthday since he died. Shortly after he died, I got a very clear image — constructed, no doubt, out of wishful thinking and imagination, although who knows — of him climbing upward with a very familiar expression of elation on his face.  Just climbing up, really excited about something he saw up ahead, heading over to find out more about it.

His basic personality was not what you would call sunny, for most of his life. Someone once told my mother he had the most purely melancholic temperament she had ever seen. He gravitated toward autumn and winter, toward requiems and memento mori. But he did light up when an idea caught his fancy, something about music or history or astronomy or evolution, or yes, politics (which we eventually agreed to stop talking about).

I remember being half an hour late for fifth grade once, because there was a weird-looking rainbow hanging over Hanover Street, and as he drove me to school he got very caught up in the explanation for how it had been formed. He had a way of pausing with his eyes wide open and his mouth wide open, making strange stuttering sounds as he collected his next thought, which I thought was hilarious as a kid, like he was some kind of cerebral monster, frozen in the act of gobbling up an idea. And then sometimes, after he had gone through (or listened to) an elaborate, arcane explanation of something very complex, he would just pause, beam, and say, ” . . . Cool!” He was content for that to be the final word, at least for now. 

I haven’t really met anybody else like him. A unique proprietary blend of intellectual and corporeal curiosities, wrapped up in one Brooklyn Jew, who ended up dealing books from his dilapidated Victorian home in New Hampshire for something like forty years. He loved Jesus, although I know he had some bones to pick with him along the way. He screwed up a lot, and he knew it. He loved his children and worried about them until the day he died. He left many of us with a certain amount to forgive, as fathers will. We all miss him. The house he left goes up for auction next week, the proceeds pay back the state for the care of my mother, and that’s the end of that. Cool, I guess. I’m glad I have more than the house to remember. 

I miss him a lot. He really did look like a little kid opening a present when he talked about something that excited him, and that’s what his face looked like in my mind after he died. I remember that expression so clearly: Like he was on his way to go see something really good. God will it. 

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