Snap Shots from Father's Day

Amba said:

Among other things, it's good to be reminded not to take for granted having honorable and loving parents.

My father was the quieter, handsome, self-effacing older son of a gentle father and a spirited, spitfire mother. His hotshot, blond, WASP-y looking 2-yrs-younger brother, who was on track to be a Jewish Kennedy (was a Liberal student leader at Harvard, which was like being SDS in the mid-'60s; was a protegé of the Roosevelts, offered a govt. internship that would have spared him serving, which he declined) called him "the gentle Puritan."

The great tragedy of my father's life was the loss of his brother. Alan, a pilot in the Naval Air Force, died in a test-piloting accident in Florida, trying to save the plane instead of bailing out when the landing gear jammed. My dad accompanied the body back from Florida to Chicago on the train, with a bottle of whiskey to numb and release him. He'd been married to my mother for a year at that time. They saw "Casablanca" the night before his brother's death, so he never wants to hear "As Time Goes By" again.

My father had always said the one thing he didn't want was to be the last one of his family left. And that happened. Both his parents died within little more than a decade of his brother, seven years or so apart, both at age 67. My father went on to surround himself with a large family (see the last picture here and as if he'd paid in advance, he has been blessed in every way since.

Knock on wood, spit three times, no tragedies, addictions, or even disabilities. Some near misses, most notably his own: at 67, right on schedule, he began to have a massive heart attack; fortunately he was on the surgical table being prepared for a bypass, the drastic blockage of 4 of his coronary arteries having been discovered almost by chance the day before.

Now he's 91!!! Jewish families are often matriarchies (possibly because -- going way back -- when you live surrounded by somewhat hostile majorities, it's not safe for the males to be boldly assertive; those males get killed off). Ours was no exception. When we were kids my dad was self-denying and emotionally controlled, like many men of his generation, and to some extent he expected the same of us. Our mom was a volatile spitfire, like his mom. But we always knew that underneath he was the steadily loving one. And in the years since his bypass, that has come out in the wide open. (Bonus: Mom has grown into much more than just a diva, too.)

They still have each other. We still have them -- more than ever. So lucky.