My Gifted Life

I just reread a poem I wrote awhile ago about my dad and hot tears ran from my eyes and down my cheeks. There were years at a younger age I didn’t think I’d miss my old man, but callow youth makes way after awhile to a more forgiving humanity as experience and humility take the edge off the intellect’s sharp sword. Rather than a focus on the few terrifying experiences that stood in contrast I thought to focus on the man that was loving and reliable, who supported his family.

My dad drove me nuts from my first memories to practically the end. He wanted assurances that  life doesn’t give. He famously told my daughter that if she was thinking of doing something and couldn’t handle the worst possible outcome she shouldn’t do it.  Well, I remember my answer as a young teen that I could walk out of the house and a maniac could shoot me with a shotgun and I couldn’t deal with it, but it wasn’t all that likely.

The one thing I never worried about with him was love. He had some form of Asperger’s syndrome, or so my sister and I think, but somehow it didn’t get in the way of him loving his family. Still, the Aspergers made it nearly impossible for him to read my facial expressions and body language. Sometimes that was a good thing, but usually not.

I have some particular memories that stick out for some reason. Some are fairly obvious like my dad at his ham radio, a common afternoon activity. He got me involved as well. Others less so like wandering around Canal street in Manhattan looking at interesting surplus or down where the twin towers would later be built at electronics components. To a child the electronics components with their multi colored coding were fascinating.

My dad tried to help me on my projects which were all over the map. At one point I was building a Van der Graff generator (never worked) at another model rocketry. Later we had a fine antique Bausch and Lomb microscope and examined live protozoa and found samples of various plants local to our area.

At childhood’s end and throughout my adult life I always felt he lived a bit vicariously through me. He clearly would have loved to have been a technician or an engineer but having his dad die at fourteen meant starting adult life early in sweatshops. He never had the chance to use  his intellect and wasn’t going to let his son’s go to waste.

I wish I could say he felt as strongly about my sister, but that was the generational divide. While not actively dissuaded she didn’t receive much help getting her degree. Still, for the son of a window washer he managed to have two kids climb out of the lower middle class and into good paying jobs and good futures.

This is not to say my mom didn’t have her contribution, but this post isn’t about that sweet caring woman.

After my mom died my dad briefly got socially active after I goaded him to live and not just sit home. He found a girlfriend and they had fun together and while the romance didn’t last forever they stayed friends for quite a long time.

The last decade he spent with my wife and our family. First in our home driving us nuts for five years. After it became apparent he wasn’t safe with him falling over and over we got him into assisted living where we visited him every week.

We gave him a good end in hospice care, visiting each day, always parting with affection. I don’t know what we could have done better. One of the most profound moments of my life will always be standing over his body with my wife and a rabbi saying a Jewish prayer for the dead.

He was laid to rest next to my mom back in 2010 and I miss him still, idealism, craziness and all.