| My father grew up in a large Russian immigrant
family in northern Ohio. There were eleven children in the
family, and numerous relatives nearby.
Dad often reminisced about his early family life. He once
described a typical day at home: his mother kept a list of
transgressions, and when his father arrived home from work, he
would take a strap to each of the offenders. His mother would
intervene only to the point of pleading, "Not the head! Not
the head!" My father never labeled this treatment
"child abuse", but he knew it was not the best
parenting to have had.
To help with the family finances, my dad had a paper route
starting at age eight; he was not allowed to return home until
he had sold all his papers. He would probably not have called
this child abuse either, but he had a deep desire to give his
children, as he often put it, the childhood that he had missed.
He never hit his own children, and although he sometimes
misunderstood our intentions, he always tried to do what he
believed was in our best interests. When I once asked him how he
had been able to treat my brother and me better than his own
father had treated him, he replied, simply, "I wanted my
children to have a better life than I had." My father was a
good example of a man who somehow found it in his heart to treat
his own children with more compassion than he himself had
received as a child.
I once asked my mother how Dad was able to be so loving
despite having been punished so often by his father. Mom quickly
replied, "Sarah. His sister Sarah protected him." I
found it interesting that my mother, having never studied the
psychological origins of behavior, had this perceptive insight.
I owe much to Sarah - and she herself must have been protected
by someone1. This is what gives me
hope: love moves through the generations as readily as does
pain.
Dad died in 1990, at the age of eighty-seven. For the last
few years of his life, he suffered with prostate cancer, poor
vision, and general frailty. Near the end of his life, he was
almost totally blind, somewhat deaf, and used a walker. Slender
all his life, he had become painfully thin. A man who enjoyed
more than eighty healthy, active years had been vanquished. But
you wouldn't have heard that from him. Just a few months before
his death, nearly blind, and having great difficulty walking, he
would be as eagerly excited as a small child if we were going
out for dinner. One day, during what turned out to be my last
visit with him, he used a walker for the first time in my
presence. I must have looked surprised, because he put his arm
around me and whispered, "I don't really need this. I'm
only using it to please your mother." After Dad died, I
shared that memory with Mom. We marveled at the strength of his
proud will, which not even cancer could break.
|
|
Although Dad lived into his late eighties,
for me he will always be in his early forties, so vivid
and special are my memories of our times together when I
was a small child. Though he was a hard-working, busy man,
first as a travelling salesman, then as a retailer, he
managed to spend enough time with me that somehow in my
memory, I picture him, like Ozzie Nelson2,
always at home.
My most precious memories were our trips around the
block - he walking, I on my tricycle; I must have been
three or four. After we'd passed two corners, we could see
the houses which backed against those on our own street,
and I would get excited. Most of these houses were
"English Tudor" style; those on our block were
wood and brick, typical American 1940's architecture. My
excitement came not from seeing a different architectural
style, but because Dad would pretend that this was England
- not merely English architecture, but England itself!
There I was at age three, a global traveler, visiting
England every day. Dad always loved to travel, but more
than that, he always believed in dreams.
|
Dad traveled often when I was small, but he made it clear
that he deeply missed all of us when he was away from home. I
had a collection of "international" dolls, each
dressed in a native costume. Whenever Dad returned from a
business trip, he would greet me with great excitement and
pleasure, and present me with a new doll. Yet it wasn't the
dolls themselves that mattered to me, and it never felt to me
that he was using gifts as a substitute for his presence. These
dolls were simply his way of telling me that he had missed me
and that he had thought of me while we were apart – a subtle
message for a young child, but he managed to communicate it. He
would describe in great detail his trip to the store, his
reasons for having chosen that particular doll, and a little
about the country represented. His pleasure in my happiness was
obvious.
Dad had a wonderful sense of humor; he would instantly stop
whatever he was doing if someone had a joke to share, and we
laughed often in our family life. Dad's favorite comedian was
Jack Benny, so every year he too would turn "39". When
I actually became 39, he was delighted that we were now
"the same age". He gave me the precious gift of seeing
humor in even the most difficult situations. Shortly before Dad
died, I dreamed of his death. In my dream, I felt deep sadness,
and complained to a friend, "But now I can't tell him any
more jokes."
We seldom hear this when a man of his age dies, but it's true
of my dad: "And he was so young."
This article is dedicated with love and
gratitude to Nathan Baron (1903-1990).
|
