I recently read someone’s account of their fathers' passing and realized it was time to post this somewhere...it's what I wrote for my dads service:In California, where my father was when he died, we held a service for the people there who knew him. We found a place called the Petaluma Historical Library Museum, a small place cluttered with obscure artifacts and books, a stained glass dome in the ceiling, and pillars on the facade…perhaps a perfect place for the moment. The truly fascinating thing, however, were the people who showed up.
There were probably about 50 of them in the end. Most were from Crate & Barrel where he had been working. Some of them were older, my father’s age, and like him, seemed to be working there as they coasted along through their simpler years. Some were more my age, working their way up in life or making a stopover between other things. Some of the people worked at the family law firm where he had recently been hired as a paralegal. To most of us that’s a laughable concept…well to them it was too, and his boss told the story of discovering a two-inch think resume among the grossly inadequate single sheets of the other applicants! Finally there were some who lived near my father and knew him from ‘around the neighborhood’ as it were. All these people adored my father! In what was for most of them less than a year, they had seen and accepted my father as a wonderful man…someone they adored, trusted, enjoyed, cared for, and would miss.
The interesting thing for me was hearing the comments which seemed so out of place. A lawyer called him ‘humble.’ Someone said ‘he’s always so calm.’ And my favorite…‘he wasn’t great at dinnerware, but boy could he sell furniture!’
My point is that knowing, and appreciating my father was a matter of perspective…all of ours different. And for each different perspective, a different relationship…for better or for worse.
What I’d like to do now is to share with you my perspective, and the way I knew my father.
First of all he was never my ‘father’…he was my dad. He was probably Daddy for a while, and later he was Pop, but mostly he was Dad. That’s important because he was never formal, he was never aloof, and he was never unreachable or preoccupied. On the contrary he was always involved, caring, eager, and open. He knew how to snuggle, to hug, to wrestle, and how to gently carry me from the car to my bed when I was asleep. Once when I was home sick at his house, he made me rice crispy treats to cheer me up…which I promptly threw up an hour later. After that he let my mom be my nurse no matter which house I was at.
I know that New Haven has lots of brilliant and successful lawyers, some here today…but from my perspective, you are all incomparable to my dad! You are Lilliput to his Gulliver; Watsons to his Holmes; Carthage to his Rome. I’m sure he never lost a case or a battle of wits. He would never say such things, but he would smile when we asked him, and his eyes would sparkle as he tried to find the right words to explain that family law wasn’t really about winning or loosing…
I used to walk to his office at the Marcus Law Firm building downtown, the big mansion that was next to Running Start. Walking into that building, it was like my dad was an ambassador or something. And everyone knew me too so I was just as important as he was. Jay would tell me he was on the phone but I could go right in. His office was a throne room, his desk was huge and I was allowed to put my feet up on it. It was all fitting given my perspective.
My dad was an Encyclopedia Galactica! His mind was the original world wide web of information and he was the master Googler. Basically it’s because he read everything ever written by man or beast, including those monkeys that are still infinitely typing. He knew about every history subject I asked about for class. He could recite every play I was forced to read for English. Maybe Spanish was pushing the boundaries a bit, but he tried. Math on the other hand, well, let’s just say he sent me to my mom for math help. Writing papers however, I did with him. “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, then tell ‘em you told em!” That was his formula and I learned it last minute after last minute as I procrastinated my way through report after report. But see, I could, because Sunday night when I announced that I had a paper due the next day on the mating rituals of Alaskan king crabs and how they are affected by the lead used in hull welds of boats build at the Brooklyn Navy yard, not only would he have four books on the subject, but he would have been to the Brooklyn navy yard! He’d yell a bit about me waiting till the last minute and make me stay up until it was done, but he would also stay up the whole time helping me through it…and he always let me spend as long as I wanted to on the illustrated cover. In the end he was as proud of each as I was.
Jesse and I learned later how to tell when he was, in fact, bullshitting his way through something…but somehow that just added to the amazement of what he did know while giving us new respect for his creativity. And that, in itself, became a game…
A game…because my dad was playful. More than anything he was playful. I have no doubt you have all suffered through his humor! From my perspective there was not a lawyer joke told in the tri-state area that wasn’t routed through my fathers fax machine for approval and distribution. He never told a joke just once either. When I was young my dad was hilarious, as I got older he became corney, then later predictable and droll, till in the end he was tolerable and mildly amusing. Somewhere along the way I started telling all the same jokes as him!
How else was he playful? “Pick a finger” he would say. “Now I’m going to mix them up, see if you can find it again.” I remember hours and hours of Risk. Sometimes it took a whole vacation to conquer the world and so he had a system for saving the board each night for the next day’s battles. I remember playing Parcheesi at the house on Brownell Street and Othello in the basement of 2 Alden.
There were the things he bought…the Star Wars figures, the G.I. Joes, the water guns, the endless stream of plastics in to the house (I think he was single handedly trying to prove The Graduate right)…and then there were the things he made!
Cardboard, wood, sand, Lego, even mashed potatoes! We made sandcastles, then set storm troopers on the walls and towers and took turns throwing pebbles till our opponent’s force and castle were destroyed. He had precise mixtures for the sand and exact specifications for the stones, to maximize the fun. We waited for each snow fall so we could dig trenches in the backyard for the rebels and then march imperial walkers across the frozen tundra. We built cardboard boats, fortresses, and forests for the Joes, Cobras and Ewoks. We spent Saturday mornings building cars, tanks, airplanes, helicopters, and spaceships out of Legos. Sunday mornings we dismantled them for parts so we could make new ones.
When my dad and I lived on Brownell he made a train table for my grandfather’s trains that was hinged and lifted up into the wall while I was off at my mom’s. When we moved into 2 Alden he made a sandbox…which was used less by us and more by the local cats as a litter box. He built a train board in the basement there too, but we later used the space for model building – plastic airplanes that eventually perished when my dad showed us how to set them on fire and throw them out the second story window. One time he figured out how to fly the Millennium Falcon from Jesse’s room on the second floor to the garage, while small strings made futuristic paratroopers drop to the ground to begin their assault on the aliens who had taken over our back yard…a plot inspired by a book of course: Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.
From my perspective, the millions of dollars he spent on toys where not to spoil us, but to give him an excuse to play with us, to spend time. The books he read to us every night and the movies we watched every opening day were his excuse to teach us and to share stories, real or fantasy.
From my perspective my dad was the greatest dad ever. I would change nothing about him or the things he did. My only wish would be that he had the opportunity to be the greatest grandpa ever. I wish that he could have built things for his grandchildren, like he did with me. “Pick a finger, any finger” he would say. I want to see him proud of them the way he was of me. And I want him to see me follow the lessons he taught me about the most important job he ever had, from my perspective.
Sometimes I am motivated to do some things in my life because I saw someone do it poorly, but I am motivated to do the important things because I saw someone else do them right! My dad got it right…and now…well, what can I say but “I want to learn the ways of the force, and become a Jedi like my father before me.”
