FURTHER’S DAY

I can no longer remember my dad’s voice but I would recognize it in a second if he would suddenly pick up a phone and call.

But when you no longer exist,  phoning and texting become a challenge.

The further and further my dad, still known as daddy to my sister and I, flies away, the more I have to rely on the soldiers of my memory army to break through the enemy lines of my resistance in order to plant the flag and fill in the blanks.

My dad died in 1977 when I was still a kid in my twenties.  That’s thousands of days ago.  My friend Terry just lost his dad yesterday and strangely I feel like I did too because the impact of losing a parent never leaves you.  The crater impact of death hits you with such earth shattering force that  it leaves a permanent impression in the terrain of your being.

In death, you hold on to your parents just as tightly as you did when you were little and the act of clinging to them was a life giving resuscitative force in itself.

Even though they literally slip through your fingers and become as elusive as the fluttering butterfly that you will never catch, you will always feel the weight of them.  On your shoulders.  

Surfing lightly atop a slowly falling tear.

If you play an old 78 record long enough, it will eventually start to wear itself down. The music will become less resonant and begin to wither and fade in the grooves just like they did. 

But you will keep that record for the rest of your life because just by looking at it, you will remember every note of the melody which will soothe you like a portable lullaby.

While our parents, my dad, are buried in the ground, we are all the repositories of their legacies.

We are in charge of the estate of them and it is our job to continue the work they started from the moment that they made you.

Most of us were conceived in a laboratory of love. Marriage, while not an exact science, is a worthy experiment which fails at least half the time.  But the goal of creating life and giving back to Mother Earth is worth the risk.

We are all the product of dreams.  We were first conjured up, like a Picasso sketch on a restaurant napkin, when our parents were children and were dreaming about their someday, faraway future.

The second that they met, their mutual, immediate, secret, coded, message was a loud and resonant: Me too that reverberated and echoed in every single cell of their being.

They wanted children so deeply, had been thinking about them for so long that that the magnetic attraction between them was like a jack in the box moment of the heart.  

Their need to love deeply simply leapt out of their chests.

We felt it in the womb.  We heard it in their cadence.  We knew their every shuffled movement.  Their songs.  Their breathes of anticipation.  Their need to escort us like a guide through the museum of life.

Deep inside us all, especially as we form and develop, the trillions of cell bubbles of our DNA pop like a giggle and a squeal, every time we feel exquisite and perfect which is most of the time that we float inside the belly of the best.

Birth is easy for us.  It’s hard for dad and even harder for Mom, who has to do all the labor.  We just one day get our cue and by sheer instinct the make our entrance right into the spotlight of the sun.   Air floods through us, courses through our lungs and veins and from that point on we are oxygen junkies.  Just like that God is a dealer.

From that point on, being helpless and clueless, we get fed and cared for like cherished garden plants.  We are forged with nutrients but best of all we are bonded and insured by all rocking.  By the cooing.  By the sing song language that our moms and dads speak to us.

We boys stick with mom for the first four years or so.  That’s our only shot to be immunized with the soft, feminine part of life.   

And from that point on, that’s when our dads swoop in like a hawk and leads us to the battlefields of sports, ready to teach us the art of ball war.   It’s where we quickly learn to put our aggressions which seem to sprout like wildfire whenever we’re around our dads.

Dads are full of mystery when we are little.  They suddenly disappear into the fine mist of morning, going off into whatever Camelot city they work in, dressed in sharp suits and buff shiny shoes, smelling like slapped on aftershave to ride the dragon trains which take them into the belly of the unknown so we can have the basics of life.

When I grew up, my mom stayed home and kept the chess board moving us  as deftly as Bobby Fisher.  Everything was strategic and well planned.  All that early in life dollhouse playing paid off big time.  Mom was well rehearsed in the fine art of us.  We were flipped about acrobatically like dicing and slicing Japanese steak house chefs from school to homework filled bedrooms, from bath to table.

And then dad would make his grand entrance with his fedora at a rakish angle, looking tired like he was an NYPD detective, worn out from his long day of gumshoe investigation.  If I was really lucky, he would be carrying a bag full of comic books on loan from my Uncle Jack’s newsstand in Penn Station. Because they had to be returned to the racks, I had to treat them like the gold that they were.  It rained Superman, Jerry Lewis, Batman, and every other superhero in my room.  Sometimes there were three of the same thing which made me laugh, because I could just imagine my dad, frantically snatching up copies so he would not miss his train.  I loved that he invested that tiny amount of time just for me.  And three of the same just made me feel even more special.

My dad was a great sidekick.  He took me to the Roy Rogers rodeos at Madison Square Garden, to NCAA basketball and Globetrotter and Knick games and best of all, to the Polo Grounds, to the original Yankee Stadium and eventually to Shea Stadium where we would trek like religious fanatics on a pilgrimage, to the Lourdes of the Fields, where we could sit languidly on a steamy August afternoon,  sipping cokes, eating peanuts and Crackerjacks like retired rich men, casually chatting about statistics, manager strategy and player talent like we were experts in the field.

My dad drove our chariot car to and from the beach on the South shore of Long Island where he would grill in his bathing suit, browned by the sun.  He relished in the delight of corn on the cob, which for some reason, was his form of manna for heaven.  In the silent home movies, he could be seen devouring the cobs which moved back and forth through his teeth like a typewriter carriage, as if he was typing out the words, “This is heaven,” which was his favorites phrase when he needed to communicate his love for something.  He would smile bashfully at the camera and wink and you could almost hear the sound of the “ping” that came off it.

Daddy was there.  At my recitals.  At my dances.  At every single play that I starred in right through college.  While he adored words and word play he did not rely on them to communicate his feelings.  He relied on the “wink” to say it all.  To this day that was the best compliment that I have ever had.

He was also a tireless worker bee.   In my young years, he was a dapper salesman of high end USA made gloves, which were made in Gloversville, New York.  We’re talking fancy shmancy.   Calfskin. Deerskin.  Cashmere.  Mink.

I had more gloves than fingers and toes and I had no trouble ruining them in the show.  We would leave their wet bodies on the radiator and the next morning they would be brittle corpses.

Dad was a notorious nosher.  He had Chuckles filled candy drawer which was his go to place when he got home.  My mom would forever lecture him about ruining his appetite, but somehow it never did, because he kept eating well after dinner. He would stand over the sink, slurping up fruit or he would cook up chestnuts on the stove and we would all partake in his nut bounty which was quite the delicacy.  He also lived for fresh bread.  I have no idea why.  I guess he had to carb his enthusiasm.

He loved TV and when he would watch a show like Jackie Gleason’s it’s the only time that I ever heard him LAUGH which is no doubt why I wanted to become a comedy writer.  

I still want to make him laugh.

Dad was not courageous.  He was scared to death of taking any risks.  He stayed on the lower rung of the ambition ladder and never was the boss of anyone. As the family grew and matured, he resisted moving to more costly places.   He was just scared, which unfortunately is what made me reckless with money.  All my friends were Jamaica Estate rich.  They had what I wanted most: my own bedroom.  I didn’t get my own until I was around 14 and we moved into my sister’s fiancé’s house ,after his folks moved to Florida.

Dad was a worrier warrior.   And eventually that is what cause his heart to explode like a grenade. He woke up with chest pains in the middle of the night and typically did not wake up my mom because he didn’t want to disturb her.

That was him.  I never once heard him say an untoward thing about anyone.  He was smart.  Really smart.  Just not about himself.

By the time mom got him to the hospital he had no heart left and since my ad was all heart, that meant certain and immediate death.

I was in LA when he died. When I came home I learned from his death certificate that he was ten years older than I thought.   He was15 years older than my mom.  He thought this would bother my sister and I.

Again: that was my dad.  Sensitive to a fault.  And that is something that I have inherited from him.  Which is what forces me to write.  I need to try and figure out what is beneath all these layers of sensitivity.  What am I really protecting and defending within an inch of my life.

And so dad died at 59/69.  I asked to be alone with his body and when I did I literally felt whatever gift he for me leap into my body.

His funeral was packed.  People just loved Murray. Uncle Murray.  Cousin Murray.  My close friend Murray.

Although he was Mr. Limpett nervous, he was a calming presence.  He was the go to stuffed bear that everyone loved to hug.

I grew up with is side of the family and all the brothers and sisters and the same face, so every cake carrying Aunt and Uncle visit was like a visit from him.

HIs family and ours were a tight tribe.   We are not today. Life keeps us apart and that is a shame.  Because we all have the very same kind of love to share, like a cherished Topps baseball card collection or a bag full of comics which sometimes has three copies of the same thing.

I think about my dad often.  Every day.   But maybe a little more today.  I’m sure you are doing the same thing.

How lucky are we to have had these angels in America men who knew by sheer instinct how to sprout their wings and get the job done?

So on this day, I look to the heavens, to the empty chair, to the hold in my heart and I whisper what I whisper each and every day:

I love you daddy.