IN MY LIFE

IN MY LIFE

Today is my birthday and in lieu of gifts I would like everyone to go out and buy a monkey.  Being President of the American Chimp and Monkey association I know that this will make your life a much more pleasant one.  Just know that most monkeys like to do the TV Guide crossword puzzles, emphatically vote Republican and when no one is around they like to sing the entire score to La Boheme.

Ever since I can remember, knowing that D-Day was June 6th, I always said that it really meant David Day.  Just like you, from day one, there were all kinds of wars, skirmishes and battles to be won, so in some ways, it worked.

I have, for the most part, been quite a lucky man.   In no particular order, I have two sons who I adore and make me prouder than they did the day before.  I also love the women in their lives who make them happy which in turns makes me happy which in turn puts me in a good mood so I am more likely to want to make you laugh.  See what one good date can trigger?

My parents, Murray and Ina of Hollis, Queens, New York, were sweet hearted, hard-working people of peasant stock who never shied away from their appointed rounds as day laborers and diligent, generous parents.  Like most parents they came with all kinds of defects with no warranties.  It was easy to admire other kid’s parents who had more than us.  My dad always reminded me of Edward G. Robinson and I secretly believed that he took the train every morning to Hollywood, shot his films and then took the LIRR home so he could be parked at the table by dinner time. 

My dad was affable.  Kind.  Twinkly in some ways.  In his younger days he was rather dapper. He worked in the shmata business (spellcheck wants me dead for that word and at the moment is being relentless with the obsessive attempt to correct me.  Suddenly I feel married again) and my dad liked to dress the part and look sharp.  That has rubbed off on me big time.  Even when I’m naked, somehow I still look trendy.

My dad was also a nervous man.  He was often scared of whatever shadow ghosts haunted him. His soundtrack was a natural tremble in the key of fear.   

He was not a risk taker.  

His solution to everything was to take care of his cub clan by working seven days a week.  He never complained and I never once heard him say an untoward word about anyone.  

He was as quiet as a book whose chapters featured far more fantasy than reality.  When he was very young he dreamed of becoming an actor. His stage name was going to be Judson Quincy, the third.  

But my dad donated his share of the spotlight to me. And yet, in my memory, there he is, bathing in the unblemished radiance of it.  He was not a boisterous kind of character.  He was the steady captain of the tugboat, which he often panicked was the Titanic.  

For him there were icebergs everywhere.  

But he navigated us with quiet grace.  The biggest compliment that I could get from him was a snappy wink. After a show in college, my folks would come backstage and while others back-slapped me and sang my praises, there, floating in the daddy distance, was the Good Ship Murray, who, when he caught my eye, would deliver THE WINK, and the electrical current connection between us was pure Tesla perfection.

Soft-hearted men do not do well in the hard-hearted world and he died when I was 25.  

The chest pains that he experienced during the night were not enough,  according to his old school rules, to wake up my mom, so by the time that they got to the hospital the next morning, all that was left was a heart that was whimpering like a car struck puppy.  

He died in minutes, disappearing like a magician’s assistant into the fine mist ether of memory, onboard that mythical sailboat, which is fueled by any parent’s last and final gust of breath which escorts them to the depths of the sky which they could only dream about when they were young and full of promise and hope.

His legacy for me which I carry to this day like a precious newborn is my love for simple things.  

My dad taught me to be mesmerized by a soft summer breeze.  To luxuriate fully in the very first bite of a butter slathered corn cob.  Still alive in me is his love for word play.  Because of him I swim in the deep end of novels.  Because of him I love theater and movies.  

When I was two my most constant lullaby was the sound of my dad laughing at Jackie Gleason.  Like all men of his day, my dad kept his feelings locked up in his Willy Loman, transparent suitcase of samples.  We all saw what was packed inside, but it was the thrill and charge of the older generation man to remain stoic and manly. Complaining was not a menu item. Ever.

Still, he didn’t fool anyone.  I knew when he had just cried.  I knew when he was angry.  But best of all I knew when he thought something was funny and I’m sure that my need to make others laugh is all because of Captain Murray of the S. S. Funny pants.

My mom was a far more complex creature.

She had a tortured past, which began with privilege and indulgence and ended up playing out more like a Shakespeare tragedy.  

I won’t go in to the specifics of her guilt and fury, other than to say I have finally written about it and my new play opens this Friday in Harrisburg, PA.  It is my complicated Valentine’s Day card to her which I never got to properly deliver.

We all seem to either come from crazy or tragedy.   I have yet to meet anyone who has escaped those particular origins.  We are all the soft clay sculptures of trauma and pain, which includes the act of birth.

Our parents, to no fault of their own, having not been blessed  with an escape route, inevitably turn on themselves, as if the grown up version of them can somehow punish the past with such rage that the hope is that sooner or later the torment will die.

My mom on one level was an ethereal creature.  

She was pretty. Well mannered.  As perpetually coiffed and put together as June Cleaver.  She was sparkly. Witty. Funny.  My friends loved her.   She took the lead when it was time, on her clock, to play a board game.

Every morning, she would write a new word on my little blackboard for me to learn, whose definitions I still remember to this day.  She had memory tricks, like exchanging scientific and historical facts for actual song lyrics, which is why I would always sing out loud during a test all the way through the SATs.

But my mom, behind closed doors, was also a tormented monster, who was forever chained to the wall of her deep guilt which was part of the tiny, invisible jail cell that she had built when she was around 8 or so.

That is the sanctuary from which she howled long into the night.  

Her need to control the outside world, which I was the center of, was obsessive and unforgiving.  

Since I was the embodiment of her worst nightmare fears, her silent allegiance was to make sure I would never, ever be out of her sight.  I was tied down.  Not allowed to stray far.  There were no sleep overs for me.  Ever.  I was not allowed to go away to college.  I had to commute.  In my earliest years, whenever I dared to be defiant and tried to sprout my wings of independence, for that single crime I was severely and brutally punished. 

I still wrestle to this day, right after I do something impulsive or risky (which I do with alarming frequency) with the inner core dragon of my invisible, still fire-breathing mom.

When she died, slayed by Parkinson’s Dementia, my first feeling was profound relief.  It was like all the toxic waste helium had finally been released from my swollen emotional balloon.

But that only lasted about ten seconds.

When you get to a certain age, you suddenly realize that you have been a part of an active chain.  Torment and guilt gets voluntarily passed from family member to family member like broken bread and we live off the crumbs of anxiety, pecking at them until we bleed.

It takes time and a hell of a lot of writing to go guilt and gluten free.

My sister did not have the one thing that saved me: a fevered imagination.   My way of dealing with my mom was to either entertain her (I sang songs from The Fantastiks to her on her death bed) or escape into the wallpapered Valhalla of my bedroom, where I could animate my stuffed animals, dress up like heroes and at times, fly off into the nether regions of time and space.

My sister was far more literal than me and I think has suffered because of it.  

When I talk to her, she often sounds just like my mom, like any one phone call is an active and ongoing seance.  She is a deeply good and heartfelt person, but just like me, she has to wrestle with the rusty Gillette razor blades feelings which were distributed like war bonds by my mom.

My past is full of folly and natural storms.  Every day I wake up and when I ask Alexa for today’s weather report, I think, deep down inside, I’m really asking:  “How am I feeling right now?  What is the forecast of me?”

Try as we may to prepare for the hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, it is impossible not to be at the very least, hampered or inconvenienced by them.

But that is why God made umbrellas and rain hats.

We go on.  No matter what.  We go on.

And so, here on my birthday, I find myself, instead of waging war on whatever obstacle stands in my path,  wanting instead to lay down my sword and shield and give myself fully to the memory of my parents who, for the most part, gave way too much while asking for way too little.

I thank them for their courage. For their war time sacrifices.  For the Paul Tripp, Danny Kaye  Peter Pan and Zorro theme records. For my Bat Masterson cane and Davy Crockett coon skin hat.  For my Howdy Doody ventriloquist dummy. For helping me plow the endless Van Gogh painted fields of my unbridled fantasies which remain miraculously fertile and productive to this day.  For the family trips that took us deep into the Smithsonian where I got to touch an Astronaut’s space capsule and later on in the day, got to see West Side Story from the Sharks and Jet black balcony of a D.C. theater.

I thank them for protecting me.  

For letting me swim through their legs in the tides of the Atlantic.  For letting me cat nap curled and peaceful on my mother’s mink stole.  For the trails of lipstick kisses that found their way to cheek and brow.  For all the Field of Dreams catches that my dad and I participated in, in zen silence,  on the beaches of the South Shore.  

For the muted, peaceful car rides home,  whose soundtrack were the Frank Sinatra records spun by William B. Williams and whose comet trails were the white puffs of cigar smoke which escaped from my dad like an animated locomotive.

I thank them for the throw up pail, which they held while I did the heaving heaving.  For getting me through the valley of the measles, mumps and endless held colds.

For tolerating me.  For encouraging me.  For making me think twice before I did the next incredibly dumb thing.

For teaching me that singing is the heart’s way of saying I love you out loud.   

For letting me go when they wanted to hold on to me the most.

For the High School for the Performing Arts.  For the years of camp which have produced friends who I cherish to this day.

For teaching me to always move forward no matter how much the instinct to go backwards beckoned..

For the love of the New York Yankees.  For taking me to see Roger Maris hit his 61st homer in.

For the endless rodeos and circuses and birthday parties which were as grand as any Prince, Jewish or British, would ask for even though I once pinned the tail not on the donkey, but on the the unsuspecting and most vulnerable tush of my Grandma.

For teaching me that being right is not as important as doing the right thing.

For letting me inherit the wind.

For giving me breath.

For loving words.

For loving me.

Hold on.  My son is calling to wish me happy birthday.

I win.