Remembering my Father

My father would be close to one hundred years old if he were alive today.

And if he knew I was remembering him on Fathers' Day he would be appalled. He had no tolerance for what he called ' those Hallmark holidays'.

He died thirty years ago of a sudden heart attack. He was almost seventy, way too young to go. There was so much I had to ask him but never got the chance.

It was a wild ride through childhood and adolescence with this man, an absent minded professor of classics, a libertarian in the basic sense, my mentor and tormentor. He read to his five children every single night of the year. We read the entire works of Hawthorn and Shakespeare. We grew up knowing mythology. We played chess and checkers, dominoes and backgammon.

One of the rooms in our salt box colonial house in upstate New York was Pa's study. He had an immense desk overflowing with piles of papers and books (overdue to a professor.) Usually the cats slept there. As a little kid I knew I would always be welcome there. "Pa, draw me a picture!" And he would take me on his lap and create a drawing with his black ink pen, usually the same thing - a person sitting in a chair. It was in that study that my brother and I learned to read. My brother, who was six, two years older than I, sat close beside Pa on the old couch, and they went through 'Dick and Jane'. I hung over the back of the couch, mouthing the words, no doubt being very annoying.

When I was six my father took me with him when he went to Harvard to teach for a semester. The other four kids stayed back with my mother. Why was this? I don't know.(Was I so difficult I should be sent away?) We went on the train, an adventure for me. I had a new warm coat for the trip. We would spend nights with my father's brother who had a house on Beacon Hill in Boston. Each day my father took me to the Peabody Museum where I would stay until he picked me up at lunchtime. Mind you, this was not a day care situation. I loved wandering among the glass flowers. I don't remember any adults there and I have no memory of being bored or scared.

Fast forward to adolescence. After my father got his passport reinstated after the McCarthy mess, our family began years of travel on various fellowships. Five kids! The first trip was to Rome. By this time I was thirteen, always in love with someone or something. I had no time for Pa. But he insisted I go with him to explore Etruscan graves with the enigmatic writing. My father was an amazing teacher! To this day I recall the wonder of thinking about that little known society. He could give a young person just enough but not too much. He made you think.

After a few years back in the States we were off for a stint in Beirut. My father would teach at the American University there. My mother took the two youngest kids by boat and would meet up with the rest of us in Beirut. My father took the three oldest of us for an odyssey that began in Switzerland where we picked up a VW bug. We drove all the way to Lebanon. The youngest brother spent most of the trip in the well behind the second seat. No one had seat belts. No one had cell phones. We drove down through northern Italy, into Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, and on into the middle east.

Needless to say, we had very little money for this venture so we spent nights in some pretty rank places. I remember the night when Pa was brushing his teeth in one of our flea bag hostelries. A grape came up out of the drain as he was rinsing his toothbrush. He just gave us 'This Look' and said he was going out to sleep in the car. From then on we have always thought of this as "the grape incident".

Sometime along the way Pa dislocated his knee. We took him to an emergency room in Yugoslavia but they couldn't do anything. My older brother was old enough to drive so we kept on going. By the time we got to Beirut, we just dropped Pa off at the hospital. When my mother arrived, Pa was already recovering from knee surgery and the rest of us were ensconced in our new apartment.

My father's office at the American University was located in the natural history department. All kinds of dusty stuffed birds looked down at his desk. Cabinets lining the walls were full of birds' nests and old bones. Seemed kind of natural to me, knowing my father.

We all loved living in Beirut. My older brother soon left to study at the Sorbonne, so I was the oldest child living there in my family. It was the first time in my life I needed to think about politics and the dire problems of the refugee camps. I went to school with a few Americans, some Europeans, and many Arabs.

Part of Pa's fellowship requirements was to travel around to other middle east countries and give lectures on classical antiquities. I accompanied him to be the person who managed the slide show. (I did not want to do this because I was enmeshed in my life of friends in Beirut and I had a serious boyfriend.) I remember one trip when we were to go as far as Iraq, through the Bekaa Valley, into Syria and beyond. We were going to an archeaology site where an entire ancient city was being dug up.

This place was out in East Jesus, beyond the beyond. There was no real road, only a track through the kitty litter desert. Dark descended and the VW bug plowed on. Suddenly we are attacked by something BIG! I see that a donkey has crashed through our windshield. Pa and I gather ourselves. No one was hurt! Then a shepherd appears, the owner of the donkey. We give him 50 piasters. (How do you value a donkey?) We shake the glass out from our clothes and minus a windshield, drive on to our destination. Pa is so cool, this oblivious absent-minded professor. Never for one moment does he give me any reason to worry. (yeah, we could be kidnapped, murdered, dismembered, whatever.) But my dad is cool.

Minus the windshield we arrive after sunset at the archaeology dig site in the middle of nowhere. The Iraqi scientists who have spent their days carefully excavating an ancient city in eastern Iraq have prepared a lovely supper for us. Song sparrows on a spit. Sheep eyeballs in some kind of soup. I took one look and I was ready to die and ascend at this very moment into the sky in a ball of fire. Pa reads my expression and, taking my arm, jerks me back behind the building. "You are going to be gracious! You may even like it. I am counting on you."

It was the hardest meal I have ever eaten but eat it I did. (Many years later I thought of this as I ate guinea pigs in Peru.)

I could ask my father anything. (Was Jesus a Communist?) He respected all questions. He was brilliant and famous, and most of all he was the kind of person who made you think you were his most favorite and loved person.

So, to you, Pa, on this Fathers' Day, I remember you with love.