Happy 100th Birthday Dad
Today is my Dad’s 100th birthday. When they invented the phrase “salt of the earth” they were talking about him. Wikipedia says it refers to humble and unpretentious people.
That was him, humble, unpretentious and happy. He lived for 84 years. Although paralyzed from strokes, Parkinson’s disease, blind in one eye, on a feeding tube in a wheelchair, his last Halloween he managed to convince someone to buy him a Batman costume. His sense of humor buoyed the world, and always inspired my heart even when I was stuck in a morass of despairing alcoholism. I always wanted better things for myself because of him. One night in a drunken stupor I called and woke him up to tell him I had just found a two headed nickel. He didn’t yell at me, or get mad; he just chuckled and said he would like to see it. In fact, I can only remember him getting mad at me once in my life. Instigated by my Mom, he slapped me across the face for playing hooky. I lived a half a block from my elementary school and told my parents there was no school that day. At 3:00 when all the kids in uniform swarmed the streets, it was obvious I was lying.
My father was one of eight children of Italian immigrant parents. I don’t know much about his childhood in the depression, but I do know he suffered and learned frugality from it. He would save a few pennies by walking instead of taking the subway. He tread lightly on his shoes so they didn’t need to be resoled often. He was frugal, but was never stingy of heart. He got a job in the post office when civil jobs were hard to come by and did not go to war. He and my Mom had two children and she worked until I came along. My Dad did back breaking plastering work every day in New York City with his brother Matty for forty years. He would come home at 2:30, take a shower and be having his dinner just as I was coming home from school. He would change his clothes, get on the subway and got to work in the Post Office on 42nd St. until midnight. He worked in the Post Office nights for 30 years. There were always love notes for my Mom and me signed, “See you on the next shift.”
He saved every penny so he could take us provide for his family. When we went shopping, he would encourage my Mom to buy a nice dress or a good piece of meat. I never met another man who enjoyed shopping so much. He got so much pleasure out of seeing his family enjoy the fruits of his labor. They were not grand my any stretch of the imagination, but he got such satisfaction from living as well as he could. After 29 years in a tenement on the 4th floor, he saved up the whole $1200. for a down payment on an attached house uptown. It was only one window wide, but it was ours. What kind of man can work around the clock like that and never complain his whole life?
He was my hero. When my Mom said they already had two biological children they couldn’t take care of another one, he insisted that they keep me. I was six months old, someone else’s child and already lost. At a year old, I tasted some Vicks vaporub, liked it and ate the whole jar. I was blue and suffocating when he found me. He instinctively knew if they waited for an ambulance I would be dead. He sucked the poison right out of me and saved my life.
I can remember a time when I spent the weekend with my biological mother. It was New Year’s Eve and we clanged on pots outside the tenement window at midnight. I was 8 years old and I remember being filled with total despair and just crying. The next day was Sunday and snowing and my Dad came to get me. We walked through the streets around the snow plows and I held his hand tight. His hands were always so warm. He always wore a light jacket and a little pork pie hat. Heroes look like that sometimes. I was so happy that he was taking me home, the place where love and kindness prevailed.
Because of our precious program, both parents were able to see me achieve their version of happily ever after. I graduated college, am still married twenty eight years later and have three fine children. My parents were married 60 years and as reliable as rain. On his deathbed I promised Dad I would take care of my Mom for the rest of her life. One day at a time, no matter how tough it was, I kept my promise and carried her back to him when she was 91 years old. Happy Birthday Dad. I know you must be telling jokes to the angels today, I wish I were there and could just have one more dance with you.