The Loss and The Gain

The first time I got an inkling of a change in my father was the night they brought him into the recovery room after amputating his leg. I went to see him although the family had been asked not to come that soon. Wracked by pain and still under the effects of the traumatic procedure, he shook his head when I leaned over him, and whispered: "You shouldn't have come now." Tears welled in my eyes at this unusual, tender concern for my sensibilities at this time of his terrible ordeal.

Before August 1973 my father and I may have kissed a lifetime total of five times. One Friday evening a year or so after he came home from the hospital, on entering the house I said, "Good Shabbes," and reached out to shake his hand as had been our custom. He ignored my outstretched hand and, instead, put on the brakes of his wheelchair and started to stand up. Alarmed, I said, "What are you doing, Pop?" I will never forget his reply: "I want to kiss you."

It was through him that I got my first formal birthday party (other than my Bar Mitzvah) on my 57th birthday. When I had my 56th, my father wished me a happy birthday. Instead of keeping quiet, I had exploded with all the pent-up anger of a long deprived child and screamed at him, "Now you're wishing me a happy birthday?

"Where were you when I was 6 and 7 and 8 and 9? You never made me a party or bought me a present or showed that you even knew it was my birthday. Now I don't need your birthday wishes!"

I soon forgot my outburst, but he had not. On my next birthday, my mother, at my father's request, arranged a surprise birthday party for me.

When I complained bitterly of his lack of demonstrated affection for me during my childhood, of his neglect of my needs, or of his ignoring my aspirations, he did not become defensive or answer me harshly. Either he stated he didn't remember or shrugged that it was the way he had seen his father act.

While his responses were not entirely satisfactory to me, he did listen; and so his replies did not tend to inflame me. Day by day, and incident by incident, I rooted out all the garbage within me. A long-festering tumor was finally extirpated.

In an earlier column ("The Loss and The Gain," October 1983 — see sidebar), I have already set forth some of the concrete changes that ensued: how through my father's efforts I received my first birthday party at the age of 57; and how he initiated our greeting each other with a kiss rather than the perfunctory handshake.

There were numerous other changes on his part (most but not all originating at my continual and insistent behest) that in total resulted in a wondrous transformation in this father of mine.

(To Be Concluded)