My Old Man

A profile in courage.

Photo by Sabine van Straaten on Unsplash

Life dealt my father a pretty lousy hand at birth. As an infant he had asthma so severe that he almost didn’t make it. His parents had to drive him to a hospital in another state to bring the illness under control. When he was not quite 3 years old, his mother committed suicide. That left him with his father, an immigrant from Latvia, and his 11-year-old sister, who reluctantly babysat him while the father worked as a traveling peddler. About a minute after the sister graduated from high school, she left home. With no other options, his father sent the 8-year-old to an orphanage.

As orphanages go, it was better than average. The children were enrolled in a top-flight private school. In the summers, my father returned home to his father, who took him along as he sold goods and collected payments in poor city neighborhoods and rural communities. He was only 17 when his father died (at age 53). Thus ended childhood. My father entered adult life virtually alone in the world.

These experiences did not embitter him, but they did kindle a deep desire to have a family – to ease his own loneliness, certainly, but also to see that another generation would not have to begin life as he had. At the age of 24, he married my mother, whose positive attributes included membership in a large extended family.

From Orphan to Father

Then he became a father of four. Considering that he had no model of what a healthy, happy family should look like, I stand amazed at how much he got right. His marriage was not idyllic, but it lasted 48 years, right up to the moment that his death did them part. And it succeeded in creating a stable, secure, and safe home environment that launched the four of us into our own adulthoods.

My father was a salesman, sometimes at retail furniture stores, sometimes on the road. He changed employment frequently, but his job hops never seemed to lead upward. He also tried a number of entrepreneurial adventures: Selling fallout shelter supplies, franchising, home repair, property management, turnkey bridal trousseaux. All of his ventures lost money, and most added to his debts.

He was never a success by the standards of American culture. Unfortunately, he believed that was the standard that mattered most, and it grated on him that he was falling short. He understood his male role as the family provider. When he wasn’t providing, and my mother had to work to pull us through, he felt ashamed.

But as a father, he was top-notch. He taught me to throw and catch a baseball. He taught me to drive. He taught me to shave. But most of all, he taught, by his example, values I have incorporated into my own life.

• He taught me to give of myself. My father volunteered his own time readily, to us and a variety of community causes, from synagogue activities to high school clubs.

• He taught me to be generous in spirit. My father knew what loneliness felt like, so he was quick to befriend the friendless, the newcomer, the acquaintance down on his luck. He was even quick to lend money to people he believed in, regardless of whether he had it to give.

• He taught me to love justice. By his actions he demonstrated his conviction that African Americans were being denied the fair chance they deserved. Today that sounds obvious. In Louisiana in the 1950 and 1960s, it was virtual heresy.

• He taught me courage. He knew it was not easy to be in the minority religiously, politically, or ethnically, but he showed me there were values worth standing up for.

Asthma and Depression

Only later in his life did I come to understand something else about my father’s courage. He had two serious, lifelong medical challenges. Asthma was the one I knew about. It had hospitalized him more than once, and it flared up to dangerous levels at irregular intervals. What took me longer to understand was his severe depression. In retrospect, it is clear that he was bipolar. At the high end, bristling with self-confidence, he would launch into a new job or venture that was sure to bring him riches. These were always followed by a crash and a descent into a dark place where he could hardly speak or bear to be seen on the street.

The depression (but not the bipolar component) is part of my inheritance from him. For me, it was a simple matter to seek help and treatment. My father did not believe he had that option. In his mind, if he told a psychiatrist about his thoughts, he would be hustled away to an institution in a straitjacket , leaving his family destitute. So he kept it all inside and dealt with it as best as he could. Through years of despair, he found the courage to go on living because it was the best thing for his family.

Two years before he died at age 72, he found the courage to seek help for his mental health. I thought it was incredibly brave of him.

Forty-one years ago I became a father. I tried to pass on the values I had learned to my children. I passed along bits of wisdom my father had shared with me, and I tried to add what I had learned. I don’t know what took. To be a father, I believe, is to light fuses each day that are 25 years long, and you live in suspense about which will fizzle out and which will detonate someday. But what can you do? You work with the hand you’re dealt, and you do your best.

My father did his best with a terrible hand. That took tremendous courage. I am proud to be his son.