Our father's day

My father didn’t know his father. He had two stepfathers, one of whom was the lovely, patient guy we called Grandpa. Dad went to a small school in Pearl River with only a handful of children; later he went to Park Ridge High. His best friend there was a boy named Wiley Bell and we still have their yearbook in our family home. As I recall, Wiley wrote something really sweet next to Dad’s picture. They were lifeguards together, too, at a lake. We loved to hear Dad’s story about the first summer they were doing the job; some kids were tossing an orange around and the senior lifeguard bellowed through his bullhorn, “NO BALL PLAYING.” And one kid yelled, “It’s not a ball, it’s an orange.” And the guard shot back, “WELL, NO ORANGE PLAYING, EITHER.” It’s so silly but it always cracked us up and it cracked him up, too. He had a marvelous sense of humor and a seasoned comic’s sense of timing. We have a handful of Dad’s jokes and when someone lobs a punch line out of nowhere, we laugh still.

I asked him a few times whether he was surprised that he had children, or so many children. He said that was the way it was. For a boy without a father, and only one brother, it’s incredible that he and my mother had their family and took such great care of us. He was born in the middle of the Spanish Flu pandemic and money was tight. He grew up on a farm and they raised chickens. One of his jobs was to get the eggs in the morning and help clean out the coops. One day when he was very little, they were going someplace and he was dressed in a little white outfit. He grabbed a tomato from the garden, chomped into it and the tomato went all over his shirt. One of our great aunts told us that he was punished for that. As long as we knew him he never ate chicken or eggs or tomatoes. Years later, we would tease him by saying we’d make him a chicken and tomato omelet. He wouldn’t laugh, exactly; more of a tolerant, “…if you knew…” His mother wasn’t warm and fuzzy; as I think about her, she was a tiger mom who made sure he had what he needed to go places.

At home, he wasn’t all that forthcoming; in his professional life he was much more communicative and he had a lot of friends and stories. He wasn’t interested in talking about his feelings, or his father or his childhood. He loved having his own medical practice, saw many patients at their homes and took the crazy shortcuts and back streets of Jersey City to get to them. That ability to bypass traffic is a badge of honor in the family, like driving a stick shift and knowing decades of N.D. players and stats. One thing he missed, since we lived in a city, was gardening; he helped us with our gardens when we got our own. When we were small, before we moved, he had a flower garden with black tulips and cosmos, which he loved.

His office was in our home and he never employed a secretary until I was about 19 or 20. He did all the paperwork himself, making notes on 6x9 index cards and pocket notebooks he carried. He didn’t ever have a nurse either. And he had quite a few patients, or at least I think he did; he certainly was in that office for long periods of time. I wonder if he practiced that way to save money or to protect patients’ privacy.

We would always ask him questions about anything and he would say in a long drawn out way, “Wellll…” and then go into the kitchen and get more peanut butter and Saltines, or chocolate covered graham crackers, or bologna and lettuce on soft Wonder Bread or rye bread with seeds. He always drank milk, with supper too, and since his office was downstairs in our house, my mother would make his lunch and bring it downstairs and put it either in the refrigerator that we had down there, or leave it on his desk. One of his favorites was sardines mashed up with mayonnaise and lemon juice, which smelled up the back stairs. And milk. And chocolate grahams. If it were summer, the cookies had to go in the refrigerator so they wouldn’t melt. We still called it an icebox. He would say to my mother later in the day, “That was gee-rate (great).” Sometimes he’d come upstairs after we got home from school with his stethoscope around his neck and chat for five or 10 minutes about one of the perennial cranky patients Mrs. Lynch or Mrs. So-and-so.

Chuck (on left) when he was Chief Resident at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village

By that time of the afternoon I would just be starting to work up a sweat about the math homework that I knew was waiting inside my book bag and how was I going to do it and hoped he didn’t have to go to a meeting, or have office hours that night so that I’d be able to present my penciled work (later ink) the next morning with a degree of dignity. I never knew what I was talking about after I finished with decimals in the sixth grade. I was part of the student body in the early sixties who were the guinea pigs (or pioneers, depending on what side of the fence you were) to be dealt THE NEW MATH. We spoke of it in a fearful, though reverential manner, and most of the girls in my class who professed not to be able to understand it, or who always “knew they would fail,” seemed to be able to put up a good show when it came down to the wire. Not me though. My father loved it. He basically did that homework for me for several years, gently explaining how to get the answers. And then I would do a problem and he would patiently correct it. I often wonder whether my lack of comprehension of those symbols and numbers led to my years-long and chronic inability to analyze well for myself! One of my uncles was a teacher and had access of course to teacher’s copies and workbooks.  My father asked him if he could get his hands on one for me. He ordered the teacher’s handbook that had all the answers to all the math problems. And it also showed how to get the solutions. I still couldn’t understand it. He probably shouldn’t have helped me so much but I loved him for it and it calmed me down.

We had occasional household help, but for the most part my mother did everything; my father never diapered a baby, gave the baby a bath, cleared the table, or cooked a meal to help her. He wasn’t all that handy either. But, he planted flower seeds in the backyard, put up the Christmas tree and put together the doll houses or whatever on Christmas Eve, took slides, drove us to Grandma’s, helped us with homework, gave us myriad opportunities and was proud of us. At one point there were six teenagers in the house in the 60’s and 70’s and he wasn’t judgmental. He paid so many bills, including those of his mother in later years, and put nine people through college at what we know was enormous sacrifice on both their parts. He had extraordinary professional achievement and recognition but he was modest about it. I think the life that he and our mother created was so satisfying for him and he loved being around her. He brought all his papers and busywork home and spread it all over the dining room table and always sat in the same place and nobody really was welcome to sit in his chair. He smoked Chesterfields without filters. He and my mother kissed each other in front of us, when he would go down to his office.

One of my favorite memories of my very early childhood is of playing “Can’t get away,” a Saturday morning routine wherein my brother Jimmy and I would get into their bed and Dad would grab one little foot and then another and we’d try to pull it away. It was so wonderful to play and we shrieked. And all through childhood our Sunday morning ritual was to drive with Dad down to the bakery on Monticello Avenue and get soft braided rolls with poppy seeds (for us) and hard rolls (for him) and jelly donuts and raisin buns with icing for everybody. And cheese crumb coffee cake (for Mommy). On Sundays he went to 8 o’clock Mass and later he’d go to another bakery up in Five Corners and brought the Times and the Sunday News (for the funnies). And then we’d come home and spread all the papers out, together with our homework, and prayer books and watch Wonderama on TV on channel 5 and eat buns and rolls and bacon and eggs all afternoon. And Mommy would do the Times puzzle and Daddy would smoke and read the sports pages and the funnies and switch the channel to football, or baseball if it was summer. And he would always be making entries in his ledger books — dates/calendar books to show patients and how much they paid and how much they owed.

He wasn’t showy, wasn’t interested in new clothes or anything fancy. He truly loved our mother and for years she’d make two dinners, an early one for us, and then a late one for the two of them, when he came home from the office or the hospital. And she lit candles. Sometimes we could sit at the table during their dinner while they caught up on the day. Those are my bedrock memories of security and love, just being near them while they talked and appreciated each other.