Remembering the Bull
Today is my father’s birthday, he would have been 88 years old today. He was a bull of a man and the first man I ever loved.
I don’t speak about my dad often and perhaps that is because he died in 1985 and has morphed into many different men since then. At the moment when he died, he was the equivalent of God to me. He was the be all of my universe. Later he grew more complex, he was this great man, but he was abusive towards my mom, dictatorial towards his children, and infantile in his real world structure.
He was also a man who was a virtuoso on the piano and could pick up any instrument and make music; often, he sang so loud in the synagogue in a deep and rich baritone voice that I grew up with people staring at us; he always danced with every woman in the room and was the life of the party.
Did he cheat on my mother with his nurses? Did he really have a medical degree from Havana’s University of Medicine?
He did tell me my mother was a witch who would hurt me and my sister after she left him when I was four years old and hiding behind the bedside table scared to see her when she returned because she didn’t want to lose her children.
He did hold a gun to my mother’s head, cut her forehead with a thrown broken glass and then stitch it up; he did break my nose when he punched me so hard I flew into the fireplace, and he did beat my oldest brother with a belt till he was black and blue – this wasn’t the only beating – but one that has stayed in my mind all these years – we were on Louisiana Avenue Parkway and I can remember the stairwell and the beating and my young eyes watching in horror.
My mother and all of us said “Yes sir” to him till his dying day.
He did speak with a thick Spanish accent and mispronounce most English words.
He had gypsy in his blood even though his lineage was Sephardim – ancestors who left Spain in 1492 and went to Constantinople, left Istanbul in the 20s and went to Havana, and then in 1959 came here to the U.S. He gave me my love of travel and instilled in me a friction with my own country – America.
He loved me fiercely and stood between me and any harm like a German Shepherd who would die defending me. He called me baby elephant for most of my young life and now the elephant is my spirit animal.
After he died, I dreamed that it had been my mother who died instead. It took years to shake that dream.
I suffered my first panic attack within the first year of my father’s death and was taken off the Causeway in an emergency vehicle. I’ll never forget because I was dazed and confused in the emergency room and when my then husband came to get me, he had one of those first mobile phones that was as big as a shoe box and the doctor took one look at him, me and the phone and said, “First, there is no reason to have a phone outside of your house.” That was 1985.
When my mother suffered her second Code Blue in intensive care in 2009, she told me she saw him. “I saw your Dad!” but it wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t all light and heaven and God and angels, it was downright fright that shook her back into this life.
After reading The Great Santini, I was convinced Pat Conroy had stolen the character who was my father to use as his own.
Do I compare my dad to a summer’s day – hell no – do I love the man who was my father – absolutely.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
