Everything's Quiet on Father's Day

Father's Day is the poorer cousin of Mother's Day, and for good reason. We KNOW who our mom's are -- we think we know who our Dad's are.

My cop friend found out for sure this year he was the father of a now 28 year old young woman. But the best part of the story is that her mother had told the girl, for her entire life, that her father was the man she was married to at the time she had the affair with my friend. Better, when I tell the tale to many women, those who are honest say "Oh -- assuming I wanted to stay married, I would have done exactly the same thing."  Hence, poorer cousin day...

I'm reasonably certain the Ds are mine, biologically, but the truth is, I adore them so much, it wouldn't matter. Each was handed to me immediately after the C section, or as I called it, the baby-ectomy, and I felt a love I had beforehand I never knew. It was truly unconditional -- there is NOTHING these two now grown women could do that would make me love them less.

I'm self deprecating, or try to be, about many things. I never brag about prowess as a professional. I drive a car and dress like a man much poorer than I am. But when it comes t being a father -- I stand on the hilltops and shout that it has been my life's work. I said just the other night, in the presence of His Holiness, Rabbi Yossi, that I am the second best Dad I know. The first is Alex, whose patience and love with his special needs son, and the fact that he has started a now runs a major company dedicated to finding a cure for his son's condition, puts me happily in second place. Not that I'm competitive...

I had the world's best teacher to be a Dad. Hy loved me unconditionally. And we truly loved each other -- he was my best friend, the one I ran to with all of life's ups, and downs, too. He was the only one I ever wished to make proud, and he taught me a lesson about that, too.

He beamed when I told him I was going into pre med, to be a doctor. He bought me a hard cover copy of "Gray's Anatomy" in high school, and inscribed it "To my son, for his pre pre med studies." It's one of the very few books I will always keep.

Hy never got to go to college, as after WW II he worked three jobs to support my sisters and mother, but he was a self taught intellectual. He read voraciously, and always admired smart people more than rich ones. I knew he couldn't wait to introduce me in the classic dream way of the son of Jewish immigrants "My son, the doctor."

But I knew by my second year of college that my path was changing. I loved Humanities and dreaded Sciences. Worst of all was Math -- I managed, with the help of Barry, to wrangle a gentleman's C in Calculus Class.

Worst, I dreaded disappointing my Dad. I had no back up career plan. So I slogged it out through Spring of my junior year, until I took Embryology, the class the professor told all of us pre meds was most like the first years of medical school, and I hated that class most of all.

So I switched majors to English, learning that if I hoofed it, I could still graduate "on time," in the Spring of '83. I was excited to start studying various types of Literature in the Spring of '82. But, I had to go home to my parents' Delray condo to give the news of my failure of Dad's dream.

Another friend, Jeff, also had a Bronx born Jewish Dad, and he struggled, too. He ended up taking an extra year of pre med studies up in Gainesville so as to not disappoint his Dad, David. Jeff ended up doing fine, but his younger brother entered law school at UF to please the tough ass David, and ended up never taking the Bar. He manages his brother's lucrative practice to this very day...

I remember the meeting. Dad was in the Florida Room. I came in, head down, and told him. I awaited his displeasure. Instead -- he beamed. His exact words, which I recall with clarity all these years later: "I was waiting for this to happen. I always knew you were more of an English student than a Science one. You won top English grad in high school! Go study what you enjoy -- there are worse things than being an English professor!"

And just like that, the man I loved the most made me love him more. He got me. His dreams for me were that my dreams became real.

So I went back for the second half of my junior year, and busted ass. I was going to get the first 4.0 of my career at UM. I was going to become outstanding English Major at graduation, even though I was starting with more than half the race over. I would use my charm and amazing bullshitting ability. It worked -- I was so honored in May of '83, and given a book of Frost poetry inscribed by Chair John Paul Russo. That's another book I'll always keep.

But before that glory, I worked as a summer salesman at Jordan Marsh in Boca. Each day I would come home from the Town Center Mall, looking in the mail for my grades. One day, I told Mom I was going to the mailbox. She smiled, pointed me to the Florida Room, and said Dad had already opened a letter from UM.

I walked out and he was sitting in the recliner, holding a paper with the grades. He said nothing, but held up 4 fingers in the air. I had gotten the 4.0! I was proud. He was beaming, too, and we hugged. Life was so beautiful at that moment.

Well, fate can be a nasty bitch, and she was --less than two months later, Dad died in my arms of a massive heart attack -- July 14, 1982.

Just over six years later, Fate turned kind, and in November of '88,I became a father, too. Three years and three months after that, I would have my second daughter.

I SO wish my Ds could have known my father. I guess in many ways they did -- I talked about him to my Ds constantly. I still do.

One morning, D1 and I were sitting quietly on the sofa in our reconstructed after Hurricane Andrew house. Her baby sister was sleeping, as was her mother. It was pouring rain outside, and as I went through the morning Herald, she was going through one of her preschool books. Midnight the Lab and Alfred the Cocker Spaniel were on the couch with us (no mystery that both of my Ds are dog obsessed). D1 looked up at me with her big eyes and asked "Daddy -- would Grandpa Hy have loved me?"

I hugged her so tight, and cried, and told her yes, yes, yes -- he surely would have.