My Dad

 

My father was a muse to me. He sang and he played the piano, and he read poetry to us at night before bedtime. Through Dad we learned to love Kipling, and to go to sleep to "Irish Lullaby." He probably had very little Irish blood, but he taught me to love Irish songs. It's hard to know how to begin to write about him, because he has been gone for nine years now, and I find myself blinded by tears whenever I start thinking of his imprint on my psyche--the gifts he left for us when he departed this earth much too soon.

Dad wrote a book - a family history - and it's in our library, in the Local History and Genealogy Room. It's replete with family stories, but he left out my favorite: how he would tell of his punishment when he was naughty as a child. His grandmother would make him go out in the back yard and learn poetry, and he was not allowed inside until he could say the poem to her, to her satisfaction. At his memorial service, we had "L'Envoi" printed on the bulletin. "When earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried...." And I played my guitar when his ashes were buried. Hymns, favorite songs.

Both my parents sang to us when we were kids. Our family always sang. Music was in our house from the day I took my first breath. They bought me a piano on my first birthday. Mom still has it: the family Acrosonic. Nothing compares. Dad always understood when I would say that to him. "You always know the piano you grew up with," he'd intone. I suppose he grew up with an old upright. He told us that when he was a little boy and got frustrated, he used to ice skate down the river, then come home and pound on the piano.

Dad had a beautiful voice. He sounded like Bing Crosby. Every time he and Mom were getting ready for their dance club, or their bridge parties, Dad would sit at our Baldwin Acrosonic in his suit and tie and he would play and sing. I can close my eyes and hear his songs: "I'll be down to get you in a taxi, honey, you'd bettter be ready about half past eight..." I can't hear Wabash Blues, Sweet Leilani, All My Souvenirs, or Third Man Theme without seeing Dad at the piano. Mom sang with him, too. If you want to hear my parents, just listen to Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly sing "True Love;" that's how they sounded to me.

He had an inimitable touch on the keys and a jaunty way of rolling chords just so. I trained my ear listening to him. He played classical music, too, of course -- I can still see him standing over me when I was learning the first movement of "Moonlight Sonata" by Beethoven. "That's a double sharp!" he would say gently but with exasperation. (He taught me to drive, too - but that's another story) He was a better piano teacher than anyone we could pay, so I simply quit lessons and learned by listening to my Dad.

A few years before his death, my parents and I went to a concert to hear the Scottish singer Jean Redpath. I was just astounded by how Dad just KNEW those melodies. When the audience was asked to sing along, he did - and I had no idea he knew those songs. And he didn't. He just told me that he "knew" them - as in intuition. Those sounds were burned into his hard drive. And he passed the torch to me.

Dad is always with me, and always will be.