Hearing the story makes a difference

When hearing the story
makes a difference

      So I called my dad. “Tell me the story,” I asked, “about when you got called in for fighting?”

      “That must have been the time they sent me off to camp,” he starts. He didn’t remember the school
event I had been told by his mother some thirty years earlier. “Not sure how it happened. But I was being
disciplined for something. I smacked the counselor, broke his nose.” All I could imagine is a borscht belt
version of the “bowery boys.” But my dad was no punk. Wait, was he?   He went on to tell me he then
hitchhiked to the “adult” camp of a family friend and hung out there the rest of the summer. He was about
14. Hitchhiking! What a different life in the Catskills of the 1930s.

      “I have a short temper, as you know,” he reminded me. Actually, I had forgotten. His temper did not
include abuse or violence. It was just frustration uttered at a situation gone awry. He walked out of restaurants
with poor service. He made a scene occasionally that probably embarrassed my mother. I just always thought
of him as being in charge.

      This brief story has given me much to think about. My dad was not meek and mild, but stood up for
himself, whether he was right or wrong. He struggles wanting that ability still. Compared to his peers, at 91
years of age, he is agile and able. He lives and maneuvers around New York. But now he does not take that
independence for granted. Physically, he has to compromise more and more. A product of a privileged
childhood and a comfortable adulthood, compromise does not come easily. Limitations by age and
responsibilities limit his individual choices. The inability to just “walk out” on the slow moving body, in a man
with a, “short temper,” must be incredibly frustrating.

      I learned a lesson with this newly begun and public Chronicle. Maybe in the bigger scheme of things,
pursuing this story is a small thing. Not necessary in the world. But, I believe it makes a difference, a
difference in my experience of my dad, and how his past is reflected in his present. It makes a difference.

In the bigger scheme of things, a hundred thousand years into
the future, will it matter that I listened to and jotted down my father’s
experience fighting in a small private school in NYC back in the 1920s
and 30s? I happen to think it will. Just like the event itself had an impact
on the future, my ability to re-witness it will too. Of course, if I don’t
share the story, that too (as I see it) will have an impact, however small.
Still, how sad it would be to lose.

It is a gift to be able to hear, read and
share family stories. Make them a lasting
part of life.

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