Happy Fathers Day

Recommended Listening below: Paul Simon…. Father and Daughter.

We all have parents we love but we were not close with. Please imagine a giant multi- trunk tree. There is a giant root of DNA and shared experience. However, there is also more than one trunk that wants to reach the sky. Sometimes one has to have the space to grow and find a way to the light. The space between trunks is also part of life and love with family, friends and significant other. Sometimes the gap never closes fully. That incompleteness is not from lack of love. It comes from lack of acceptance of the gap. Love is always present in the roots.

We are left with memories and traces of who they were. Black and white photos tell a beautiful story. We see young men and women who were given a second chance. There was never one moment we knew anything about their trauma until many years later. They never spoke about those years. As far as I knew life began in May 1945, and the years before, belonged to other souls. But Dad wore the numbers 134271 on his left forearm. Mom suffered physically her entire life because of the German war camps. They were unknowable but they projected light, like other survivors, unlike other parents. This is the shared experience that I have with my sister. We are similar to that multi-trunk tree.

There are phrases and actions that we can never forget. They have been gone for decades and you hear their voice in your voice. They shape us in knowing and unknowing ways. One of their primary lessons was to have reasonable expectations of anyone, including family and friends, when it came to life events. There are going to be people who disappoint you and surprise you, so let the moment unfold. There is more to learn that way.

The conversations with mom, after school, about how one friend said this or that, always led to the same conclusion. “Don’t expect so much from people”. You control how you feel. Do not let someone else have the power to do that to you. She would remind me that taking the easy way was not the best course of action. That has been hard for me to learn. She loved slapstick comedy and showed us how to laugh at ourselves. When we would stub our toe or bang our funny bone she would burst into laughter. She would remind us that paying attention when you walk is a good idea. But that love of someone doing something mindless, without hurting themselves seriously, and hopping away in pain is funny.

Dad was full of life. He would sing songs in the showers and butcher the American lyrics. I could swim better than he could when I was eight. He would remind me that you cannot win a Little League Game by yourself. He was supportive of whatever I wanted to do but he would not let me walk to the Clark bowling lanes when I was 12. Every other parent allowed their child to do so. There was never a time that I felt burdened by their trauma. There was normalcy growing up in Clark. The dark energy was buried deep underground but the heat was always under our feet.

He was the proud cheerleader of my life. There were few parents who took the time to visit their kids in college. He was one of those parents who picked up the tab. Dad loved puncturing the liberal world view of our professors. We were naive students with rudimentary knowledge of the material. He was the experienced Odysseus, strapped to a mast of time, who traveled through the gates of Hades, and saw the world with clear eyes. I would bring him fellow idealists and watch him devour them like the surly rabbit of the “Holy Grail”.

That time was followed by years of playing Morgan Freeman to Jessica Tandy. We would drive from job to job listening to WABC talk radio and talking about the world. We shared the same office for twenty years. “Not everyone went to Georgetown Alan.” He especially disliked politicians who would promise a New World. Our liberal secular world has preached… “We are the World”…mentality for almost sixty five years. They have predicted world food collapse, world economic collapse and world environmental collapse. None of it has happened. In fact the opposite has occurred. We have brought more people, almost eight billion now, out of hunger and into middle class than ever predicted.

That is something Dad would have predicted. He believed economic progress, not politicians, was the wheel that moved culture and society to a better place. He loved Israel and disliked American Jews who criticized Israel. He was a Democrat and became a Republican. His fierce independence is what guides me to this day. He taught me to respect people who put the work in every day. Listen to what they have to say. Those are the people my father loved the most.

We live in a time when there is cultural pressure to draw lines and boundaries between friends and family over personal religious or political beliefs. Interestingly, and noting Jungian synchronicity, the weekly parsha, or Torah reading for June 20, is the Parsha Korech. That Parsha deals with the rebellion of the Korach family against Moses and Aaron before the Israelites enter Canaan. Korach accused the Moses and Aaron of pursuing power and their own interests before the interests of the community. The short story is that it did not go well for the Korach family. The lesson was simple. Israelites doubted the word of God and chosen leaders. Hashem showed the Israelites that it is ok to disagree but do not disturb the roots of the tree.

We all have children and in-laws we love, and maybe, some we are not close with. Imagine that you are a giant multi-trunk white oak tree. You all share this wacky DNA and shared life experience with the white oak trees in the forest. That gives you the strength to grow powerful and independent branches from each independent trunk. Each branch is given its own space to reach the sky. When all branches are free to grow the entire tree becomes the king tree in the forest and in life. The tree has no fear of the gaps because the roots are deep. Hashem only asks that we believe in love’s power in the roots. We must learn to accept the gaps, and the doubts that come with life, because the trunk does not always grow straight and true.

Peace to Everyone- Dedicated to Eric and Amanda, Max, Bella and Ava; Jeremy and Heather, Beatrix Calliope.

Happy Father’s Day…. Father and Daughter. Paul Simon