Tag Archives: fathers

The Man In The Room.

classical music, contemplative essays, nostalgia, , , , , , , ,

I am a woman. Always have been; had no choice in the matter. My fetus did not grow external gonads.

At birth, how was I to know that I would never really be alone? No; wherever I would be, go, or do, there would always be a man in the room.

******

The first man in the room was late.

He was sitting at a bar, drinking, on a Friday night – shirking the very responsibility for which any woman in his position, at least in those days, would have immediately jumped to respond. He was an obstetrician. He was my mother’s doctor. And, he was definitely On Call.

When the phone reached him, he likely chuckled with the bartender about cervical dilation and other, baser aspects of the female anatomy over which he claimed domain. And, he probably ordered another beer. After all, who was this infant to proclaim any birth rite at prime time on a Friday night in April? It was pouring rain. Time out.

Back in labor and delivery, my mother was practicing female obedience. No woman, in the history of the world, did this better. I was crowning, and the nurses, frantic to enact their version of submission, pecked about, insisting that the doctor would be there “any minute”. To my mother, the directive was unanimous:  “Just  hold ON!”

So, my mother obeyed the nurses, who were obeying the doctor, who was calling for shots by now in the bar. And, she held a birthing baby in her vagina until it felt certain her entire body would explode. The man was not yet present in the room but, at that interminable moment, he was everywhere. He was squeezing my mother’s abdomen, suffocating me, and holding lit matches to every nurse in the wing. What a masterful grasp wielded that drunken sailor on such a wet and inconvenient night.

When he finally appeared, as doctor, the gurney carrying my mother and me was propelled so fast down the hallway toward delivery that it nearly toppled and, at about 8:45 pm (well after the downbeat), the next baby girl was finally permitted entry into the world. Through the caul that draped my soaking face, I screamed bloody, spitting murder at the man in the room.

The second man in the room was just returning from work.

He was my father.

To hear him tell it, I would be the embodiment of his every gift…a “born” artist and musician, a singer like him, his – for all practical purposes – first-born child. He would hold me with tender arms and soft hands, feed me, sing to me. I would love him with my whole heart. He would go to work, come home, bring the money with him, count it on the kitchen table, and share with me a teaspoon of his hot tea with milk and sugar.

On his day off, he would come and go as he pleased. And, he would take me with him. I would sit in the car, singing to myself, while he did what he had to do inside the store or the other man’s house. He would eat his supper after dark, make his lunch, go to bed, and get up before everybody else in the house was even awake to walk to work. He owned his own barber shop, made his own hours and, when his day was over, he was done.

Mom’s day was never done. She’d stay up til after midnight, finishing the sewing that needed to be ready by the next day’s pick up, and get up before we would in the morning to prepare our breakfast, shrieking us awake so that we’d be ready for school before she was nearly late for work.

On the weekends, not otherwise pulling a shift at the machine shop, she’d run the sweeper and dust around us as we tried to practice our piano lesson or read. On Sunday, she’d get us ready for morning worship at the Gospel Hall and we’d all go, to spend most of the day there listening to: men. Mom finally took her nap, on Sunday afternoon, while Dad would spend the afternoon chewing on a toothpick seated on a park bench watching us pet the small animals at the zoo.

The third man in the room reached puberty when I was almost a toddler. He was my elder brother.

A very ripe 11 at my birth, he had been the only child for those first ten precocious years, surrounded by adoring adults substituting for the father who was not yet there. I was an intrusion, a stray dog, a reluctant pet, an object of derision. I was in the spot reserved for him, and this was not to be.

My brother would manifest as the man in the room for the rest of my life in that house. He would ride his bike wherever he pleased, growing to be an active teen with the capacity to socially organize and initiate all manner of events in the basement, where he held court. I grew, too, but the playpen that corralled me was the only point of view from which I could define the world. He was, when not placed in my exclusive care, always outside of the box – and, ever-present, in the room.

If there were rules, they never applied to him; if there was law, he learned to rule it. When I came of age, he dictated to my parents just what the outside world was all about and, in spite of my creative gifts clearly matching or surpassing his, my choices were decreed: for the daughter, there would be no further education. Doctorate degrees were there for the men to take; girls should get a job, learn to cook, and prepare for the husband God had in mind.

God, on the other hand, frightfully busy making more men and the women intended to serve them, tried to present the man for me on more than one occasion. In the first offering, there were other men with power in their laps who determined that the man God had clearly chosen for me should stay away. Because they were in a position to claim their dictates as from God directly, the fact that they weren’t listening to what I was hearing seemed to have no bearing on the outcome God intended. I just chalked it up to the men themselves, and peered at them, from across the room.

From that point forward, the man in the room took many forms. He was a boss, or a hired hand, or a curious customer, or a band mate. And, I was ready to pass his test. When I graduated to the ranks of professional, Union card carrying musician, he became the Maestro – an object of my adoration. If I couldn’t please God anymore, then perhaps I could revere the baton in his hand.

******

The man is still there. He still waits to tell me when to speak, when to act, and when to acquiesce. He decides my value. He directs my course. He expects me to be there when he needs me, and to disappear when the time is right. He may not have any idea how much power he holds because, to him, he is just in his world – the world he inherited from his mother’s womb.

He’d best preserve that power for as long as he remains strong; a world without a woman in it would change his forever.
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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo

2013  all rights reserved. Thank you, sir.

littlebarefeetblog.com

Superhero.

contemplative essays, tributes, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Superhero.

He was my lifeline to sanity.

By his model, I learned to love.

It is no wonder, then, that I would have died for my Dad.

Now, being a girl, of course, my feelings toward my own differed from those of a son for his father. For me, Dad was my affirmation – of talent, personality, desireability, value. He was my nurturer and my affection. He was my wink and smile. He was my honesty, my truth, my sure thing.

Tony didn’t know how to hide. He could play a character with the best Hollywood had to offer, but there wasn’t a deceitful bone in his body. He didn’t hide, because he had no reason to do so. Everything he had to give was always apparent, and presented, liberally, with heavy doses of joy.

When the Ken Burns special on WW II aired the first time, and we watched footage of Patton – standing over the bed of the raven haired soldier found cowering there – I recognized that my father was the first, and most brave, defender of pacifism. He wasn’t afraid, at all, to be honest about his feelings: fear, bewilderment, and lack of willingness to follow through on the rage of war. He thought that, if he stayed in a bed at the infirmary, he could escape the horror of man against man. Lord knew he’d not escaped a childhood of abuse and neglect as cast off to the state of Massachusetts, a ward of the county, both a resident of the Fernald School and lightweight defender against Mrs. Bracchi’s burly boys. Unfortunately, Patton, who couldn’t face the truth that Private embodied, held tight to all his power and convinced the man, who would become my father, to get up, go back to the front lines, and fight. And, God, the Infinite Wisdom, took care of the rest. God brought the remnants through, to the end of that monstrosity and home again – to grieve the bloody losses, to tremble at the memories, to blindly venerate the war leaders and, ultimately, to move on with the lives God had preserved for them. I’ll never forget Dad’s own words, at my reminder that he’d earned the Bronze Star for Valour in the Battle of the Bulge: “I wasn’t brave; I was scared to death.”  The voice of truth, in every other man’s denial.

Perhaps my father speaks through me, in those moments when I am most emboldened. The truth persists, at the top of my list of reasons to keep on living; I want to be true to truth, live it out in my every, breathing moment, and open up its nourishments to those who are prisoners to the lies of dogma, denial, resignation, and defeat.

When Dad stepped into a room, he brought with him a burst of irrepressible, inner sunshine and slightly musty air – the air that carried a little of the day’s sweat and blood, the body’s casting off of fuss and care, and a mind’s treasured ability to turn away from all imposing forces. He was self-possessed; he knew what he could do, he knew how well he could, and he was ever willing, every day, to do it. He made his own lunch the evening before; went to bed “at a decent hour” (or, as he so fondly intoned with reference to Mum, a night owl : “the same day I got up”); rose with the sun; walked, all the way, to work in his own barbershop; stayed there, not leaving until he was finished; and, walked home again with his lone companion, the setting sun, carrying the cash money with him – under the trestle bridge, and up the long hill past the street vermin and what would later become the prison – all the way to his own driveway, and up the steps, and into the kitchen to meet a hot supper waiting on the stove.

As a toddler, I would bring my love to his table. Up on my knees on the chair at the head, I’d lean toward him, his back to the window, watching that brown hand stir the milk and sugar into his hot tea. He’d look at me with his twinkling eyes, take the first spoon of tea, swallow it, smack his lips when it was just right, and then put the spoon back into the cup to fill carefully, “not too full”, and then put his other soft hand underneath as he held it out to my open mouth. And, I’d swallow my single spoonful of warm sweetness – supping with him, and he with me.

His stories were ever ready. While he could read aloud like a grand orator, he preferred the realm of his own imagination, which he shared at a moment’s notice and, usually, at the head of the Saturday morning breakfast table. Eagerly accepting his unique blend of missionary fortitude and Pop-eye, we’d travel with him in a small, prop plane, deep into the African jungle, to face Sabre tooth tigers and all manner of associated beasts, only to meet Pop-eye’s spinach fed muscle and save-the-day bravado, always finishing with a song, always his theme: “I’m Pop-eye, the Sailorman!” Somehow, he knew that, in the face of every pompous pious or power-mad tyrant, all stories should always end with a laugh, a wink, and the salvation of a true Superhero.

In fact, on the morning of his death, he was still laughing. His final earthly yarn was spinning away inside his delirious, fevered head, and I am hoping he just slept it off into the ether. I know that everyone who ever truly loved, even for a minute, was there waiting for him.

And so, I can only give what he left with me. Truth, affection, mirth, music, deep knowing, and devotion. I hope I can even touch what he gave me as I bring of myself to the place where I am destined to love. I will not bear a child, or know that bond; but, perhaps, God permits the grace to love, even still – unconditionally, and always in the name of truth.
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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo
6/26/15  All rights those of the author, whose name appears above this line. Thank you.
littlebarefeetblog.com

Boston.

family history, nostalgia, scenes, short stories, , , , ,

*REMINDER: THE POSTS IN THIS CATEGORY ARE NOT TO BE SHARED, REPOSTED, REBLOGGED, OR RECONSTITUTED IN ANY FORM. THANK YOU!

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The floor was bare wood under her summer shoes. There were no rugs. People, clocking and clunking up and down the steep stairs with their heavy feet, then around the corners, the tallest men tipping their heads to pass through the small rooms and narrow doorways all making her feel as though everybody there knew each other like family.

She was five, now. Being small and just five made moving around in the Old North Church with so many tall people, and smelling the real bare wood, wildly exciting.

They stepped out into the street in the bright sun, squinting ’til their eyes almost shut. Mum wore her hand-made cotton white print dirndl skirt, the flat black cotton shoes with the tiny turquoise stars on them, a sleeveless blouse, and clip-on sunglasses over her real ones. Mum had made her two new sunsuits, and she wore the pink one today. Daddy, who always wore a hat, had his straw brown one on with the light blue ribbon, a plaid short sleeved shirt, his favorite slacks, a brown belt, change in his pocket, and his walking shoes on. They held hands with Daddy to get to the house across the street, bending their heads to follow everybody else inside.

She could just reach the soft velveteen tubes draped between the posts that circled a man seated at a strange round table that moved under his feet. Her little fingers loved the feel of the smooth fabric wrapped around the firmness beneath, and she could just reach all the way around if she used her thumbs, though mum said she mustn’t. Her eyes fixed on the man seated at the round, spinning table as he threw a wet, grey mound onto the center of the part that moved. When it jumped off, he tried another. She watched as he squeezed his smooth, long hands around its middle, making it turn into mum’s leg and then mum’s waist, and then, like magic, his fingers forming a perfect circle rim and turning a tiny spout like Mammy’s English teapot. Mum said: “oh! my…lookit thayat!” All the tall people around her breathed out at the same time as they recognized what they now saw. She looked up at everybody, looking at each other, smiling and nodding.

There were wooden chairs, and wooden buffets against the wall with plates and pots and cups on them, and embroidered doilies like Great Gramma Learn made in her rocking chair back at Mammy’s house. There was a fireplace, too, with shiny cans the color of a Lincoln penny sitting nearby. And, she thought she saw, up on the wooden wall, resting on hooks, guns as long as a clothes pole, black and heavy looking. Paul Revere had lived here, a long, long time ago, Daddy said, and this was his house.

After lunch that Mum packed, Dagwood sandwiches and cold milk, off they went down toward the water. There was no grass under her feet, but bricks, each one a little bit different than the next. She kept her eyes on the ground, away from the squinting sun, hopping onto the next favorite brick each step. Daddy whistled and hummed: “lol, lol, lol; LOL lah – lol…..” Mum smiled under her sunglasses. In the distance behind them, the bell bonged its tune from the Old North Church. She stopped, and swung from Mum and Daddy’s hands, lifting her bare legs up all the way off the ground.

It was during that big swing that she saw it. The biggest boat in the whole world. A ship, Daddy called it. Not a rocket ship, but a boat almost the size of one. They got in line behind the tall people, and up the ramp they went, with the water lapping in the sun under their feet.

The boat was a huge sailboat, and the sails on it whipped as loud as Mammy’s awnings on the front porch when a storm was coming. There were ropes as prickly as Pappy’s arms, twisted like Mighty Fine donuts but as long as a whole block on Perry Street. Men with straight backs walked on the ship, taking long slow steps, wearing dark blue coats with shiny buttons down the front of them and cornered hats like she had never seen. And, the floor was bare wood under their buckled shoes.

*   *   *   *   *

Daddy was bon heah, he said. He was a little boy from Boston. He never knew his mum, or his father. His Uncle Gabriel would let him visit once in awhile. “Wall-yo! Come uppa downstauhs an’ bring a peecha wine!” Hah, hahhhh! Daddy laughed. Mum looked at Daddy. They smiled, and were quiet.

Then, they got in the car, and headed to Aunt Frances and Uncle Al’s house in Springfield. The house was grey, and the whole porch was made of the same grey wood. The wood moved under their feet as they crossed to the front door. Inside, Uncle Al was tall and silent, and Aunt Frances ran to the door, rocking from foot to foot as she stretched out her arms to pull everybody close.

Aunt Frances was dark, like Daddy, and funny. Her fingers were long, and she touched everyone’s faces with her hands. Uncle Al stood, next to the refrigerator, looking out from his twinkling eyes while Aunt Frances stirred the ziti in the big pot. Ziti was different from the rigatoni Daddy liked for suppah, and Aunt Frances had meat in her sauce.

She clamored up to watch the ziti simmer in the pot. Aunt Frances took her into her lap, to hug her and smooth her hair and give her a little taste of ziti. Uncle Al wanted to show everyone a trick. Eyes closed. Eyes open, and a piece of candy in his hands appeared. She saw that Uncle Al was missing the first part of his middle finger. She asked Uncle Al what happened to his finger. He said that he played clarinet in Artie Shaw’s band, but his finger got caught in a machine at the shop, and he had to stop playing clarinet. So, now, he did magic tricks. And, his eyes twinkled when he said it.

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They were in Boston for five days that summer. This was the first and last time. The only vacation the family ever took together that she could remember. Aunt Frances would come to visit seven years later, and one more time until she and Uncle Al moved to Fort Lauderdale. They never saw The Walter E. Fernald School where Daddy grew up, or Mrs. Bracchi’s house where Aunt Frances had lived, or Uncle Tom’s, either. But, they’d been to Boston. And, now they knew.

They knew how to make ziti with meat sauce. They knew the smell of real wood, that the streets could be made of brick, and that some peoples’ houses could live longer than the people in them. They knew how teapots were made, and where the biggest ships sailed. And, she knew where her Daddy had come from.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Many years later, she went back to Boston. Once, with her then-husband, and again by way of Harvard Square.

But, her father still calls her, from the depths of his childhood. She feels his hands on her face, and she wants so to answer.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo

3/3/15  all rights reserved. Not yah story, not yah right.

littlebarefeetblog.com