My father was our dreamweaver, book devourer, entertaining intellectual. He was the fire in the room, the charisma, the laugh whisperer in a sear-sucker suit.
I remember seeing the movie Big Fish a few years back and thinking only of my dad. Amongst fairytales of shoe-lined trees, characters of all shapes and sizes, and the most solid, certain of love, it was the paramount picture of my father. This film had gazed, however briefly, into our small world.
When I was a child, my dad read me stories from rainbow fairytale books before sleep each night. Many nights, he would fall asleep in the moonlight by my side, after having worked a dozen hours at the hospital and another three as my storyteller. I remember looking over him, meeting his familiar gaze with my own, urging him to go on: pulling open his eyelids with my small, fat fingers, curling up against him like a kitten with loud expectation. Finally, one day, I set my short-legged body into full gear, whipped the mattress from atop my bunk bed and set in on the floor, so he could fall asleep mildly each night and be only mine (A failed attempt, I see today).
This was, of course, after years of positioning him with his arm around my shoulders and my head in the nook of his chest so that I could fall asleep in the one place I knew certainly safe, where I could enter the other world we shared: of sharp-toothed witches and pining princes, of gnomes and princesses perturbed by peas, of a New York City psychiatrist I knew only as my pillow, my confidant, all mine.
In Big Fish, before the main character, storey-teller, father passes away, he is lying in a bathtub, fully dressed and his red-headed wife, in her dress, climbs on top of him and summons up their love. This is my mother and father, Redcat and Ted, who always came back to each other, never hid any of the sides of their truly passionate love. Who, in all of their cuddling, screaming, kissing, laughing, crying, loving, were life partners in the truest sense: sharing 5am coffees and 6am baths; weekend walks; visits to the botanical gardens and cat litters on the Mexican plains.
Despite the storytelling, which extended into our everyday, despite the fact that my father dreamed up our first imaginary friends, led by Rinkadink, a wild-haired girl akin to my sister, the world that I shared with him was not only one of fairytales. It was of rice and lemon tea, midnight dashes to Toms Restaurant. One of fierce intellect, photography, Caribbean seas, fried chicken and fishing. One of laughter, as all of my father’s relationships are. But most of all, it was one of unquestionable love. My father loved us, my mother, my sister and I, with everything he had and far beyond that point. He taught me to love myself unconditionally, to eat heartily. and laugh lightly at every chance. He healed my broken hearts. He always begged the best of me.
I want to thank my father for knowing how to pull me out of my own depths; for kissing my nose; for our last vacation together, when we fished at daybreak, ate our (well his) catches, swam in tide pools, roasted pork fat and slept at dusk tired from the sun. I want to thank my father for showing up always at airports, for being there in youth, adolescence and adulthood to warm my heart. For singing Beach Boys songs in Karaoke with my best of friends; for searching Canada for a proper sheepskin rug; for always allowing me my fears; for knowing how to pet my head; for breaking through bad moods of all of us; for picking me up at any moment, anywhere,; for introducing me to the wonders of licorice and salt; for never, ever limiting our candy intake; for saying only “hug me” when he saw my face break into sadness only 3 weeks ago; for always being proud; for proclaiming his love every day; for hard honesty but certain softness; for being unabashedly bold and bestowing that boldness on us.
And I will speak quickly of the others, for my father was not just ours. My father loved his friends. He reached out, always, to his neighbors, to his colleagues, to local homeless men who needed a smoke or friend. Children loved my father instantly—he spoke to them with respect and honesty, knew how to swing them into the air and entertain imaginations most adults can’t even comprehend. To this day, I walk the streets of Morningside Heights and am greeted by those—doctors, store owners, the hardware store man, neighbors’ children, local skitzophrenics, and their eyes, their mouths all beg the same question of me: where is Ted? I do not know what to respond except that I know he is here, everywhere, not just in my heart, mind, memories, but in the literally thousands of lives that he has saved.
I guess what I can say, today, at the end of my father’s tale, is that he has had true love, been truly loved, has spun straw into gold time and again, and has given us girls (often to others’ shock or dismay) incredible, inviolable personal strength. As a healer, photographer, storyteller, comedian, writer, intellectual, companion, but most of all husband and father, he has, with great compassion and humor, protected, enlivened and loved his family. It may sound cliché, but I am sure, as sure as I am of these memories, as I am sure of my own self standing here today, that no one could have been a better father. That I was blessed to have had a moment, let alone 24 years in his heart’s gaze.
In the words of Pablo Neruda, dad 'I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; I love you because I know no other way.'
