- A small, square, black-and-white photograph with a scalloped white edge on which the date, May 1959, is printed in small type. I am the curly-headed baby in a white party dress sitting up on Daddy’s shoulder eating a strawberry. Boyishly handsome in his crew-neck sweater and grown-out GI haircut, he smiles up at me, squinting into the sun. He is 30, I am one, we are in love.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
My father in flowered velvet bell-bottoms and a denim safari jacket, his wild gray hair sticking out all over the place. It is very late at night and he is at his discotheque, the Pandemonium. The Pandemonium is losing money like crazy, but tonight Brother Duck is playing, and everyone is drinking Harvey Wallbangers and smoking pot. My mother is home, loading the dishwasher and crying, mostly because he looks so ridiculous and he won’t cut his hair. He is a 43-year-old man, for Christ’s sake.
In this picture, my father is writing a check. This check will feed me and clothe me and send me to college, will pay for my eyeglasses, my summer camp, my abortion, my psychiatrist, and my phone bill, will insure my car and fix my nose and take me out to dinner on my birthday. Stereos, TV sets, diet pills, guitar lessons, collect calls from Europe, all covered. This is a very important check, but my father scribbles it out quickly and hands it to me without looking up. Here you go, sport, he says.
My father is having a heart attack in his Cadillac El Dorado during morning rush hour. He grimaces but continues driving into the city, where he parks his car in his customary spot and proceeds to his dentist appointment. You look like hell, Hyman, says the dentist. My father can barely reply. The dentist calls an ambulance. My father’s hospitalization coincides with the publication of Iacocca, the autobiography of his corporate Italian look-alike. He receives about a dozen copies from various well-wishers.
Before you lose a parent, you think, oh God, what will I do if one of them dies? Then it happens, and you find out you can’t do anything. You just go on. Maybe you can try to become what you miss most. My father is not in this picture, but his shoulders are. I wear the memory of those football-player shoulders like a magic cloak, indispensable for getting through traffic jams.
