Last week my long-time college friend, Bruce, wrote “My
brother died this morning. I tell you
because you are my oldest friend, and also, because I sat down just now in front
of our fireplace with the logs burning and read On Growing Old and remembered that we memorized that poem together.”
My first thought was of Camus’s novel L’Étranger which I read in French in
school (alas, no longer have any ability in that beautiful language). But those
haunting first words sprang to mind: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.” There is finality about it. This is part of life.
I also remember memorizing John Masefield’s great poem On Growing Old with Bruce. We were romantics back then and Masefield wrote
so poignantly about what we thought was the unthinkable in our youth. I wrote something about that experience on my 70th birthday which is now more than a half decade ago.
I bring this up because last Saturday night I had to go to the
local hospital ER. I had been on
antibiotics and Prednisone for a bronchial infection and late Sat. night I
could hardly breathe, persistent uncontrollable cough in the chest in spite of
all my medications. Pulmonary Embolism? Congestive Heart Failure? That was the motivation to go.
My wonderful wife, Ann, was with me every step of the way
but eventually, when they get you in that ER bed, everything is out of your
control and even trying to explain my complicated health history seems of little interest except for recent medications.
She was exhausted by midnight and as our home is five
minutes from the hospital, I asked her to go.
And so, alone. Then I was sent
off for tests, x-rays, CAT scan, blood tests, finally being admitted to a room
at 3.00 AM. Indeed, a solitary journey.
Hospital life: constant interruptions, no rest with
nurses and Doctors (most of whom I don’t know) popping in unexpectedly at all
times. Nighttime is the worst. TV is useless of course so I brought one book
in particular that turned out to “save” me.
It calmly and poetically put living (and dying) in perspective.
It is a recent book by one of my favorite writers,
Richard Ford. I wish I was writing
this blog when his earlier Frank Bascombe novels were published, but I covered his last, Let Me Be Frank With You,which is actually a collection of novellas.
As I said in that entry: “I feel I know this person as I knew Updike’s
Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Frank is four
years younger than I and Rabbit ten years older. But the times recounted by these characters
are of my era. No wonder I’m so familiar
with the landscapes of their lives.”
I also loved his last novel, Canada, which was not from the Bascombe line, but Ford’s voice is
unwavering. I thought it one of the best novels of the year.
His latest work is essentially a memoir Between Them; Remembering My Parents. It was particularly affecting reading it in
my hospital stupor and I felt that Ford drew me away from the illness into the
very private lives of two ordinary people, who did the best they could, swept
along by the rivers of time and chance. Edna and Parker marrying early in life, both
from the deep south, building their lives as a partnership, accustomed to
living on the road together as he was a salesman, even successfully surviving
the depression. It was just the two of
them until later in life (in their 30s) along came their only child, Richard Ford. The title of the book is particularly
revealing. It was in effect a life separately
lived by the parents, and then Richard coming between them. It changed the formula and as life dishes out
the unexpected, so we make our adjustments.
 | |
| Parker, Richard, and Edna |
For Richard, this meant having a part-time Dad, who, even
when he was in Richard’s life, wasn’t particularly interactive with him. Neither was my father, who I loved dearly,
and although he returned from work each night, he lived in a marriage which was
essentially unhappy. At the end of this
entry I am pasting the brief essay I wrote about my own father.
What stunned me about Richard Ford’s sparse lapidary memoir
is he poses as many questions about the multitude of blanks, things he could
not even conjecture at, regarding his parent’s relationship. Here he shines as a creative writer, while
this blog, which is fundamentally an ongoing memoir, is the work of an
essayist. Ford engages the reader to
think about those blanks as well, whereas I’ve tried to define some, probably
woefully incorrectly. Memory is so
faulty, so fungible.
My mother carried most of the fury of my parent’s
marriage. My father was the “beaten” one
emotionally. One neatly fed into the other. But Ford’s memoir, reading
it while I lay vulnerable in my hospital bed, reminded me there was another
side to her. The loving one. Memories swelled, one’s I’ve forgotten.
Silly ones, like the time we were driving back from my
cousin’s house in New Hyde Park to our home in Queens one late Sunday night and
my mother and I asked my father to stop at a drug store as we both were dying of
thirst. We jumped out of the car and in
the paperback rack I saw one of the then best-selling books, Don't Go Near the Water, a 1956 novel by William Brinkley. I showed my mother the cover as we were asking for water and we began to
laugh so uncontrollably that those in the drug store probably thought we were wacky. Funny how a memory like that, unlocked for
years, could be unleashed in a hospital bed in the middle of the night while
reading about someone else’s parents.
In Ford’s skillful hands, the very ordinariness of these
two forgotten people, his parents, is elevated to a kind of tribute to the
human condition: the solitary journey we’re all on.
Some other writer’s memoirs emphasize how they developed
as writers, influenced by parents, particularly mothers. Ironically, I read the late Pat Conroy’s My Reading Life after
emerging from open heart surgery now seven years ago. His mother used to read him Gone With The Wind, instilling a love of reading.
I had no such mentoring and apparently neither did
Richard Ford, although Ford supplies a teaser on that subject. One day the young Richard and his mother were
shopping at the “Jitney Jungle grocery,” and his mother asked him to look at a
woman in the store. Richard looked and
saw “someone I didn’t know – tall and smiling, chatting with people, laughing." His
mother said, "‘That's Eudora Welty. She's a writer,’ which was information that
meant nothing to me, except that it meant something to my mother, who sometimes
read bestsellers in bed at night. I don't know if she had ever read something
Eudora Welty wrote. I don't know if the woman was Eudora Welty, or was someone
else. My mother may have wanted it to be Eudora Welty for reasons of her own.
Possibly this event could seem significant now, in view of my life to come. But
it didn't, then. I was only eight or nine. To me, it was just another piece in
a life of pieces.”
In Ford’s Acknowledgements at the end of the book he
gives thanks (among others) “to the incomparable Eudora Welty, who in writing
so affectingly about parents, have provided models for me and made writing seem
both feasible and possibly useful.” So
there is an arc there, from that vague memory of being with his mother to
becoming a writer. Although in the
Afterward he says something that Updike might have said as well about writing: “Mine
has been a life of noticing and being a witness. Most writers’ lives are.”
Unfortunately for me, I did not come from a reading
family. My father read Reader’s Digest
Condensed books. I can’t remember my
mother reading anything but magazines. But
Ford and I share the fact we were poor students in high school. He refers to a disability. I had several, one an emotional one coming
from a troubled family, feeling shame, and I was a small kid, trying to make up
for it by excelling in baseball, and even basketball to a degree, anything to
fit in. But I also think I had a form of
dyslexia. My mother interpreted my
disability as the need for speech therapy, which was also embarrassing as the speech
therapist worked at the high school and I was still in elementary school, and had
to walk through the halls with the high school kids, standing out as any young
kid would. I hated it.
And that of course was not the only problem. My spelling was atrocious. And as I said although my parents generally did not
read to me as a kid, I do remember one that was read. I loved to look at the pictures. It was probably their sense of well-intended
therapy: Boo Who Used to be Scared of the Dark. I had reason.
In school I read
only what was assigned and it wasn’t until I came under the influence of two
great teachers in my life while a senior in high school that I discovered the
joys of reading. After publishing thousands
of books in my publishing career, I guess I learned to compensate, word
processing being a good crutch for poor spelling.
Ford does not deal with the leap from his hardship in
high school to his days at Michigan State to writer. Not appropriate in this work as it is about
THEM and less about HIM. And there is
yet another ironic thing we had in common.
He first thought of going into Hotel Management. It is no wonder; his parents frequently took
him on his father’s road trips, living in hotels all over the Deep South. No such explanation for me other than Kent
State had such a program and I vaguely thought of that as an escape route from
my family (this plan did not work out thankfully).
I was flotsam in the tide of life.
Between Them is
really two separate works, one about his mother which he wrote soon after she
died, and the other about his father, which he recently wrote. But you wouldn’t know it, as it flows with
such continuity. His prose is
breathtaking. Here is one paragraph that
was particularly affecting (to me), about his father:
“But hardly an hour goes by on any day that I do not
think something about my father. Much
of these things I've written here. Some men have their fathers all their lives,
grow up and become men within their fathers' orbit and sight. My father did not
experience this. And I can imagine such a life, but only imagine it. The novelist Michael Ondaatje wrote about his
father that ‘... my loss was that I never spoke to him as an adult.’ Mine is
the same - and also different - inasmuch as had my father lived beyond his
appointed time, I would likely never have written anything, so extensive would
his influence over me have soon become. And while not to have written anything
would be a bearable loss - we must all make the most of the lives we find -
there would, however, not now be this slender record of my father, of his
otherwise invisible joys and travails and of his virtue - qualities that merit
notice in us all. For his son, not to have left this record would be a sad loss
indeed.”
Yes, a sad loss, especially from such an exceptional writer,
Richard Ford. The book was a gift from
my wife for my birthday and the coincidence of it landing in my hands while in
the hospital, helped deal with the travails of my setback, and even more so with
the ultimate philosophical question I’ve quoted many times before by Eugene
Ionesco: “why was I born if it wasn’t forever?”
I got to know two perfect strangers, now memorialized,
and appreciate Ford’s writing even more.
I will always look forward to his next work
As to my own brief essay about my father, I reprint it
below as an appendage.
An Unspoken Obligation
Up Park Avenue we
speed to beat the lights from lower Manhattan in the small Ford station wagon
with Hagelstein Bros., Commercial Photographers since 1866, 100 Fifth Avenue,
NY, NY imprinted on its panels. The Queens Midtown Tunnel awaits us.
It is a summer in
the late 1950s and, once again, I’m working for my father after another high
school year. In the back of the wagon I share a small space with props, flood
lamps, and background curtains. The hot, midtown air, washed by exhaust fumes
and the smoke from my father’s perpetual burning cigarette, surround me.
 |
| Me and my Dad |
My father’s brother
and partner, my Uncle Phil, occupies the passenger’s seat. They have made this
round trip, day-in and day-out since my father returned from WWII. They speak
of the city, its problems, the Russians, and politics disagreeing on most
matters. Meanwhile I sleepily daydream about where my friends and I will cruise
that evening in one of their cars, a 57’ Merc, probably Queens Blvd., winding
up at Jahn’s next to the RKO on Lefferts Boulevard.
The family
photography business was established right after the Civil War, soon after my
great-great grandfather, Carl, emigrated from Cologne, Germany with his
brother, settling in New York City.
Their portrait photography business at 142 Bowery flourished in the 19th
century. The 20th century brought a new
focus: commercial photography which necessitated moving to a larger studio,
better located, at 100 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 15th Street. There the business remained until the 1980’s,
occupying the top floor.
My father took it
for granted that I was being groomed for the business, the next generation to
carry it on. Uncle Phil was a bachelor and since I was the only one with the
name to preserve the tradition, it would naturally fall to me.
This was such an
understood, implicit obligation, that nothing of a formal nature such as a
college education was needed to foster this direction. Simply, it was my job to
learn the business from the bottom up, working first as a messenger on the NY
City streets, delivering glossies to clients for salesmen’s samples, or for
catalog display at the annual Furniture Show. As a youngster, I roamed NYC by
subway and taxi with my deliveries without incident – after all, this was the
innocent, placid 50’s. Eventually, I
graduated to photographer’s assistant, adjusting lamp shades under the hot
flood lamps so the seams would not show, and, later, as an assistant in the
color lab, making prints, dodging negatives of a clients’ tables, lamps, and
sofas to minimize any overexposures.
I see my father
through the lens of his working life, revealing a personality normally
invisible to me. At home he was a more contemplative, private person, crushed
by a troubled marriage. My mother expected more, often reminding him of his
failures. But strolling down the halls of his photography business he is a
transformed person, smiling, extending his hand to a customer, kidding in his
usual way. “How’s Geschaft?” he would say.
His office
overlooks the reception area and there he, my Uncle, and his two cousins
preside over a sandwich and soda delivered from a luncheonette downstairs. I
sit, listen, and devour my big greasy burger. They discuss the business among
themselves. Osmosis was my mentor.
In spite of the
filial duty that prompted me to continue learning the photography business, I
inveigled his support to go to college – with the understanding I would major
in business. By then I think I knew going to school would be the first step
away from the family business, a step, once taken, would not be taken back. The
question was how to reveal this to him.
However, as
silently was the expectation that I would take over one day, my retreat was
equally furtive. We both avoided the topic as I went to college and yet
continued to work there during the summers. Once I switched majors from
business to the humanities, we both knew the outcome of the change, but still,
no discussion. This was territory neither he nor I wanted to visit at the time.
My reasons were
instinctively clear to me, in spite of the guilt I often felt. In the studio he
was larger than life, the consummate photographer, but he was also provincial
in his business thinking. He had bet the future on producing those prints for
salesmen, discounting the impact of the developing mass media. My opinion on the matter would mean little.
After all, he was my Dad and I was his kid. So I kept my silence and
progressively moved away.
Why he never
brought up the subject I will, now, never know, although I suspect he
understood I wanted to find my own way in life. Ultimately, I married and found
a job in publishing with an office, ironically, only three blocks from his
studio. I still occasionally joined him for that greasy burger at his office
during those first few years of my publishing career, his greeting me with a
smile when I arrived, “so, how’s Geschaft?
