I imagine some of my friends and family will find this amusing because I am always saying how much I don’t like doing what everybody else does. Here I go, though, writing a post in tribute to my late father, Harry, on Father’s Day.
Harry Arenson was a complex man. Of course, I didn’t realize how much so until I was an adult. I always knew he was special and that he was usually a lot more fun than most of my friends’ fathers. He has been dead since May of 1981. When I look at his pictures, I can hear him telling me joke after joke and making his outrageous puns, as though he were right in the room with me. He had such a quick, clever wit and an excelllent command of the English language. He did not truly believe this, being ashamed of his lack of formal education. I learned after he died that he had never finished high school. He was forced (as were many in those days) to leave school to help support his parents and brothers. It simultaneously touched and saddened me that I was the only one in the family who had not known this. He had not wanted me to know, for some reason. Losing my father really shook the foundation under my legs. When he died, I had no idea that within the next year we would also lose my young nephew and then that I would become a widow, joining my mother in that role.
During my first husband’s illness, my father was my shoulder for crying. My mother was the practical one who provided strength and who helped me to be strong too. My father found ways to help us laugh when there were scant reasons for laughter.
One of the things I most loved was what a tender-hearted, compassionate person Harry was. Although he did not always approve of all of the causes in which I was involved during my teens and young adult years, he was really my model. He hated to see injustice and railed against it at every opportunity. He had self-esteem issues stemming from his childhood and from his own father, (who was in many ways tyrannical, even though we all adored our Zaida or Grandfather) but Harry was the first to stand up for someone he felt wasn’t being treated properly or with fairness. When my Girl Scout Troop no longer wanted me as a member because I had proposed membership for one of the (then) few girls in our neighborhood of African-American background, my mother was horrified that I wrote a letter to the troop leader and quit in defiance, saying that I wouldn’t be caught dead in their company after the revelation of their bigotry. My father was so proud and took me out for a huge ice cream sundae at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlour, home of the amazing “Kitchen Sink” sundae.
Harry was poet at heart, though I don’t know that he ever wrote a poem in his life. He was a workingman, a staunch union supporter, a newspaper routeman in Manhattan, delivering stacks of newspapers from a truck from the age of 16. He worked for the Hearst Corporation at the N.Y. Journal American, for 41 years till they went out of business and then went to work at a slightly different job for the New York Times, until his retirement. From the time I was a small child, he recited poetry to me, with great feeling and encouraged me to memorize the same poems. I can still recite most of them. He was thrilled when I began writing poetry at the age of three, dictating what I wanted to say to my parents, or to my much older sister. Every spare moment my father had, and there weren’t many with long work hours and constant extended family crises and obligations, was spent reading his beloved books and listening to music of all types, but mostly classical. Like most parents of his day, he hated early rock music, but he loved folk songs and very much enjoyed the Beatles. He came from poverty, but his books and records were his pride and joy, along with his cameras. During the Great Depression, as a newlywed, he supplemented the family income by taking portraits and even won some prizes.
Any chance for an excursion into the “country”, which included suburban New Jersey or Long Island, as well as more rural areas in Upstate New York or Connecticut, was a great delight to Harry. He would get lost in his own world, setting out on long walks with his cameras. I have a closet full of boxes of his slides that I need to digitalize. He enjoyed photographing his kids and grandkids too, but probably not as much as capturing the beauty of nature. We would all tease him about his endless pictures of what looked to us like empty country roads going nowhere. He said walking along country roads and observing nature gave him a chance to think and to resolve things that worried him. I don’t much enjoy being photographed now, but I have to say that the photos my father took of me in my teens and early adulthood were the best.
Harry often recited Shakespeare to me, having committed an astonishing amount of his works to memory. In fact, when I was quite small, part of our bedtime ritual was that he always said,, “Goodnight, goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.” My mother, impatient and always practical, would wave him off and tell him to just let me go upstairs so she could relax for the evening.
Harry blubbered easily. He definitely wore his feelings on his sleeve and so do I. He was born in 1909 and in many ways, he bought into typical gender roles and stereotypes, but he was not in the least ashamed of, or embarrassed about being so emotional and crying so easily. In fact, he was mostly proud of being this way, except when in the presence of his own father. My father taught me early that humor and pathos were very closely related and sometimes inseparable.
The role as “breadwinner” was one Harry took very seriously, so he was traditional in that respect. He did not want my mother to work outside the home and she was fine with that. He did not abide by definitions of women’s work in other ways. He remained very much in love with my mother till his dying breath and he always wanted to help her and to make things easier for her. He regularly assisted with shopping, vacuuming, washing walls, windows, and draperies. He did not see this as unmasculine behavior. He absolutely loved buying gifts for my mother. There was a good deal of plotting and happy planning around these purchases. My father would turn over his paycheck to her because she managed the household budget, but he kept a few dollars for his own expenses. Somehow, he saved money out of his small self-alottment, and from this, he bought my mother jewelry, handbags, clothing and flowers. He recognized and appreciated fine quality and had to do a lot of convincing to have my mother accept his gifts.
My father maintained a tiny garden in front of our Brooklyn home. He planted my mother’s favorite flowers. Peonies, lilacs and sweet williams were among her favorites. He loved them for the pleasure they provided her.
Very little kids enjoyed my father so much because sometimes he was so absolutely silly and knew how to relate to them. It might not sound too appealing to you, but he enjoyed the giggles he invariably got when he took his false teeth out of his mouth and sucked them back in again. He adored playing with toys along with the youngsters in the family. It was his chance to be a kid again and I am just like that. I still get super-excited at toy stores. I will never forget that he was almost as excited as I was when I got my first bike, an amazing reddish-purple J.C. Higgins English racer with a wonderful brown leather tool bag holding miniature tools.
My father was a master at making up silly words in pretend languages and I confess to this “talent” as well. There must be something in our genes because my eldest son invented his own Slavic-sounding language and actually once created and performed a comedy routine entirely in his private language. I have incorporated some of Harry’s ridiculous, but hilarious words and expressions into my own vocabulary.
Again, though he was traditional about some things, he wasn’t with others. He preferred my mother to dress in a “feminine” fashion and hated it when I dressed in what he considered a provocative or undemure way when I was a teenager. That said, he argued with my mother sometimes about the activities he and I shared and enjoyed together. He grew up in a family of five boys and didn’t know much about paper dolls or makeup. He taught me how to build crystal radios, how to make boat and airplane models, and how to use my woodburning set, even though my mother said those things were for boys.
My father’s family had been ultra-poor when he was a boy, so it was important to him to dress well. He wore work pants, work shirts and a cap most days, but when he wasn’t working he sported expensive suits and cashmere topcoats and he always wore a dress hat, or fedora. He was meticulous about his shirts, ties and cufflinks too. I have one of the gold cufflinks with his initials on a chain and wear it as a necklace.
Harry wasn’t perfect and he didn’t pretend to be. He lost his temper and shouted (though never lifted a finger to hit anyone, ever). He bore grudges, he gossiped with his brothers and was over-protective of his kids, sometimes to the point of interference, he was highly superstitious, had a number of phobias, was nervous and borderline obsessive-compulsive. He had little confidence in his abilities, though he was clearly very intelligent. He was born with six fingers on one hand, as was his youngest brother. His brother had his extra digit removed when he was a young man, but my father was terrified of doctors and could not. For all of his life he suffered from the delusion that everyone noticed it and that it was, in fact, the first thing they noticed about him.
Loyalty was probably one of Harry’s most memorable qualities. He spent most of his limited spare time with family on both sides, but he had lifelong friends, Tommy Moran and Petie Embarrata. He used to joke at times that we were Irish and our name was Erinson, or Italian and our name was Arensino. My father would have done anything for his friends and they , in turn, for him. He never tired of telling me that family and trusted friends were more important than infinite riches and without the first two life would not be worth living.
Many Father’s Days have passed since Harry’s death in 1981. I spent a lot of years trying not to feel too blue on this day, and trying to find ways for my kids not to, since three of them lost their father pretty young. Today, Father’s Day also coincides with the birthday of my eldest son, who has many qualities of both his grandfather and his father. Life isn’t always easy, but I know my father would have understood and liked the Native American saying, “If the eyes had no tears, the soul would have no rainbow”.
On his gravestone, it says, “His love and beauty are immortal”. As I sit here today, writing this, I know this is true.
