Ode to my dead father

The Sweetness of Line

It isn't what I write that counts but how these circles and connecting letters that ink up a page came to be. The wonder is how in second grade, Mrs. Miller, a tall buxom narrow teacher in grey two piece suit falling below her knees drew for the first time on the blackboard these connecting curves for my separate letters.

Before then my "A's" stood upright forted against any invasion from a "T" or an "R" and I liked that. I liked the power of emergence- the upright cowboy on his horse- lone man among his neighbors- helping radiate me as the runt in a large family.

With my "I's" or "T's" I was the captain on his bow overlooking the deepest blue- the pirate eager to capture gold on his secret forays into hidden coves.

I wouldn't have taken cursive writing from a man. Mrs. Miller though had a secret heart, a fondness for words and connecting people. I wondered if she had 26 children at home and figured out over the years- for she must have been ancient like the oaks I climbed- I wondered if she had been a keen observer of how her children connected and made the bold discovery that our 26 letters must do the same! It was only because she was this gleeful scientist that I went along.

She abducted me with a sly conniving magnetism.

One by one my pirates held hands with my princesses. Solitary monks kissed white virgins. Letters who once stood proud, chess pieces in their own squares broke down under Mrs. Miller's demanding tutelage. Lined papers instructing me how to connect my heroes slowly imprisoned them in a smaller world.

No longer a man of stature in the family I became small, indistinguishable from my brothers, one more shaved tree in Mrs. Miller's forest.

I learned. I was a good boy. I knew and wanted to believe this was only play so I could return soon to my capitals.

Years later having succumbed to this weighty community of letters, this practical flowing democracy with no king or queen, these ant scribbles in the sand, I received a letter from my father.

Never having met Mrs. Miller, Samuel Portney, my father had never given up his ship. Being the boxer he once was, fighting the Depression, earning money slamming into men's noses with thinly cushioned fists, he never laid down his letters into the realm of the feminine.

His was not a world of connections but of rulership. Not only that, he wrote his one page letters ripped ragged from a notepad in red felt pen- unlined and rigid. I opened these envelopes slitting through his dried moisture stuck tight in the flaps. He commanded respect. His letters yelled for attention and got it fully.

I would move to a corner of the room away from women's things and sit. Thank God at least he hadn't given in to Mrs. Miller's coy experiment.

No way.
Not him.

I am certain he wrote these notes alone after my mother had kissed his cheek and gone to bed. Probably after watching Columbo.

I love my father. He carved a path for family out of raw thorny passages. The death of a father when he was twelve surely cured him of his Mrs. Miller. I am certain one night he burned the soft cursive flow of a child's world and leaped forward into manhood returning to capitals- the mythos of the innocent.

To get ahead I will stand apart, he invoked. To connect with those I love I will separate myself in distinct red felt.

What I'm curious about all these years later, now that all those short notes have come and gone, those messages of rebuke and praise and the lists of items left to me- black leather jacket, heavy oak desk, narrow alligator shoes. After all of these correspondences read alone and written alone connected us. I wonder about the spaces between each inked letter. I wonder what price he paid to separate them. What inhaled scream or trembling of fear lay transparent between his "I's" and "T's". What paths had he not taken, connections had he not made?

On the other hand I wonder in those spaces what self respect he cultivated, what strength of character to remain upright, responsible, a lighthouse beacon for his widowed mother, seven siblings, young wife and four children.

I certainly spent many years cursing his lack of cursiveness. I placed myself directly underfoot his capitals when I think now he was only trying to lift me up to his heady heights.

I know there is a place for cursiveness in my life. I write to him now, dead so many years, with connecting thoughts rounded with care and concern and his echo is a distinct cry from the connection he cultivated without anyone noticing.

On his deathbed my brother held his hand and chanted a Jewish prayer: "Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One."

My father knew who was in charge. He knew with red felt pen in hand the life he was here to craft. Though he died alone, as will we all, he died underneath the canopy of a cursive God, Mrs. Miller's consort.

He died in his lover's everlasting hidden embrace.