More Than a Cherished Father, He Was a ‘Mister’

Last weekend, I visited my father’s grave and brought along the ultrasound images of our baby.

“Pop, I wish you could see these,” I said. “You’d be so excited.”

The fuzzy black-and-white pictures look more like X-rays of a spaceship capsule than of the womb. There floats our little astronaut, curled up and dreaming of the stars.

I had cherished the dream of one day giving my father a grandchild (in our small family, one is an enormous addition). I thought it might somehow make up for his rootless early life, the life of an orphan and wartime refugee whose homeland was lost behind the then-newly erected Iron Curtain. I dreamed of presenting a little child who would be, to use the words of one of the Psalms, like a laurel crown resting on his head.

But it was not to be. He died last fall of a sudden, very aggressive cancer--just a few months before we learned that Colette was pregnant. I was happy about the news, but also bitterly disappointed that I could not share it with him.

I realized, on this particular cemetery visit, that Father’s Day would be a painful one this year. Sunlight glared off of his bronze grave marker. It hasn’t been that long, I thought. Not long enough even for the grass to fill in the dirt outline of the grave. Standing there, I thought about Dad’s role in my life. I thought about what he taught me about fathers.

Fatherhood, it seems to me, is an obscure business, a job done in the background (but, like the prop manager of a theater, the show can’t go on without him). Think of what your own father was doing at certain times in your life. On the last day of a family vacation, where was he? Packing up the car, or paying the hotel bill. He isn’t in the video of your school graduation because he was the only one who knew how to operate the camera. Remember the time he came home from work and spent the night wrestling with your math homework? Many fathers are much like St. Joseph in Botticelli’s “Adoration of the Magi”--standing at the back of the scene, looking tired from a long day’s work, watching as a radiant woman and child hold court.

Vigilant, attentive, a father deals in certain practicalities of family life that are his alone. Nick Sr. maintained a kind of order in our traditional household that was subtle, almost invisible and, now that he’s gone, is noticeably missing. He was killer of spiders in the bathroom and patroller of bumps in the night. He was unplugger of toilets and handler of door-to-door salesmen. He was gardener and Mr. Fix-It. He was financial planner and unconditional moneylender (“I know,” he’d say, grinning, to Mom or me, “you’re going to pay me back someday.”) The list seems endless.

Now that my wife and I face a mortgage and other bills, I can appreciate all those evenings that he spent at the kitchen table, quietly studying the checkbook. (Where was I? Watching television, oblivious to his money woes.) Now, when I feel tense and go to water the yard, I’m reminded that this, too, was his domain. On summer evenings I’d see his silhouette on the front walkway, spraying the lawn with a jet of water. It must’ve had a very calming effect, for he’d stay out there long after the sun went down.

No single epithet fittingly sums up all that a father is. “Breadwinner” sounds silly and dated. So does “provider” or “king of the castle.” But I have a personal one that comes close. And every time I look at the ultrasound pictures, I look forward to telling our child about a time when an old farmer’s wife put my father’s life into the simplest, and most special, of terms.

*

We were traveling in western Ukraine four years ago, visiting the village where Dad was born. The Soviet Union’s collapse had made it possible to return. Great things happened on that trip, too many to describe here, but I’ll let this brief moment stand for all that must go unsaid.

Dad looked around. He met old neighbors and former school chums and told the story of how he’d left: how the German army, pushing east into Russia, passed through the village and took able-bodied youths to work on German farms. He was orphaned by the time this happened and, in hindsight, his being taken was fortunate, because it led to his coming to the U.S. when World War II ended.

The village lanes were gravel and dirt. Lining each side were fenced yards and run-down cottages with tin roofs.

“Hey, they didn’t have tin roofs when I was here,” he said, jogging his memory. “It was heavy straw, and the storks used to build nests in them!”

The streets seemed smaller to him. (Of course they did: The last time he’d walked them, he’d been a barefoot child.) He wore slacks, a dress shirt and his red Republican tie. Grimy farmers and old ladies in head scarves came out of their houses to meet him. For a moment, Dad looked like a Southern congressman stumping for votes in a rural district. Everyone was talking and laughing, and a crowd swelled in the lane. I could tell Dad was feeling good. He saw a man and woman pitching hay into a huge pile.

“Why are you piling hay?” he called out. “You should be fooling around in it!”

The couple was in their 70s.

Yet the lady grinned and the man laughed and shook his head. There were hearty laughs from the crowd. Two more women approached. One asked the other who the comedian was. She seemed surprised to hear that he’d been born there.

“Him? Oh no!” she said. “Vin yeh pan!”

Pan is a courteous title, like mister. What she meant was, he looks too sophisticated to be from here! Or, literally: He’s a mister!

Dad stopped when he heard that. There was a look of surprise on his face.

“Did you hear that?” he asked me.

What an impression that baba had made! It was as if Dad had been told a mighty secret. And, in a way, I think he had: about himself. Once upon a time, city folks had demanded that this poor farm boy address them as pan and pani. On his return, the honorific had been applied to him. He savored that moment. We talked about it often before he died.

Orphan, refugee, immigrant, self-made man, father. . . . Dad had come a long way in 72 years. On a future Father’s Day I’ll tell his grandchild all about him. But I won’t have to struggle to find the right words. They were given to me. I’ll say, your grandfather was a great man. In fact, he was more than that. He was a mister.