DADDY IN A CHRISTENING GOWN, 1900
(Jack Wolman, 9/24/99 - 7/5/54)
There is one problem with the gown.
My father was a Jew
so he wasn't christened.
Oh, not much of a Jew:
gambler, ass-chaser, speculator
with other people's money.
A Jew all the same.
By middle age he grew
to hate the roots he could not deny, and
the most Jewish thing about him
when he died at 54 was the manner
of his funeral.
But they even got that wrong
probably a Divine Oversight.
At my last sight of him,
he was in an open casket in
a Jewish funeral home:
expressly forbidden,
so much so that the rabbi--
Yeshiva University 1947--
went into a rage and
refused to do the funeral
unless the lid was screwed down.
No, he was less a Jew than a pagan
who believed in nothing
but the rage of his thwarted fate.
If I had his Marine Corps dog tags from
World War 1, I might know if he chose
J for the tags, or simply No Preference,
so anyone could bury him if he died
in battle or in the putrified tent city of the camp.
Like much else I will never know.
But there is the photograph I found
in my ex's garage one day last week,
forgotten but recalled with shock
to see him as the baby boy in
the middle of his brothers in
their knickers and watch chains,
surrounded by his surly older sisters
while he sat in regal nonexistence
on a stool wearing that white long gown
like Emma Thompson
about to crash screaming into his own life
crying "I, I, I!"
He has my face or I have his:
A blank doltish stare, the man in the moon,
round and uncomprehending.
His brother Saul is absent because
he is due to be born in 1901 and
is missing the party to which he brings
his capstone of cruelty and mockery.
What were my grandparents thinking
that they presented an incomplete set?
That this my father was the finishing touch
on a chain of misery and stillbirths,
a kid arrayed in a goyishe costume,
so confusion had made his masterpiece?
Or did they chance their lives upon
the roll of dice and bet against themselves?
KTW/7-4-10
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Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."
--Francine du Plessix Gray
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