Emma Thompson was the Angel in Angels in America.
kw
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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
On Jul 5, 2010, at 9:24 PM, Max Richards wrote:
> Terrific, Ken.
> (not sure what Emma Thompson adds apart from adding to the mounting
> incongruities...)
> Max
>
>
> On 5/07/10 7:01 AM, "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>> --------------
>> 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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