Memories of my father
London, 1905: my father had his portrait made. That wee oval frame crossed the ocean with him to Harlem, New York, where his aunt Leah raised him after his mother died. It found a safe harbor here in Rhode Island among the Harvard Classics crammed together on the bookcase in my childhood parlor.
For this month’s Father’s Day I have an impulse to sum up his life: His own dad re-married, and he fell under the spell of his cousin, the child of that second marriage. So, my mother and father were thus a mix of cousins, aunts and uncles. Go figure. This snapshot tells its tale but also keeps its secrets.
In time Moe needed to apply for a passport, to visit his actual birthplace, London. Among my travels I have contemplated this little antique image, but for this Father’s Day I seek to define his larger personality. Yes, he was indeed a Brit but also a Yank, and his respect for language, for tales and for poetry, came sometimes as a surprise but also a reassurance. A brief spell in Canada played a part in his life, too. This one single image will have to evoke his memory.
Once upon a time I spent a summer thumbing a journey across America and my father Moe handed me a camera hoping I could make creative use of the diverse images I would encounter. I recall one particular moment when I pitched my pup tent on a mountain-top. After I built a small fireplace a wide range of wild companions, of various species arrived from chipmunk to toads, forming a magic circle! Alas the snapshot has long since vanished into the void.
My father might show up in an auditorium, alone in the back row, to listen to my speech, but our relationship was marked by many surprises and moods. When we discovered that my mother was mortally ill, she instructed me how to take care of my dad, from whom I had often been estranged. For almost a full decade we were housemates (one of my colleagues thought my dad worked for me as a house valet!). When I married, the ceremony took place at the fireplace in my/our home. Memories of my father travel backwards now to that little oval image of a motherless child.
MIKE FINK (mfink33@aol.com) is a professor emeritus at the Rhode Island School of Design.
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