My dad was here.
Long ago but not now.
He was, in his way, a once upon a time, most powerful and influential presence who enveloped my own shadow as if it was his own.
He quietly took great quality care of us as if he had been trained in at some fancy school in France that specialized in the art of parenting.
He was graceful and generous in his skills and yet he never once asked to borrow even a cup of spotlight, that three dimensional radiance that my sister and I waded in, in those days of etched sparkle, which was cool and refreshing on a hot summer day and warm and inviting on those snow blurry days that snapped at us like angry ice cold snakes. Those days that you could write your name in the damp vapor of a frozen window pane.
Daddy was always there, even when he wasn't. It was like we were made out of a kind of human memory foam that he easily left his pillow-like impression in.
While he often dreamed, on the island of a thousand dreams, of being the leading man, he was way too humble and hushed to ever expect that role.
He was content being the supporting actor of our family production. He was a Thornton Wilder stage manager. The caretaker of our floating souls.
He was kind to the marrow.
I never once heard him say an untoward thing about anyone. Ever. Not once.
He absorbed our pain and refracted fear like a giant roll of Bounty and took it all on as if it were his own.
He was duty bound and selfless, conscripted into our little army of four, armed at the checkpoint of our lives, ever the affable soldier whose only weapons were charm, an encouraging wink and a casual nod that spoke volumes to me. That nod was our mutual code of encouragement and silent guarantee that all was well which was communicated faster than any single router ever could.
He loved simple things.
He adored his fresh corn bread that was dutifully fetched every day from the incubators of our our local German bakery.
He loved his chestnuts and slurpy sink fruit and candy drawer. It was like he was healed by sweetness.
He loved to cackle and cry at variety shows which seemed to arrive on our shores like an invasion of courts jesters whose sole purpose was to enthrall and reward the majestic royalty of selfless parents.
He loved to bring me home comic books, on loan from my Uncle Jack's newsstand in Penn Station, which to me, was Valhalla. My entire weekend would be spent in the worlds of Superman and Jerry Lewis.
My dad came from a large family which was very unusual for Jews, especially since culling the herd was the speciality of World War two.
He had three brothers and two sisters---who all had the same identical faces that were permanently etched in quiet contentedness.
They were a band of brothers and sisters, highly trained, nourishing specialists all, who asked for nothing for themselves and yet expected you to be as happy as you could possibly be, at any cost as it was a pre-condition of life. A God given right.
There were endless calendar marked celebrations and traditional festivities which were documented like a Cannes press conference, whose snapshots and faded 8mm movies would act as proof positive; our holy grail Zapruder film of just how much we were adored.
The truth is we never needed to become reflective or hold a seminar or family only panel discussion on whether or not we were being acknowledged or appreciated.
We were just too busy being distracted by love.
My dad looked a lot (to me) like Edward G. Robinson and I used to harbor this outsized fantasy that every day he took the Long Island Railroad to Hollywood, shot his movies and took the train back like clockwork so he would be home by six o'clock. I thought surely we must be rich, so I was willing to cast aside any real life concerns that we were the bluest blue collar family amongst my friends.
At day's end, I used to be so drunk on by television that my dad would easily float into the house undetected. Like Elijah or Tinkerbell. My mom would wedge him in-between their splayed opened bedroom closet doors, swoop me up into her arms and then perform the grand illusion trick of making him appear, using the incantation (with a grand, sweeping, flourish) "Magic Aroo-Ballo!" She'd THROW open the doors, parted the waves and there he would be: the radiant recipient of a perfectly cast spell.
And I fell for it every, single time. Even when I was 30. Being bedazzled does not grow old. No matter how hard you try.
There was our cabana which was nestled near the Atlantic ocean kissed beach where my brown skinned dad, wearing a pair of trunks up to his chest cavity, grilled steaks, fondled fresh corn and mugged to the silent camera the words, "This is living!"
Bering Plaza cigars were puffed on as our captain navigated our clunky Hudson chariot home, while Sinatra sang for only the lonely as I snoozed like a fan tail cat in the now long lost area of perfect coziness, cuddled up behind the rear seats, against the wide flat surface in front of the rear window which offered a perfect Galileo-like view of the passing-by universe whose trillions of winking diamonds sparkled and chased each other in comet streaks against the endless velvet carpet of infinity.
Infinity is really all we really knew then when I was young. There were no such things as physical limits or curated boundaries.
Flight was alway imminent and available.
There were no flight paths or needs of concern.
We were impossibly free inside our bubble heart home where broadway show albums sang on cue, tiny people enthralled us on television and parakeets flew like multi-colored, deliriously chirping doves around the living room.
Our meals were more like a day's end bounty, dessert was bottomless and being held and backed stroked was a guarantee.
Baths were as soothing as the waters of Lourdes and afterwards we felt unbearably clean, anointed and renewed
And when we levitated and flew to our beds we would be tucked in as if we were being ritualistically folded and saluted like cherished flags.
And with the far away sounds of a roaring, Jackie Gleason, a lisping cross-dressed Uncle Milty or the madcap, made up foreign language of Sid Caesar, we would begin to drift from the dock, as audiences applauded and laughed, just like my dad had during the day after day of days.
And now he's gone.
And there is no "magic aroo-baloo" that will be potent enough to bring him back in the midst of a Jon Snow storm.
My dad was not an articulate man. His gestures after all, were his sign language. So on the eve of my departure to Los Angeles when he suddenly ambled out to the dining room and said to 25 year old me, "Well kid, I hope you get what you want in life," I was so taken back by its directness that I was convinced that I would never see him again.
That was my main thought on the flight out there.
And in 13 days he was dead.
He had a heart attack during the night and typically, did not wake up my mom to alert her as he did not want to take away the dreams that he had so carefully manufactured.
By the time he got to the hospital, his most resilient and prodigious heart was now pulverized wish dust.
He died reading the New York Times, a beloved zen practice of his. Perhaps to the very end, his fantasies still began with: "How can I fix this? How can make this better?
It was apparent, from the second that I sat with him, as he slept in his casket, that the torch had been literally passed and I had been officially charged with the task of becoming Murray B. Simon. (The "B" stood for: Because I have no middle name.). I also discovered that upon looking at my dad's death certificate, that he had lied to me about his age. I thought he was 59 but he was in truth, 69.
He was 13 years older than my mom and he thought that it would bother my sister. So just like that I was cheated out of ten years.
All that was left, in the end, was his now proud, silent tuna sandwich, which held vigil on the top shelf of my mom's refrigerator waiting, just like me, for him to come back, pick me up and devour me.
I have since raised two elegant sons like a second tier Ed Sullivan impressionist version of my dad, knowing full well that I'm nothing more or less than an incredible simulation of who he was.
But this I know for sure:
I have become the memory of his melody. The comet trail of his Old Spice and Vitalis.
The standing guard at the Chuckle filled vault of his sweetness.
I am the true descendent of greatness in a smaller, economy sized package.
I often stop, certainly on days like today to feel the magnetic pull of home, in order to pay tribute to a man who held no significance whatsoever to the outside world. He lived and died little more than a census statistic.
But in my universe, he towered.
My universe, after all, just like yours, is the completely made up existence where I watch the world go by, like the Little Prince perched on his planet.
It's the place where I am sitting right how, where I imagine that everything that I perceive is real, while the Secret Gods of common sense whisper to me, " All of this is just a story that you keep making up along the way while you experience brief moments of bliss and contentment in between the endless avalanche of unimaginable loss and pain.
Parents and dogs, I think, are put on this earth to be ringmasters; to help us soar with elation while shielding us from the sorrowful downpour that is the chemistry of despair and defeat.
So on days like this, I turn back to my dad, whose shadow I now embrace as if it were my own.
And I quietly thank him for being the protector of the realm. The caretaker of all things.
I am, perhaps, just a little more alive because of him.
Which makes me want to fly like a multi-colored parakeet to the outer reaches of gratitude, beyond the horizon, where all good parents sooner or later go.