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Forgiving My Father

The Little Assistant

I have never visited my father's grave. By the time he died, when I was thirty-two, the man I had adored and whom I resembled, who had introduced me at age five as "my assistant" when I accompanied him on his hospital rounds and spun nightly fairy tales starring me, had become less than a stranger.

I know why it happened, but I am still unnerved and disturbed by my icy remoteness, by the seeming indifference with which I witnessed his weeping lament the last time we met that soon he'd never see his "little Jeanne Kitten" again. I turned away from him as he had once turned away from me, and I let him suffer and die alone.

I was my daddy's darling from the day I was born. "I told your mother that she had a little girl with big cheeks," he used to recount to me, "and I gave you special pills to keep you small." It was he who named me; my mother, convinced that a masculine name would confer a certain sophistication as well as provide a convenient pen name, had called me "Gene," which my father thankfully-prevailed on her to alter to "Jeanne" with the "e" pronounced so that I had a perpetual diminutive. This metamorphosed into "Jeanne Cat," which became the basis of nonsense rhymes he set to music and sang to me most of his life.

I always associate him with music. He was a retiring, shy, and serious anesthesiologist when that medical specialty was first being developed, and he invented various ingenious surgical devices that he never bothered to patent, but music was his hobby and means of self-expression. Into my teens, the mellow sounds of his clarinet or saxophone wafted from his officein the house he and my mother had designed and built. I used to take breaks from doing homework or even from talking on the telephone to sit with him in wordless communion while he played standards from the thirties and forties. And although I don't remember actively inviting him to listen, he'd often stop by as I played my guitar and sang one of my innumerable repertoire of folk ballads-all in minor keys about unrequited love-which I specialized in literally as well as figuratively in high school. At dusk, we used to take walks together in the yard he kept well manicured, inspecting the trees, the little bamboo grove, and the fat roses he'd selected for scent and color. Sometimes at night he would fall asleep himself in my room in the middle of telling me one of his stories about a bear and his princess.

Generosity was part of his nature. Having been raised with unnecessary penuriousness by immigrant parents, he compensated by acquiring and bestowing the best of everything. He wasn't flashy or extravagant, but craftsmanship and quality mattered to him, and shopping in discount stores was against his religion. Whenever my mother or I couldn't decide between two purchases, he always encouraged us to take both.

Unforced togetherness reigned in my family. My parents took me along on every vacation from the time I was six weeks old because, my mother explained with grudging approbation, my father couldn't bear to leave me with strangers. Although there was undoubtedly the classic mother/daughter rivalry for his affections-he found it easier to relate to a little assistant than to an adult woman-as well as marital tension, little of either surfaced. Our mutual need for accord caused them to shield me from, and me to minimize, what I later realized was major strife.

Despite the rumblings, my parents were as affectionate and playful with each other as they were with me. My mother's vivid liveliness complemented my father's wry introversion. Both had a need for harmony that forced conflicts underground, but I never doubted-and still do not-their genuine closeness and mutual appreciation in the early part of my childhood. They gave lavish parties where the guests never wanted to leave, traveled extensively, and spent my preadolescent years designing their home with a natural division of labor: he created the clever, elegant fixtures, she the bold, striking decor.

As is typical in physicians' families, my father was my in-house doctor until I left home. I went to a pediatrician for checkups, but he was the one who took care of me when I was sick or hurt. He was the master of the painlesscompensated by acquiring and bestowing the best of everything. He wasn't flashy or extravagant, but craftsmanship and quality mattered to him, and shopping in discount stores was against his religion. Whenever my mother or I couldn't decide between two purchases, he always encouraged us to take both.

Unforced togetherness reigned in my family. My parents took me along on every vacation from the time I was six weeks old because, my mother explained with grudging approbation, my father couldn't bear to leave me with strangers. Although there was undoubtedly the classic mother/daughter rivalry for his affections-he found it easier to relate to a little assistant than to an adult woman-as well as marital tension, little of either surfaced. Our mutual need for accord caused them to shield me from, and me to minimize, what I later realized was major strife.

Despite the rumblings, my parents were as affectionate and playful with each other as they were with me. My mother's vivid liveliness complemented my father's wry introversion. Both had a need for harmony that forced conflicts underground, but I never doubted-and still do not-their genuine closeness and mutual appreciation in the early part of my childhood. They gave lavish parties where the guests never wanted to leave, traveled extensively, and spent my preadolescent years designing their home with a natural division of labor: he created the clever, elegant fixtures, she the bold, striking decor.

Forgiving and Not Forgiving. Copyright © by Jeanne Safer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.