Lucy Morganstern
Booth Piece, Sept. 2, 2004
(for Sept. 16th class)
When I was in my mid 30s I enrolled in a year long intensive workshop. The goal of the workshop was to help the participants transform their lives by freeing up energy trapped in the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realms. We spent most time in the physical realm. Each one of us had to sort through every single thing that belonged to us and discard anything that was no longer relevant to our current lives. Anything we decided to keep had to be restored to a state of “impeccability.”
Not all of what I owned was located in my apartment. In fact, quite a lot of my possessions were stored in my parents’ house in Brooklyn. I spent a lot of time traveling on the subway to Brooklyn from my apartment in Manhattan to retrieve, examine and decide what to keep and what to divest.
I made some surprising discoveries down in my parents’ musty basement. My 8th grade graduation picture showed an exotic looking girl with dark brown hair and a pixie cut. “My God, I was beautiful!” The picture did not at all jive with my memory of myself as an overweight, unattractive girl. Next, my autograph book filled with messages from classmates and fellow campers at Interlochen Music Camp. Could these glowing comments be about me – me, the lonely, always-feeling-like an-outsider 13 year old?
The most stunning revelation of all came from the letters from my father. Fortunately I had saved almost everything he had ever written to me. As I started to reread these old letters from my childhood and early adulthood my personal history started to rewrite itself. My relationship with my father took on a dimension that was totally unexpected. A question I hadn’t thought to ask answered itself: my father loved me.
My Dad was a social misfit. Although he had many fine qualities – he was honest, helpful, compassionate, generous, had a tremendous sense of integrity and was extremely smart, his less attractive traits of intellectual snobbery, impatience, irritability, intractability and imperviousness to social mores alienated many people. Dad defiantly marched to his own drumbeat. He wanted to be accepted for what he was and he didn’t hesitate to express his opinions loudly and at great length. Once Dad started on a subject dear to his heart he was unstoppable. Mom was embarrassed by Dad’s behavior and because of this their social life was mostly limited to family.
Underneath his brusque exterior, Dad was a humanist. He was an ardent Democrat, social progressive and champion of the underdog. His job as Research Director of the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers involved gathering and analyzing labor statistics, but he was often called in to negotiate union contracts with big companies like Westinghouse and General Electric and to defend individual union members in trouble with the management. Dad had an intuitive gift for sizing people up and recognizing latent gifts. When he saw that someone, be it a family member, acquaintance or union member, was not “fulfilling their potential” he didn’t hesitate to step in and suggest a course of action that he thought would lead them to greater fulfillment.
Once Dad was requested to represent an insubordinate union member in danger of losing his factory job. Seeing that the man was highly intelligent and, in fact, overqualified for the work he was doing, Dad encouraged him to go back to school to get a college degree. The man followed Dad’s advice, graduated and went on to get a high paying white collar job.
Dad held the managements of these big companies and their fancy lawyers in great disdain which he didn’t bother to hide. Once one of the company lawyers said to him, “Abe, if you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”
Dad replied, “Because I’m not a crook.”
In fact, Dad was not materialistic in any sense. Although he had grown up in poverty and had to work throughout his childhood to help support his family, money was remarkably unimportant to him. As long as he had enough, he was content. And, somehow, although we never had much money, there always seemed to be enough for whatever was needed.
Dad was an economist by profession but his great love was writing. More than anything he wanted to be published. This coup evaded but did not deter him. During my childhood he would retreat to the isolation of the attic every evening after dinner and would write for hours. I went to sleep hearing the distant clack of typewriter keys. Over time he produced a fair number of novels and hundreds of poems.
Not having his worth recognized was a constant theme in my father’s life. Repeated rejections from publishers delivered continual blows to his ego and the stubborn refusal of life to fulfill his desire for acknowledgment caused Dad to carry a big chip on his shoulder. He was never far from being angry. Although his anger was almost always expressed verbally rather than physically, it was scary nonetheless. We all dreaded his explosions of rage. An older girl living across the street from us teased me about being fat when I was five or six. When I ran crying to my father, he went immediately over to her house and yelled at her, frightening her – and me. I never complained to my father about ill treatment by anyone after that.
My parents had distinct and diverse orientations to life. Whereas my mother searched for the meaning of life in spirituality, Dad looked for his answers in the sphere of the intellect. Although each did genuinely appreciate and admire the sterling qualities of the other, they could not reconcile their fundamental conflicts – attempts to do so always ended in frustration. Each bitterly criticized the other for being unwilling to change. The intolerance and friction between my parents pervaded our family life – no one was spared harsh criticism. My beautiful, popular older sister was called a “social butterfly,” my dynamic and charismatic older brother’s accomplishments were belittled by my competitive father and I was labeled “selfish and lazy,” in part because I resisted my mother’s attempts to get me to clean up my room. Disorder reigned in our home. Dad liked things to be neat, but he was totally sabotaged by my mother’s inability to organize and keep things tidy.
Brought up in a chaotic household, with two parents who led very different lives and who were engaged in a private war for dominance, the conflicts manifesting externally were also reflected on the internal screen of my psyche. Life seemed scary and unpredictable to me and I felt insecure and unprotected. Underneath the atmosphere of acrimony I knew that my parents loved me, but that love was available to me only at their whim. I was thrown back on my own resources, expected to take care of myself at far too young an age. Once I learned to read I buried myself in the fantasy world of books.
Some of my happiest childhood memories of my father concerned bicycles. When I was two and a half and my brother was eleven Dad took us to a store to buy a bike for Danny. I zeroed in on a tricycle and could not be persuaded to leave the store without it. I don’t remember if Danny got his bike, but I rode home on three wheels.
Two years later I found a small bicycle downstairs in our basement. I was determined to learn how to ride it. Dad didn’t want to be bothered, but he brought it outside and left me on my own with it while he went up to his attic to write. When he found me a couple of hours later trying to teach myself to ride he was impressed with my tenacity and took over my tuition. No training wheels for his young daughter! Dad gripped the back of the seat and ran behind with me as I pedaled. I can still remember the first time I turned around to speak to Dad and found that I had actually been riding solo for quite a while. Within a couple of days I was a competent bicyclist. A few months later at Christmas time I found a new red 24 inch bike under our improvised Christmas tree. As Jews, my parents didn’t officially celebrate Christmas but I was such a fervent believer in Santa Claus they couldn’t bear to disappoint me. I loved riding my new bike and when the days got longer, evaded my early bedtime by riding around the block.
My relationship with my father worsened when I began my violin studies shortly before my ninth birthday. Dad was a passionate classical music lover. One of his strongest attractions to my mother had been her great musical gift. My mother had graduated from the Julliard School when she was only eighteen but she was shy and insecure and although she had the talent to be a performer chose instead to teach piano privately. My older brother and sister both played stringed instruments. My brother, Danny was a serious cellist and practiced many hours a day. My sister, Annie, on the other hand, hated to practice her violin.
When I quickly showed promise as a violinist, my father started putting pressure on me to practice. Although I loved music, I, like my sister, didn’t like practicing. Perhaps because I was a quick study and learned with ease I hated the drudgery of doing things over and over. Constant repetition exhausted me both physically and mentally. The more Dad exhorted me to practice the more I resisted. Practicing became the battleground between my father and me.
“Did you practice today?” This was the first question my father asked me when he got home from work each day and I dreaded it because I usually hadn’t.
“You are undisciplined,” my father told me over and over. I grew to hate that word. I escaped into reading, my refuge, often reading a book, or two, or three a day.
Periodically, we had fights about practicing. When things got really bad Dad would shout, “That’s it. No more lessons.” I would storm off to my room feeling my life was over. After awhile, chastened and regretful, Dad would apologize and peace would be restored. He never did stop my lessons.
It was generally agreed that I could be a soloist – if I worked hard. I loved music with all my heart and I wanted to be a great violinist like my hero, the Russian violinist David Oistrakh. I longed to be able to practice six hours a day like my brother, but very often I couldn’t even get myself to take the violin out of its case to practice at all. Added to my inability to concentrate for hours on end was an extreme tension that inevitably led to physical pain when I practiced.
I had always found it hard to hold the violin when I played. With my long neck and narrow, sloping shoulders – the least optimal physique for a violinist – my great fear was that the violin would fall while I was playing. Pressing the violin hard between my left shoulder and my chin created severe tension in my neck and across my back to the other side, inhibiting my bow arm. I also experienced a great deal of tension in the muscles of my left hand and arm. I felt that no one besides me understood how much it hurt to play.
Dad wanted me to be more like him. He criticized me for being too sensitive and emotional – like my mother. Mom and Dad were polar opposites. She was an extraordinarily sensitive soul for whom going to the store, shopping for clothes – any activity that involved interacting with people she didn’t know – was a tribulation.
But whereas she had a hard time dealing with the mundane aspects of life, she was truly in her element when it came to circumnavigating the world of the spirit. Wise, beautiful and compassionate, she befriended people in need and was beloved by almost everybody who knew her. Mom could also be extremely judgmental and unforgiving, but this side of her was reserved for her family – Dad, Danny, Annie and me. Because of her inability to handle basic functions of motherhood, I was largely left to my own devices – washing and mending my own clothes, shopping for food, cooking.
Dad actually had it right. I was very much like my mother in her emotional sensitivity and fragility. Like her, I loved nature and felt more tuned into the spiritual than the practical side of life. And, fortunately for me, it was from her side of the family that I inherited my musical and artistic genes. Dad’s family, although music lovers, were definitely lacking in talent.
But I was definitely like Dad, too. I was stubborn, strong willed and independent, and I also carried a chip on my shoulder – in large part because so much of our relationship seemed to hinge on the violin and his high expectations which I seemed unable to fulfill.
By the time I was 18, having completed one year at the Mannes College of Music it had become apparent to me that the excessive physical tension I experienced when I played the violin, if not addressed, was going to compromise my ambition to be a professional musician. Fate stepped in. While on vacation in Mexico City I met a woman who ran a school in Copenhagen where she taught Eutonie, a system which helped people gain greater body awareness and relaxation. She invited me to come to Denmark to study with her and my gut instinct told me that I should go. While still in Mexico I wrote to my current violin teacher thanking her for her help during the past year and terminating my lessons. There was a major blow up when I arrived home and announced that I wanted to go to Denmark in order to learn to relax. Dad was furious, but I was so determined that he finally agreed to let me go – until Thanksgiving. He thought that I would still be able to reenter Mannes at that point and not lose a whole year.
Although I was convinced that I was where I needed to be, life in Denmark was difficult. Having grown up in a city based on diversity, I felt alien and isolated in a culture that seemed to celebrate uniformity. The Danes were friendly enough, but it was an impersonal type of friendliness that made me feel my exclusion all the more deeply. I had few friends and almost all of them were natives of other countries who were also attending my small school.
Away from parental influences for the first time with few outside distractions, I was able to do some serious, independent contemplation about myself and the direction of my life. I saw many things I didn’t like and determined to try to change them. I came to decisions about new courses of action which had such a sense of finality and inevitability that I experienced accompanying feelings of terror because I had a conviction that there would be no going back once I took the first steps.
I saw clearly for the first time how intertwined my personal identity and my musical identity had become. Without the violin I felt I was nothing. Yet, although I didn’t know if it were even possible, I wanted to feel that I was a valid human being regardless of whether I played the violin or not. Seeing no other way to establish an independent sense of self, I stopped practicing.
A couple of months passed before I had a desire to play, but when I began again my experience of playing was quite different. Now I wasn’t playing because I felt I had to for survival’s sake, but because I chose to. Playing the violin started to become a positive experience for the first time in many years and, as I began incorporating the relaxation techniques I was learning at school into my violin technique, I learned to play with greater and greater ease.
Charting my own course for the first time in my life I was determined not to return to New York where I felt sure my dominating father would inevitably try to run my life. I wrote to my parents announcing I was not ready to come home, and to give my father credit, he allowed me to stay and continued to send money to pay for school.
Dad and I corresponded often during my almost two and a half years in Denmark. Although he still tried to steer me in the direction he thought I should go, the Dad in the letters was gentler – chatty, humorous, philosophical. Periodically he entertained me with zany stories and poems in addition to providing me with detailed reports on family members and events.
I was catapulted back to New York a little over two years later after a romantic relationship I had started went suddenly sour. Once back in New York, I drifted. Returning to music school had no appeal. I had no idea what I wanted to do other than vague dreams of joining Vista or the Peace Corps.
Dad convinced me to go back to school. New York University, Dad’s old alma mater had initiated a new program called University Without Walls where students could study anything they chose and still graduate with a B.A. The administration promised that they would award credit both for prior college courses and also for life experience. Dad helped me create a “life experience” portfolio based both on performances I had given when I was a teenager as well as my studies at the Gerda Alexander School in Denmark – for which I was awarded a full year of college credit. They additionally accepted my one year’s worth of earned credits from Mannes College thus enabling me to graduate from NYU after only two years.
Although I still loved music and played the violin I no longer aimed to be a soloist. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my music. I had chosen to study education at NYU and ended up certifying for Early Childhood and Elementary Education. After graduation I got a job teaching reading one-on-one at a Catholic School. Although I enjoyed working with the children I soon realized that I missed music. My teaching job ended abruptly after just one year when New York City had a financial crisis. By this time I had started studying the violin again and I began to take auditions for orchestras.
About the time I enrolled at NYU I had also started psychotherapy sessions. I had been horribly depressed after returning from Denmark and my depression didn’t seem to get any better as time went on. Fortunately, the therapist I found was warm hearted, insightful and, most importantly for me, upbeat. Over years of therapy I got to realize how distorted my view of life had been.
I was a typical psychotherapy patient in at least one respect – I blamed my parents for my predicament. Not only did I blame them, I soon realized that they were even worse parents than I had originally thought. I couldn’t forgive them for the damage they had done to me, from which I thought I would never recover. At least Dad didn’t get all the blame now. In the course of my therapy I had realized that my spiritual, dysfunctional mother had severely undermined my self esteem. She, too, was consigned to my shit list. All the while, my father was helping pay for my therapy sessions.
I won an audition for the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina, a six and a half week summer job. The conductor was so impressed with my playing that he recommended me to a friend of his, the conductor of a prestigious part time orchestra in New York City. One playing engagement led to another and within a couple of years I was earning my living as a free lance orchestral musician.
I wasn’t too happy as a free lancer. I thought that the musicians were poorly treated and was disheartened by the lack of talent demonstrated by most of the conductors with whom I worked. The stark reality of life as a free lance musician was far from the inspirational dreams I had entertained about life as a musician, but I also didn’t want to commit to being a member of a full time orchestra. Feeling like I was missing out in life, I started looking around for other possibilities. I took courses in word processing, computers and writing, trying to get a sense of what else I might do that would lead to greater fulfillment. Then my mother told me about a fascinating conversation she had heard on the radio. The woman being interviewed was going to be giving a workshop about creating what one wanted in life. I signed up. It was the first of many workshops I took with Virginia Sandlin, the workshop leader. I could feel my life changing, becoming more positive. My mother also began taking workshops with Virginia. Finally, when Virginia announced she was going to give an intensive year long workshop my mother, sister and I all signed up.
It was during the course of this workshop that I found the letters from my father. Since they were old letters and represented my past I was prepared to throw them out, but first I wanted to take a look at them. I started reading my father’s letters written to me when I was a homesick eleven year old, away at camp for the first time – Red Fox Music Camp.
The tender, encouraging tone of Dad’s letters took me by surprise. This wasn’t the critical, angry father I loved to hate. Dad wrote:
Monday Evening
July 3, 1961Dear Lucy,
How do you like sleeping on the upper deck? And how do you like Red Fox, and everyone there? We liked the place very much. I’m sure you miss being asked how much you’ve practiced. Your ma says next year we’ll run a music camp on a ship, since you’ll be used to the upper deck. On a ship, however, you’ll have to get used to Rock’n Roll. Get it? Ha! Ha!
In case you get lonesome – which I doubt – just remember how hot it can get in the city. Yesterday it was 95 degrees – and probably over 100 degrees on Avenue J. After the heat of the last few days, the sun must’ve gotten bored. It was cloudy and a little cooler today. It is supposed to rain. Whether it will or not seems to depend on the weatherman making up his mind.
So now, tell us about Red Fox. Do you play in the orchestra? What are you working on? Do you do any chamber music? How are your room-mates? Have you made any good friends? How about the other teachers, and counselors? We sure hope you’ll have a good time. What do you do for fun?
If you get tired of reading, here’s a bedside story from the pen of your grumpy, plumpy, shloompey old pa. Once upon a time in the mountains there was a wise old fox, and because he blushed when he was wicked – which he always was – they called him Red. Now Red had a friend, a wizened old fiddler who played out of tune, but since Red was tone-deaf he loved to dance to the fiddler’s fiddling in a neighbor’s chicken coop. After the fiddler finished fiddling and Red had finished dancing, they’d sit down to chicken salad sandwiches which Red and the neighbor’s generosity, so thoughtfully provided.
Now one day the neighbor in a grumpy, sullen mood went to his chicken coop, and after he had counted his chickens and noted the number that were missing, he went straight for his gun, and then went to his kennel for his most ferocious pair of hounds. “When I catch that little red fox,” he swore, banging the gun handle against the table, “when I catch that little red fox, I’ll make a collar of his fur, and from the rest of him I’ll make me a stew.” He swore so loud, and his ferocious hounds barked such a vicious “Amen” that Red couldn’t help hearing. “I guess,” he said, “it’s time for me to get me gone. Oh gosh, I’m sure going to miss the old fiddler’s fiddling and the wonderful dancing, and the neighbor’s plump, delicious chickens.” He decided not to tarry because there was no time to lose, and left without even bidding the old fiddler goodby. But, the old fiddler never forgot, and when he built a music camp he named it Red Fox in his honor.
That’s the end of the story. Keep well. Send our love and best wishes to Miss Minty. We’ll be writing to her shortly.
Love from Ma, Pa, sister, brother, Pepi (who is very all right).
Your father Abraham M
Exerpts from another letter…
Tuesday, August 1, l961
Dear Lucy,
We got your wonderful letter about how you popped out of one of your moods, and practiced two and a half hours because you felt like it. You see, it can be done. You are a strong young girl with lots of will power. Moods come and go. It is what you do, and the work that goes into it, which makes you happy. I bet you will have the Vieuxtemps in excellent shape before the summer is over. I hope you do very well with the Faure at your audition. When you get back to the city we’ll start looking for a good violin…
Poem For Today
The breeze in the old man’s beard was cool
As he trudged wearily to shul.
He sneezed as he prayed –
He had a tickle in his nose and a pickle in his throat
And his knees shook like a soldier’s when he heard the guns roar.
But between shiver and tickle and tender throat’s pickle
He asked forgiveness for his sins and beseeched the Lord’s blessing,
Which I presume was granted, for in the midst of his praying,
The old man sang, “By the rabbi’s beard,
For supper we’ll have mother’s delicious herring
And a piece of cake and a bottle of rum
And Mother’s cheese blintz as a chaser and some
Knishes made famous by lobster-nosed Dubin.
And, though my knees shake and my throat has its wintry moods,
We’ll dance and be jolly –
For the good Lord love us, as He loves all our brothers and sister,
Apple cheeked and wrinkled, clean shaven and whiskered” – And, well, he sang and was happy,
And all the old men sang with him
Until the whole shul was dancing from sundown to dawn –
This is the end of my poem, but more will come.
We send you our love…
Your pow-pa Abraham
The following letter was written years later, when I first arrived in Copenhagen…
Saturday – October 5, 1968
Dear Luce,
Since you asked for it, here’s a poem:
Herrings don’t drink milk.
Herrings don’t drink wine.
The prefer their baths with vinegar,
And rub them down with onions.
The saddest sight for fishy eyes
Is a herring that has bunions.With corns on my toes
And callouses where I sit me down,
I walk the streets of this Danish town –
They call it Copenhagen.
All I seek is a warm, cosy room
Where I can fiddle dee fiddle dee daddle.When Whiskered Sam greeted Hans Christian Anderson
By transatlantic cable,
A shark swallowed the message
And got indigestion –
Which, for the moment, ends this Saturday fable.The poem writ, I bid you hello, my Copenhagen daughter. Sorry you haven’t yet found a room, but the room will come – and the fiddling with it. If you have trouble, visit the larger synagogue and talk to the rabbi. I’m sure someone there will try to help you. In any case, I wouldn’t scrimp on room or food at this time. I know you don’t mean to be extravagant, but at the moment there’s no need to count every penny. Nor to worry either. Learn what you can – and at the same time try to learn how to enjoy yourself wherever you are…
Your ma is busy making – guess what? Right. Cole slaw. Chicken in the oven, cole slaw on the table. Home is home. But on Saturday night, a man’s stomach yearns for what he used to know as a child – though he can’t eat it any longer – and that is marinated herring.
Your ma and I are with you 100 percent. Treat yourself well. Get a good room, one in which you can relax and enjoy yourself. It’s not every day you’ll be going to Denmark, so make the very most you can of the little adventure. Be happy. We all of us love you. Don’t worry about money and try not to be lonely. We’re not so very far away. Only three days by airmail. All of us, and all of your various friends say, Hi, Luce.
Dad
P.S. Other letters to follow.
Part of another letter, written some weeks later…
1:15 PM Saturday – November 16, 1968
Dear Luce,
Your letter received and contents noted. I’m truly sorry you lost your way and ended up at the wrong post office. You had a nice bike ride, so I guess it made up for it.
There’s only one reason why children are born: to be misunderstood by their parents, particularly if the children are sensitive. However, we shall go along with your instincts. You may stay the year. Not because you think that New York and Mannes and Bronne or Galamian are stupid but because you must find your own way of getting to the right post office. Your anger makes me laugh. It’s so positive. Incidentally, you don’t have to underline the word, Bullshit. It may not be in the dictionary but I know what it means.
Since Eutonie is what you want you may have Eutonie. For this year, you can learn all you possibly can about it. We don’t begrudge you your independence because you’re an interesting character in your way. Very interesting indeed. The cashing in the bond stuff, though, is corny. Money has nothing to do with our decision and we don’t aim to cut you off. We’ll send you what money you need. If we cash in your bond, we’ll put the money away for you – to be used when and if you actually need it.
In my last letter, I think I talked to you about decision making. I’ve made many a decision in a Big Rage in order to run or hide from something. I take your decision now as a considered one – one you’ve truly and quietly thought through – so I expect you to stick with it wherever it takes you. I don’t understand the high falutin stuff about the search for reality and self and the deeper meaning of Life, but I take it this is within, and integral to your life style. And since it is, there’s no question about our helping you as best we can. Which means, once again, the financial support and whatever else may be needed…
Well, that’s about all for now. Take care – and don’t abuse the bike.
Love
Dad
There were many more letters in my collection. Like a fast forwarded film of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, my 30 odd year relationship with my father went through a metamorphosis as I read. The father whose letters I was reading obviously loved his daughter – and the father was my father and the daughter was me!
As if the window of my perception had been washed clean, the love that had always been there, but only dimly seen, now shone like a diamond in the sunlight. I couldn’t understand how I had missed what now seemed so evident – of course, my Dad had loved me. And I had loved him, too.
I also discovered, somewhat to my chagrin, that my bossy, know-it-all father whom I had fought and resisted for so much of my life, actually knew what he was talking about; and, whereas I felt that he didn’t understand me at all, he had understood me extremely well.
Virginia encouraged me to gather the best of Dad’s letters and put them in a book form. I got to work and created a little volume which I entitled “Rediscovering Daddy,” in time for Dad’s 75th birthday party. I made a number of copies and gave one to each guest.
Included in this book was an introduction in which I described the epiphany that I had experienced upon finding Dad’s letters. My introduction also served as an apology. With the wisdom of hindsight I now understood that the man who wrote those letters was a concerned parent trying to help his child as best he could. I wrote in the closing of my introduction:
“Recently, as I have been reexamining my life – who I was and who I have become, and why – I have been realizing the tremendous part my father played in my development. I see that despite great love, good will and support, the relationship of the perfectionist parent and his perfectionist child was extremely difficult because each followed a separate path. I also see that my father supported me in my goals in life: finding wisdom, learning how to function in the world and developing to the utmost in my art. He kept me on the track, even though he didn’t get much appreciation from me for doing it. In fact, a large part of the reason why I went to live in Europe was to get away from parental influence. My escape was not total, however – his letters followed me across the ocean.
The purpose of this book is to acknowledge my father as the profound thinker and skilled writer that he is and to say that I am so grateful for his great love and attention to my well being.”
My goal in taking the workshop was nothing less than the transformation of my life. One of the most profound gifts I received from this undertaking was the gift of my father. Dad was thrilled with my birthday surprise and its impact was far ranging; friends and relatives who had received a copy of the book were able to glimpse the true essence of Dad as distilled through the lense of his writings. Acknowledged at last, Dad grew mellower and mellower, more and more forbearing, supportive – and more outwardly loving. My Dad had always held me away from him when he hugged me; now he held me close.
My relationship with my father blossomed over the next ten years. I saw him with completely different eyes, eyes that were able to look deeper and appreciate the fine character that lay beneath his still not so, but more lovable, façade.
Dad expressed regret that he had not been a better father to his children when we were young and he tried to make it up to us as adults. Although in the past he had been disparaging of any profession I expressed an interest in other than music, he later became extremely supportive of me when I started doing work in healing in my mid thirties. He also encouraged me to write.
Dad was 39 when I was born. His willingness to reexamine the past, admit mistakes and try to rectify them when he was in his seventies enabled me to release old hurts and anger so that I could move on to become the person that I wanted to be.
Dad passed away in the beginning of 1999, but I feel our relationship continues – on a long distance basis, to be sure. I always celebrate his birthday, a day on which I feel his spirit draws near, and try to commune with him. I experience him as a soul essence, the core version of Dad minus personality imperfections
This year’s celebration was particularly potent because the day was beautiful, the sun was shining, the wind was blowing and there was a pervasive freshness that made me feel joyous and invigorated. I took myself off to the Hungarian Pastry shop on Amsterdam Avenue at 111th Street. Sitting at an unoccupied long table, I ordered a cappuccino and croissant and commenced to communicate with my father as best as I could using the medium he most loved – writing. I wrote Dad a birthday letter, a letter of greeting and appreciation. I also requested his assistance in the areas of his strengths: clear seeing, incisive thinking – even discipline, now not a dirty word for me.
I also asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell me, and there was. I tuned intuitively into Dad to hear what he wanted to say. His message was supportive and encouraging. He told me not to underestimate or limit myself. He also told me that I have every ability I need; and to be very clear about my goals.
A couple of days later I went to visit my brother who now lives in Chicago. I told him about my revisiting of my relationship with Dad and the old letters. I asked Danny whether he had any letters from Dad. He did have one and made a copy for me. As I read it, I again had the experience of seeing Dad in a new way. This time it wasn’t so much about love, although the love was evident to me, but about wisdom. Dad wrote:
October 11, 1983
Dear Daniel,
This letter is a kind of review of things we’ve talked about. First, about observing oneself. I believe what you observe, how you observe and what you feel about what you observe is as much you as what you are and what you accomplish. What’s important is the neutral, quiet, dispassionate observation of the content of the mind even when under acute stress. It’s certainly not easy, and yet it is possible. Not always, but often enough. Being aware of, without being identified with, the things that occur, the patterns that recur in relationships, one’s relationships with others and one’s attitude towards oneself, one’s ambitions, goals, achievements, disappointments, etc…all this plus one’s sense of the meaning of life and one’s role and place within it. After a while, strangely enough, the more aware, though objective you are, the more connected you get to feel. Of course, you’re also more perceptive.
In a sense, we’re what we shut out. We’re shaped by what we don’t want to know about ourselves. Dimly yet deeply, we know there are things we’re afraid to see or learn about ourselves, so we exaggerate, distort, magnify, fabricate and get tied up by tying ourselves up in knots by vague, disturbing, elusive shadows…creatures of the imagination we don’t want to look at (like imaginary blood from a non existent wound) because we don’t feel strong enough to look this fear in the eye.
Another thing happens. We begin to feel burdened by our gifts. We’re haunted by anxiety, by the fear we’ve been lucky, that we don’t deserve or merit our luck, and that one day luck is going to desert us and we’re going to be exposed for what we are… inadequate, undeserving, ill prepared, pretentious, etc.
The fact, though, is it’s all a myth… and based on a harsh, underserved, incorrect measure of ourselves. The reality, indeed, is quite the opposite. If you consider your assets, attributes, qualities, gifts and achievements objectively, you should understand what I mean. As I see it, you have an excellent brain, you can think logically and deeply, and you have a very great musical gift. You also have generous instincts. The trouble, I think, is that you’ve been afraid to believe in yourself, you’re afraid to have faith in yourself, so that you have to be in complete control. But how can anyone be in complete control of everything…and all the time? Complete control, in a sense, is the mother of anxiety. If you trust yourself (by which I mean if you can accept yourself), the gift is no longer a weight or burden. You find that it works for you, comes through for you with less tension. In your case, your gift almost always come through for you…but with a great deal of tension.
I could say a lot more. But, to return to my second paragraph. The fear masks the potential, makes seem difficult what, in your case, is more easily or readily possible, and accessible, and, instead of the positive, creative excitement, forces the mind to preoccupy itself with those disturbing, intruding, bleak, unreal shadows which live only because we keep them behind clouds and allow them no sun.
As I read it back, all this sounds like a mouthful. Maybe it is but it isn’t meant as a lecture. The things I’ve said, or tried to say, are meant as suggestions…ideas to examine and explore if you want to…
Stay well and let’s hear from you.
Love from all of us to you and June.
Dad
At a certain point in my development I had thought that my life had been irreparably damaged, but later on I realized that the damage had not been irreparable, that I could heal, regenerate and move forward. Whereas I thought my inheritance was pain, anger, fear and frustration, I saw that not only could I heal and regenerate, but that my parents had bequeathed me many treasures. Obscured by feelings of anger, fear, helplessness, resentment, these treasures, like the lost letters, lay in the cellar of my consciousness. The physical act of reclaiming objects from my past had a parallel effect on my psyche. Just as physical objects I decided to keep in my life had to be restored to a condition of impeccability, so these encrusted treasures of values, talents, character, life experience, ideals, brought into the light and dusted off, revealed their true worth. Unlike jewels with an intrinsic value, these qualities were more like seeds which contained potentials of inexhaustible, indeterminate value. This was my true inheritance – and what an inheritance it was…
Now, just as I truly feel that my relationship with my father and mother goes on, although through the prism of a different dimension of being, I feel assured that facets of them, still undiscovered, will continue to emerge through time, enriching and inspiring me and helping me do what I always wanted – to go beyond limitations into richer and richer realms of experience and realization.
