“All hands on deck!” he bellowed merrily
When calling us for supper of
Boiled-to-death chicken and
Gray-green canned peas.
“There is nothing to fear but fear itself!”
Mostly appropos of nothing
When the family conversation
Had neglected him for too many minutes.
”That’s a bingo!” his answer when
A simpler affirmative would have sufficed;
”Right in there, baby boy!” — a baseball reference
Applied to any comment that was on the money;
“Chow chow!” to initiate phone conversations.
”I’d like to check her vitals” when a mint-and-ruby-faced beauty
Appeared on our color-wobbly TV screen,
Rendering my proper mother stock-still,
Adding “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!” for good measure.
”Not necessarily” to any obvious suggestion;
”Nine bells” when asked when Mass started,
His three years in the Navy peeking above the conversational horizon;
”Copacetic” when asked about his health and mood.
His favorite adjective, ”spasmodically,” was
Inserted, well, spasmodically, into conversations
whose comedic content had dipped below
tolerable levels, a wisp of blue tingeing the table talk.
He saluted in excruciating slow-motion when driving by churches,
His stiffened hand rising languorously to his brow
Then dipping back slowly to the steering wheel,
Sending teenaged me into abashed paralysis.
”CH-ch-ch” he chuffed when bring the car to a stop,
The hissing air brakes straining in his pretend city bus.
He knew the set-up and punchline to many jokes;
Just not the same ones. He laughed anyway,
leaving us exasperated, embarrassed and unsatisfied.
My Old Man hid his intelligence,
His seriousness behind the clown’s facade
He wore with family and friends.
The facade that disappeared when
Rounding up his boys from a game of tag
To attend noon Mass during summer vacation,
Or teaching them to take down and
fold the parish church’s flag at sunset,
Or splicing white leaders onto family films
This Emmett Kelly, this homegrown Red Skelton,
Always “on,” always on the lookout for the comic moment,
Somehow reached high into the Civil Service
Garnering higher pay with each grade increase—
A silent retort to his highly-compensated RN spouse.
He was elected to lead the veterans group for his state,
Marched with them proudly and briskly in city parades,
Collected their history into massive tomes that seemed
To have come unchained from a medieval monastery.
He wrote to the local paper in a clamorous cracking of keys
On three-copy carbon paper — the wonder of the typewriter age—
About Communion breakfasts,
The installation of officers in his vet’s group,
And later of Cub and Boy Scout award ceremonies.
Always bylined with ”It was reported by” and his name.
He was an avid filmer of local fires and downtown parades,
Anything that moved and caught his restless eye,
One in a while, dutifully capturing his stiff-limbed kids
Waving, squinting into the blinding suns of his lighting rig,
Their performative acumen far below his hopes for a star turn.
When Citizen’s Band, or CB, radios were popular,
He had one running at all times, under the constant
noise from TV, running children, music practice,
Hoping to beat the clanging red trucks to the fire,
Or the fender bender two blocks over,
Where he’d film the action then, self-deputized, direct traffic.
Like a top loading washer’s swirling gray-blue mass
Of T-shirts and undies, with one gaudy-colored
Sock bubbling occasionally into view,
His buffoonery emerged in me unbidden and undesired.
This serious boy, this prospective scholar with an unserious father,
Who might gain his attention and approbation
But only at the risk of his stolid mother’s displeasure.
A circle seemingly impossible to square.
My Old Man lives more peaceably in me now
His eruptions of wackiness no longer a horrifying surprise;
His broad comedy refined by my mother’s precision
And carefully-modulated storytelling skills.
Only now, many years after he left the comic’s stage,
Do I now possess some of the the subtle verbal and social tools
That might have let me pry off the jester’s mask
And peek at the furtive and cloaked cunning beneath.
The next life, I hope, strips us of all need
For attention, prominence and belonging.
We may be shrunken, the wild projections
of our personality collapsed like exhausted, fiery suns
into dull yet stable white dwarves. Our light might be less,
but it would fit more snugly the confines of our souls.
Image generated with DreamStudio
Fun to remember your dad with all his isms. Very insightful. Love this!
So poignantly deep and complex. Inspires my own reflection.