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DAD & MOM

My creative side probably comes mostly from my father. My siblings and I saw him manifesting creativity so often with his drawing, painting, and poetry. Sometimes, when speaking about his art, or when he finished a picture, he would playfully say, “I’m a genius.” Family and friends who heard his comment, of course, had their own views about that! But I feel at times he truly dipped into reservoir of eclectic, imaginative ideas. He also very much appreciated other artists’ talent.

The night before my father passed, in August,1997, my wife, Setsuko, and I attended a Neil Sedaka concert at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade, where the Boston Pops perform each July Fourth. We had been invited to the concert by Jimmy Fielder, Sedaka’s bass player. Jimmy and I had been original members of "Blood, Sweat and Tears”. It was a warm summer night and the place was packed enjoying Sedaka singing many of his hit songs. His closing melody was from a Puccini aria that Neil had put his own lyrics to, entitled “Turning Back the Hands of Time”. I found this song to be very moving. It seemed to bring the audience together. Something was happening this night but I didn’t know what it was. My wife and I got back to our apartment around midnight. My brother had left an urgent phone message for me to call my mother in Florida. When I spoke with her, she told me that, earlier that day, my father was trying to speak to her for about 10 minutes, but it was all gibberish - nothing was making sense to her. Frightened, my mother called for an ambulance. At the hospital she was told that dad had a stroke.The doctors did a bunch of tests on him, and finally, after about five hours, they said my father wouldn’t last beyond the morning. My mother said her farewell to her husband and left the hospital.

Our morning flight down to my dad’s funeral in Long Island, New York was through bleak and rainy weather. Gazing out the window, I told my wife, “The sun’s still there, it’s just hidden behind the dark sky and clouds.” I was indirectly saying that dad was still around - we just couldn’t see him with our physical eyes. During the funeral ceremony the sun poured into the cemetery area where our family and friends were gathered. It didn’t stay for long, but I noticed it. I took this as something deeply spiritual - a gift from God honoring my dad. I didn’t cry that day. There was no guilt about that. My dad and I hadn’t left anything unsaid between us. I loved him and knew he loved me.

That winter, Setsuko and I visited my mom in her Florida condominium. After we arrived at her place, the three of us we hanging out in the guest bedroom. My mother asked if I wanted any of dad’s remaining things such as his cowboy hat. (He rode horses most of his life until he got too old for it. He was a real New York City cowboy)! The only thing of dad’s the I was interested in was his art work, most of which he kept in a large stack or box. I asked my mother where his drawings were. She had no idea! Looking around the room, the only thing I could see was a medium-sized box on top of the dresser in the room. When I asked what was in it, she said she had recently bought a new lamp for the TV room and that was the box it came in. I said. “Oh," accepting that on face value. I was pretty disturbed that we couldn’t find any of dad’s art work anywhere. I couldn’t believe that my mother might have actually thrown it all away! So during our whole week’s visit I felt uneasy about this.

Finally, on the afternoon before returning home to Boston, I, in desperation, looked into the supposedly ‘empty’ lamp box on top of the dresser. I was jubilant when I found it filled with hundred’s of dad’s creations! It was like finding a hidden treasure! I spent the whole afternoon into the evening going through his pictures and poems, picking then ones I wanted for myself, while leaving the rest for my brother and sister, if they were at all interested. It was getting pretty late. My mother and Setsuko had gone to bed, but I was still up, with dad’s pictures sprawled out over the dining room table, totally absorbed in choosing the ones I wanted to take home with me. All of a sudden, from out of total silence, I was startled to hear an authoritative voice saying to me, “Are you still up? Get to bed!”. Quickly turning around, I saw my less-than-5-feet-tall mother in a while nightgown pointing and shaking her finger at me. But even more than that, I noticed for the first very time in my life, that she had no teeth! So for a moment, she looked like the “Wicked Witch of the East”. It took me a second to calm down from the shock of this. But I also found it quite ‘funny’ - her treating me like I was still her 5 year-old son again. Here I was, fifty four years old, a grown man, a musician who’s traveled around the world, been married twice, blah, blah, blah, and she’s telling me when to go to sleep!

About a week later, I called her. Joking, I told her that she had really scared me for a moment, especially when I saw her without her usual beautiful teeth! She said that when she was young, her parents couldn’t afford getting their childrens' teeth fixed. She did get them fixed when my brother, sister, and I were young, but she never told us. I became silent on the phone for a few seconds, wondering, what other ‘secrets’ she was hiding from me. So then, with a kind of young boy's voice, I asked my 80 year-old mother, “Are you really my mom?” I think she almost fell off her chair laughing. It was a nice mom and son 'moment'.