Out of Amber
A Trip With My Father
One Sabbath morning, my father was walking my siblings to synagogue. As they plodded up the hill near our home, he realized the home of one of our distant neighbors was on fire. He reacted instantly, waving down a cyclist, asking him to watch the kids in the stroller, and running into the burning house. Inside was a sleeping elderly couple, whom he escorted out, saving their lives. Later, someone at the synagogue made an announcement after prayers about it, and everyone clapped. I remember looking at my dad as they did. He seemed actively embarrassed.
It’s always been a bit like that. If I were to speak dramatically, I’d say that to some extent, my siblings and I were waiting on the curb for a good chunk of our childhoods, watched by others while we waited for our father to finish saving lives. If I were to speak less dramatically, I’d be more like my father, who downplays many of his deeds, even the heroic ones. I remember when my rabbi taught me about the difference between the virtuous trait of humility and the sin of false humility, I felt angry. Why can’t he take praise? I thought. He did everything they’re saying he did and more!
Later, after I'd become an adult and watched my father continue to grow and learn well past the age many men calcify into amber-preserved versions of themselves, he told me why. He told me about how awful his childhood had been, about the horrors, public and secret, that had shaped him, and how he’d transmuted the awful ways those things made him feel about himself into a desire to save others from feeling that way. And how perhaps, if he could save strangers from horrors worse than his, maybe there’d be a chance for him.
I’ve learned so much from my father, and not just standard father-son transmissions (in fact he missed a number of those). He imparted to me secrets about life and people that very few people understand well enough to act on. He didn’t explain them so much as live them in front of me, and often. Among those things: how to disarm with humor, how to disarm with violence, how to befriend any stranger, how to recruit friends to a mission, and how to use leadership and conversation to bring the best out of people.
I won’t go into details here, but I will say this: I know for a fact that my father will leave this world a better place than he found it; that he personally is responsible for positively overhauling the quality of lives of hundreds, and less directly, tens of thousands. This did come at a cost to his ability to be in my life specifically, and I did struggle with that. When he was home, he was in some ways still abroad. But he’s a far better father than his was to him, and I’ve seen him try, and succeed, to push past the limitations that being raised the way he was placed on him emotionally. That’s far more than many sons can say.
I do still wish, less so than I used to, but still to a significant extent, that he could see more of me in ways that allowed for a kind of connection I’ve found in other kinds of relationships. But there was one instance that comes to mind, where he really truly saw me. In the bleak midwinter of the Covid lockdowns, he agreed to let me share one of my life's passions with him, which, admittedly, was a testament to his ability to take in new information, try things he might never have before, and listen to me.
I wanted to cultivate a chemical experience with him, show him why I do what I so often do. We imbibed, danced and meditated and played with ideas and all the fun and meaningful stuff I like to when I’m on my bullshit, and as the music and chemicals hit a crescendo, the air suddenly went out of the room, and we were face to face, his hand on my shoulder.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You saved me!” And then: “You do this often? You do this for your friends? You create these moments like this, you cultivate them?”
“Yeah, Ta,” I said.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re my son.”
“You’re my son!” he repeated, over and over, again and again, until the air came back into the room, and tears to our eyes.
“You’re my son.”
