Like the city that came to define him in so many ways for me, he too was a man of images glimpsed. He had grown up in NYC attending Catholic school, playing baseball in the streets and hanging out at the YMCA. Later he became a lieutenant in its Fire Department, and if ever a job fit a personality like a pair of supple leather gloves, it was his. He wore his firefighter image with the ease of someone born to face danger head on. Men, who choose careers like firemen or policemen, are attracted, at least in part, to the adrenaline rush. What else would cause a man to voluntarily enter a burning inferno or chase a desperate felon down a dark alleyway? Once when I was nine or ten, my father took me to his fire station. "Hold on tight," he said as he showed me how to slide down the pole. My knuckles white with tension, I grabbed hold for dear life and shot down to the floor below. Proud that I had not fallen or disappointed him, I was nevertheless reluctant to try again, so I quickly moved on to try on his heavy rubber boots instead. They came up to my thighs and movement in them was impossible. My feet felt incased in cement. I couldn't imagine running in them, much less climbing a ladder. Could my father have been a hero? Did he ever save lives? Back then I believed all that and more. He was larger than life, just like the city he was a part of. If I'd been born a boy, perhaps I would have followed in his footsteps- those giant bootsteps.
He took the captain's exam several times, but never passed it. I suspect, subconsciously, he never wanted to. It would have moved him to the sidelines, perhaps directing others, instead of in front- leading his men. He liked to be in charge, to have things done his way. I think he enjoyed coming home smelling of smoke, at times with his eyelashes and eyebrows singed off, like a warrior returning from battle.
He was a man of extremes. Looking at his photograph now, it reminds me of his facile ability to charm. He was a handsome, gregarious man whose smile lit up a room- and the hearts of his young daughters. But he had a dark side too, like the underbelly of the city he served. A quixotic temper that devastated like a sudden winter storm blowing in with such fury it made us run for cover. We waited. We had become virtuosos at waiting. When it was safe again, we crept back out and rejoined the flow of life in our home.
When I was around thirteen or fourteen, my father took me with him to the Bowery Mission. The area reminded me of a wasteland buried in a corner of an otherwise vibrant, thriving city. As I think of it now, the images it evokes are of broad streets, empty of traffic on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Only when you looked for them, or when pointed out to you, did you notice the bodies slouched in doorways, most clutching bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. They were so still; as if props placed there for a movie set depicting the morning after some invisible plague had struck. My father belonged to the Christian Alliance of Policemen and Firemen. One of their charitable works was serving meals and presenting the gospel to the homeless alcoholics who came into the mission for sustenance, and perhaps a bit of human compassion. My father moved among these lost souls with the determination of someone on a rescue mission, this time a heavenly one. He approached the work with confidence and a steadfastness of conviction that made others either get in line with him or get out of the way.
As I grew up and became more of my own person, I lost that brief tenuous connection I had with my father in childhood. The year I turned twenty-two, he became seriously ill. The enemy he had fought throughout his entire career defeated him. The neurosurgeon told us it was not uncommon for firemen to get this particular type of brain tumor because of all the toxic smoke they inhaled at fires. After they forced him to retire on full disability, he was never the same; he had lost his purpose and his vitality with it.
I moved around over the years, and when I could, I returned to visit the city, but it too had changed. The images glimpsed were different from the ones I remembered from my youth. I recalled a card my sister had sent me once that said, "I turn the leaves of fancy, all watermarked with yesterdays dreams, till I find a time my heart saved." My heart has saved many such times, like this one.
