I
have my father’s eyes. They are
hazel-green with long, black eyelashes.
My father was a very handsome man, “Black Irish,” with jet black hair,
those green eyes, and fair skin.
Although I was born with red hair, a genetic gift from Daddy’s mother,
Helen nee McDonald Lynch, I also have his very full head of hair, its texture
fine but wavy and curly. I was my parent’s
first child, and felt utterly adored all through my early childhood. Often, Daddy would pick me up and dance us
around while he sang, “Your Daddy’s Little Girl.” While Mommy prepared dinner, I would sit on
the side stoop steps of our white brick house in Bayside Hills, Queens,
restless with excitement, anticipating his arrival home from work. As soon as I caught a glimpse of him walking
down the street toward home, I would run my little legs as fast as I could to
the edge of the property. He would scoop
me up in his arms, and I hugged him with all my might, breathing in his scent,
a mixture of Salem cigarettes, perspiration, and Afta, an aftershave from Mennen. What joy it was to be reunited with him
after a day apart!
My
father was a very funny man, and he teased me with jokes like, “How much do you
charge to haunt a house?” He gave me
several nicknames, “Sarah Bernhardt,” (for my sometimes melodramatic and
sensitive nature), “Miss Know-It-All” (since I loved to share whatever I had
learned that day with him), and “The
Loudmouth Kid.” Unlike some adults, my
parents loved to hear me talk and chatter.
A child knows when an adult is mean-spirited, and I understood that
Daddy dubbed me with these monikers from affection and tenderness. It’s a very Irish, and Irish-American way to
use “double-speak,” i.e. you say something which to outsiders might be interpreted
as the opposite of its true meaning.
Such communication developed over centuries of oppression in Ireland,
when the Irish never knew who was listening to any plans of uprising. I know this because my father bestowed me
with his love of history. Early in his
career, Daddy was a CPA, and he worked so hard during tax season that he would
get home long after I had been put to bed.
I would crawl out of bed, tip-toe into the living room, and find him
watching movies on The Late Late Show. I
crawled on the couch, sat down, and ask him to put his head in my lap so that I
could massage his head. There are many
reasons I love film, but this early association of finding comfort, escape and
relaxation while watching a movie is seminal for me. My love for The Great American Songbook was
bequeathed by Daddy. He had this Bell
& Howell reel to reel 4 track tape player, and loved putting on Judy
Garland, Frank Sinatra, and, his favorite, Tony Bennett. I can see him in our living room, cigarette
in one hand, singing along to “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”
I
learned to love the water and the beach because Daddy, who grew up swimming in
Jamaica Bay in the 1930s and 1940s. Our
family took trips to Jones Beach in the evenings, and vacations to Hampton
Bays, where he would get up early to dig up clams at low tide. He was so delighted that I loved to swim, and
that I swam well. When I joined the CYO
swim team, Daddy took me to every one of our meets. By then, I had a younger sister and a younger
brother, so that was our time together.
When we returned home in the cold winter nights, he would make each of
us a root beer float. I never got tired
of seeing him deftly take one scoop of vanilla ice cream and drop it gently
into the soda. Like magic, the
concoction would fizzle and pop. Everything
does taste better when it’s made with love.
As
I grew older, my father and I had a relationship fraught with tension,
misunderstanding and anger. He had a
high pressure job. He drank. While we didn’t know enough at the time, he
had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his combat experience and being wounded
in Korea on August 14, 1951, his 20th birthday. He and I shared similar personality traits,
being extroverted, humorous, conscientious, compassionate, and, man alive,
stubborn. There were fights, there were
tears, but there also was his pride in me, and so much laughter. I knew he loved me, and he knew I loved
him. I always knew that he would do
anything to protect me, and would rather suffer the torments of hell himself to spare me any pain.
When
my father died on February 1, 1991, 20 years ago, he hadn’t had a drink in
nearly a year. He stopped before his
cancer diagnosis, as if having a premonition that he hadn’t much time to share
with us. His last year on earth was
bittersweet, sad and beautiful. His
courage in fighting lung cancer was inspiring.
While his diagnosis was terminal, he insisted on undergoing
chemotherapy, and he never once complained.
He actually would make the staff at the oncologist’s office laugh. His pulmonologist, Dr. Kellerman, wrote a
letter to my mother after Daddy died, and spoke of his great admiration for my
father, how much of an impact he had made on everyone at the doctors’ office,
and that it had been an honor to have been Danny Lynch’s doctor. At his wake, the funeral director had to open
up an extra room to hold all the people who had come to say goodbye to Daddy.
There’s
no way I can sum up my father’s life here, or impart all the reasons he was so
lovable albeit so damaged. He was a good
man with enormous integrity, he was a brilliant thinker, a mentor, a true
friend, and a friend to all who knew him.
He was the life of the party, an American success story, a great
provider, and an adoring husband and father.
He was my Daddy, forever 59, not turning 80 tomorrow. But, as they say, “the dead are always with
us.” I still know he loves me. I now carry my Daddy in my heart,
and I shall…always.
