Father and Son
MELVIN TUMIN
WE
HAD
just passed Moll's drug store and were almost out of
the Italian neighborhood, but I still clutched tight to my father's hand.
I wasn't taking any chances. I remembered the fright of my last
encounter with the Gentiles. I must have squeezed the hand I was
holding especially fearfully as a group of four or five ragged, dark
eyed, loud laughing boys passed us. I say I must have given a special
squeeze qecause I can still see the puzzled look my father cast at me
at that point. I think if I had looked up at him then he would have
known why. But I did not dare look. I could never let him be sure.
I knew that a man doesn't like
his
sons to be cowards.
But what I felt isn't really important, except as it made my
father feel for or with me. And my father was a man of great feeling.
We were all sure of that. Not only were we sure, but every member
of
his
congregation, no matter if they liked him or thought
him
op–
pressive, would always be more than ready to say "Our
rebbah,
he's a
man of great feeling." Even my aunts on my mother's side--eight of
them whom we saw at best infrequently, partly because of the
dis–
tance to our house from their sections of the city, and partly, (perhaps
even more than partly as I see it now) because he didn't have any
respect for them and they respected him too much to like him-even
they, I say, when we happened to be alone for a minute or so, would
say : "Moisha, you look just like your father. But your father is a
man of great feeling. Do you think you'll grow up to be like
him?"
I wish he were here now to see how hard I try to do what I think he
would likeJ me to do, to be like
him.
But as we walked along the street, on the sunny side, always on
the sunny side, on our way toward the synagogue, I thought how
unlike my father I was. He was big, six feet tall, maybe a little taller
than that. I was short and fat, and it seemed as if I would always be
fat. My father was heavy, but, oh, so well built.
Even then I thought that maybe I was afraid and he never
seemed to be afraid because he was tall and strong, and I was short
and fat. But that didn't seem like a good answer. Because my mother
was short and fat,
tqo.
And I knew she wasn't afraid. She would walk
