Fathers Day : remembering the passage of my father in 2012

Not a Toy

Walking through Central Park, 
A little girl bounces on her father’s head;

He makes her legs move like a scissors. 

She pleads:  “Stop it!  I am not your toy. “
---Copyright 

 

 

My father as a young man before he went to WWII, where he fought in the third Armoured Division, was declared a MIA, and reported as "dead", in a newspaper article my grandmother showed me as a child.  He was a "Disabled veteran" due to damage to his one hand, which I never noticed as a child.  He fought in the European Theater, Normandy beach, and his division cleared concentration camps.  His best friend was a LIFE photographer, who was killed in action; Dad had the photos of the camps this photographer had taken, in a box, which I found as a child...but he would never talk about the war to us, ever.  He married my mother, having first dated her teacher, when he returned from the war.



 

At the lakeside summer home, my father at 92 and my mother at 85.  My mother died on the evening of the Chinese New Year, and my father had a comatose stroke 7 months later and died two months later.  He said it was no longer any fun without my mother.  The best part of my parents relationship to my sister and myself, is that they loved one another and had a long companionship.