Dad – part 3, Condoms

Ooops! This should have been published between Dad – part 2 and Prolet. I inadvertently left it in draft status.

I suppose that coming to terms with my parents’ humanity and frailties has been an essential part of my own maturing. My Dad was, in so many ways, a wonderful father, and I am deeply in his debt for so much of what makes my life rich and rewarding. I came to understand my Dad’s shortcomings as a husband at a time when I was struggling with what being married meant to me, and what I wanted it to mean. I realized that my ideal of what a partnership could be was stunted by the deep dishonesty in my parents’ relationship, and by the imbalance of power they constructed.  To some extent, their marriage was typical for the times, with imbalance the norm.  Dad complained angrily that Mom was always late, but no one seemed to notice that getting four children ready to go was entirely her responsibility. And, to be fair, being late was at least in part her passive aggressive way of expressing her anger about that imbalance.  But if Dad was king of his castle, he was mostly a benevolent dictator as far as we kids were concerned.

The party favor business eventually fell on hard times.  In an odd twist, Dad pivoted from selling party favors that included balloons to selling another product made by the balloon manufacturer, condoms.  It started almost as a joke, with Dad taking over the small amount of retail mail orders the manufacturer received.  But just as Jet Party Favors was failing, my resourceful and imaginative Dad quickly built a big mail order business in condoms, videos, and toys of another kind.  At Tamar’s urging, Dad placed a small ad in a men’s magazine for condoms.  Aviva reminds me how revolutionary this was at the time, in an era when condoms were still hidden away behind the pharmacist’s counter and were never advertised openly.  Several magazines refused to run Dad’s simple, text only ads at first.  But the ad business grew, and by the time Dad was done he was mailing out a full color 32 page catalogue, in which Tamar’s beautiful hands were often featured. 

We had a lot of fun with that business, especially with the letters from satisfied customers which Dad occasionally read to us. Tamar worked there for years, deciding, among other things, which videos were too explicit to send through the mail. But none of us were able to convince Dad to take up selling on the internet, which was just too foreign to him.  He ended up selling that business and retiring, as he was completely eclipsed by online sellers.

I don’t know how well Dad might have fared in retirement, but not long after he retired his best friend John died, and just months later, his first born, my sister Shayne, died of leukemia.  Those two losses, especially the loss of his beloved child, compounded the loss of a working life and sent him into a tailspin. He lived another seven years after Shayne died, outliving Mom by a year, but it was scarcely living compared to the mostly joyous life he had before. I don’t think much about him in that last phase of his life.  I think of him vigorous, presiding jovially over the long table in Amenia, grilling steaks for twenty or more, singing in his big voice at campfires, arguing politics, and telling jokes with great skill and delight.  

Dad loved a joke.  When I was away at college he would call from time to time (something my mother never did). “Uncle Stanley told me a cute joke today,” he’d say.  He’d tell me the joke, ask how I was and if I needed money, and tell me he loved me. He gave me a life of security and comfort.  He taught me to think critically about current events and history.  He told me that I was terrific and that I could do anything, and I believed him. I learned more from his virtues, his warmth, his generosity, his kindness, his capacity for joy, than I did from his shortcomings. It’s a legacy I’m lucky to have.  I miss him.

Dad lived to know that his first great grandchild had been born. He had a picture of baby Asher, my first grandchild, in the room where he died, at a lovely assisted living facility.  When Dad had had enough of life he stopped eating.  He died, as I like to tell people, on time and on budget, as he was just exhausting his savings.  A businessman to the end.  The diagnosis was “failure to thrive”, which seems a fitting end somehow for a man who had personified thriving for so much of his life. He left a huge imprint on those lucky enough to know him – his family, of course, but also all the kids of friends who spent time in the paradise he helped to create at our summer place in Amenia. Those kids, grandparents themselves now, still light up when they talk about him.  He was always a nexus of fun, always kind, always encouraging.

Mom and Dad overcame the great challenges in their relationship and they stayed together until death parted them. I watched them slog through a long and painful reconciliation and end their lives as old friends, with their beloved family intact. The example of their reconciliation certainly had an impact on my decision to stay with my first husband, taking 20 years to acknowledge that I couldn’t make that marriage into a relationship in which I could thrive. I can’t summarize what I learned from my Dad’s strengths and weaknesses, but perhaps the great lesson for me is that we don’t have to be perfect to be valuable. I hope that if my life is weighed on the same scale as my Dad’s the balance will be as favorable.

There is always far too much to write about any person’s life.  The big piece that’s left out of this brief account, and the piece that impacted so many people, was the amazing culture and community Dad and Mom created for us and our friends at our summer place in Amenia. Although it’s a big part of Dad’s story, it really needs its own chapter. And I think that before I tackle what Dad and Mom created there, I should introduce Mom.