I woke up thinking about my father and this poem.
"How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?"
"How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?" Dick Lourie
*this is an illustration from my cancer memoir, "Car Dealer's Daughter"
1 comment:
I lost my father very suddenly, to a heart attack. I was 19.
In the years just prior to my birth, dad worked with Fred Astaire, on his TV specials, which are online somewhere. I've been afraid to watch them--I've never seen them, for fear dad's name won't be in the credits. But it should be.
And decades before that, when dad was wee, age seven maybe, or eight, he performed solo at Carnegie Hall--violin, which he'd been playing "for years."
So where you wrote about ol' Fred and Eleanor... Ginger is the easy choice for many, and marvelous they were.
"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels." ~Faith Whittlesey
But after seeing most of the Astaire-Rogers flicks, loving them, I saw him dance with Powell and thought "WOW!" And I wondered... why isn't this pairing considered to be brilliant. Well, it is, I guess, by many.
And there's something about Eleanor... a kind of self-assuredness, a lack of "feminine charm" that was mandated from all women performers, especially when working with men. There's something there, I think, that most of society doesn't jive to, that is far more appealing to me, about women. Their independence. Their status not determined by or next to a man's status. Good ol' Eleanor. She could dance with the best, or just be the best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toDl2hXt8BM
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