I am in this man’s army. He was an ordinary soldier in the U.S. Army. That’s how he presented himself: as an ordinary citizen, soldier, breadwinner and father. However, I found him unique.
My Dad was a righteous man. His righteous inners came from a deep understanding and experience of being an Orthodox Jewish man in a world that killed jews for sport. As a child, he interacted with Cossacks. The Cossacks were renown pogromers. (Hordes of horsemen pillaging, raping and destroying jewish villages in eastern Europe.) His father, my grandfather, was one of the rare Jews in the employ of the Prussian Military as a high ranking Officer. I never met Grandfather.
Dad uprooted himself and his siblings and Mother from that poverty stricken, miserable rural eastern Europe. He brought his native healing gifts to the new world: America. In the U.S. Army stationed in Panama during World War II, he was the medic. Dad was a healer.
As a healer, he took on my Mother, an Auschwitz survivor and kept her stabilized and safe. Her pain was so extensive that even Dad’s positive disposition wore out. But steady on course, my Dad loved my Mom so thoroughly, that when they both were dying at the same time for different medical reasons, he outpaced her. He stood guard through her dying and was the soldier at her grave. His integrity at caring for her was 100% completed at her death. Dad liked the percentage number of 100. He earned it time and again and that’s what he expected of me.
For those who know me, my teen years with Dad were horrible. I was a Wilde Childe of the 60’s Hippie mentality and he was Darth Vader. Our fights were bitter. I was a terrible disappointment to him because I wasn’t behaving like the good girl he thought he raised. While I had academic excellence, I was unfocused and undisciplined. He and I were estranged for many years. He chose to not speak to me for about four years though we lived in the same house. That’s how badly I disappointed this upright man.
I thought he was just another ordinary restrictive parent. I was wrong.
It’s very sobering as a spiritual seeker to have the eureka that my Dad, my ordinary foot soldier of a Dad, was highly esteemed in the spiritual realms. It was me that needed to expand to embrace the wealth of deep spirituality that my Dad’s heart beat to.
The most explosive of these awarenessness came when he confronted me regarding my crazy and wild behavior when I was about 28. We sat in front of a mediating therapist. Dad pointedly asked me to make an account for his sperm. This is very Erika Jong and I was ready for the answer. I told him that when I was nine years young, a nineteen year old man raped me. For me, the rape was a moment frozen in time that I covered over in wraps of pain. I couldn’t ever face it myself. He, the healer, wept for me. He simply wept. Suddenly, I knew I was loved. He loved me and was willing to make sure I knew it. I was never the same.
The startle of that weeping made me aware that I had no clue about what my life was supposed to be. That ordinary Army soldier believed my report. And he saw, in his fatherly love to me, what I missed out in life from the pain of the rape. Suddenly, my wild behaviors made perfect sense to him. The soldier Medic healed another soul: me.
Thanks Dad. I couldn’t have lived this long without the model of your righteousness; your stalwart integrity and your endless support in keeping my Spirit alive and fresh. You are ordinary as every gift from G-d is ordinary and extraordinary as every gift from G-d is sacred.
Thanks mostly for your sanity. I salute you.