Phoebe Kate

My father, Michael, was an eccentric.  Not a reclusive-type one, but a colorful one — rather in the style of Oscar Wilde, a writer whose work he greatly admired.  He put a copy of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” in my room when I was very young, trusting that at that right moment, I’d pick it up and read it and understand.  A voracious reader of everything I could put my hands on, I gave the book a few passes at 8 and 9 and 10, and couldn’t get beyond the first few pages.  At 12, I read the whole thing and it influenced me greatly as an aspiring writer.

My father was a man of strong faith, but always realistic and frequently flamboyant.  I have the feeling that when he wasn’t thinking he was Oscar Wilde, he fancied himself the psalmist David, who was prone to frequent outbursts of personal consternation and woe.  For several months when I was a teenager, I’d be awakened every morning at 6 A.M. by my father’s loud wail, ”OH MY GOD! I’M STILL HERE!”  It was not a prayer of thanks upon seeing the light of a new day, but a protestion to heaven above.  My mother and I didn’t make much out of it — after all, he was an eccentric, right?  He was just being dramatic, a role he so greatly relished.

Once I asked him why he shouted like that at the crack of every dawn.  He just gazed benignly at me over the rim of his martini glass and said, “One day, my dear girl, you’ll understand.  Life doesn’t get easier as you get older.” 

I just rolled my eyes in the supremely condescending manner that adolescents adopt with enigmatic elders.  Every kid knew that once you got your drivers license, and became the legal age to drink and to marry without your parents’ permission, and had the power to make your own decisions, be the captain of your fate and the master of your destiny, things would be just fine.  

It’s taken me four decades, Michael, but I finally  understand.   

–phoebe kate