Elegy

(for my dad)

 

I am your family first

to speak. I tell

a forty-five-year-old story about

how you once flew cross country to bring me

home for surgery.

 

That’s all they need to know.

 

*

 

You would remember

I had an ovarian cyst, menstrual bleeding,

stabbing pain that no doctor

from the Berkshires could explain.

 

You picked me up at noon

for the afternoon flight.

I would miss the rest of summer

rehearsals and performances

but mostly the bassoon player

with dark curls and a Long Island accent.

We were seventeen, practicing Mendelssohn

triplets by day, doing it at night

on the dorm linoleum floor.

 

I don’t remember how you

jammed my bass into the rental car,

drove us to Boston, or anything

we talked about.

From the in-flight meal

I gave you my roll and dessert

all I had as an apology

for making you come all that way

just for me.

 

I awoke from anesthesia

you and Mom and the surgeon.

Oophrectomy. Benign. Ectopic. Pregnancy. Fallopian. Hemorrhage.

Other than pregnancy, a jumble of words.

I bypassed fear and mortification

and remorse and thought only

about the boy back at Tanglewood.

 

Afterwards, I always wondered why

you never summoned me

to your study to hiss and seethe

your disapproval

over my disgraceful behavior.

 

When I was twenty you divorced Mom

to marry the office woman, a two-year affair

you told her

another old story.

 

Your new wife had a son my age.

At sixteen he unexpectedly became

a father and you took him in:

supported, advised, loved him.

 

I would only learn this when

photos of you holding a newborn baby

filled the house’s living room shelves,

empty of books since Mom moved to a condo.

I would only learn how you welcomed the young family

when my bedroom became a nursery.

 

I would learn these things and

forget and learn and unknow and

learn and pretend not to care and

learn and ignore and learn and

for forty-six years be unable to put it together

like a massive memory slip

just before the final coda.

 

*

 

The son speaks too.

So proud, grateful, calls you honorable,

extraordinary, calls you “my dad.”

 

After Kaddish, people

gather around, your medical colleagues,

some patients.

“He saved my life.”

One wipes away tears.

“Thank you,” she says, “for your sacrifice.”

She means the relationship I lost out on

while you worked so hard for others.

 

Now I see head-on

what was a peripheral blur:

your secret second family

your years of lying.

 

And this too:

You and I are on

that plane from Boston

when you accept my roll and dessert

but it’s you trying to atone,

coming all that way

just for me.