Father, You Remember

How during the war, your father sold 

the black sloop Imp

because boating was banned:

German U-boats off the coast,

trying to sink merchant ships.

How at ten, eleven, twelve, you tracked 

troop movements with thumb tacks 

on multi-colored maps of Europe and the Pacific.

Your hero, Ted Williams, batting .400,

joined the Army Air Force, and you 

and Cort Converse built a cockpit 

out of a cardboard refrigerator box in your basement

and flew. 

You were Ted Williams,

Francis Gabreski, Eric Brown! You defeated

Hermann Göring and all the Luftwaffe!

In 1950, during the Korean War, you signed up 

for the marine corps Platoon Leaders Class

and trained on Parris Island. You, who were born

with a lazy eye and had never held a gun, 

peered down the sight and excelled at shooting

rifles. Then you left the PLC and avoided 

the draft when you became Pre-Med.

In 1954, Hurricane Hazel whirled 

up Buzzard’s Bay and slowly advanced

on your family’s long manicured front lawn 

while the Cadillac went under. You waited

in the house you say was not a mansion, 

huddled in the living room with your parents.

Afterward, you marveled at the brown-green 

high water mark on Cleveland’s Ledge lighthouse.

In 1958, you braved vertiginous Mount Royal

in the Montreal winter to get to the looming brick

Royal Vic for your medical student rounds, 

my mother pregnant in your small apartment

on the street whose name you have forgotten.

As the town “Doc,” you happily rose 

for morning rounds at 5:00 a.m. almost every day,

stepping on the scale, charting your

weight in red on graph paper because 

Mom said you were fat. The jagged line

went down and up and down and up.

When Lynn Fieldsend nearly severed her

ring finger in her father’s miter saw. 

Lord knows what she was doing near it.

She was screaming. Her mother was rigid

with fear. You saw that it could be reattached.

Well, can’t have her without her ring finger, can we? 

you soothed the mother.

Your favorite picture of my mother from 2004: 

in her brick red kitchen, she looks down, one hand on her hip, 

sternly addressing your three-year-old grandson. And he looks 

up at her, diaper sagging. You say she always talked

to him as if he were an adult and he understood.

I will miss your telling.