Sunday, March 17, 2013

Ecce Homo


St. Patrick's Day was not a significant date for me until 2004 - because my dear Dad died on this day.  Today is the ninth anniversary of his death.  This photograph of the two of us effectively captures something of how I feel when I think about him.  In worldly terms, he was not a 'successful' man.  He was an actor, often out of work until the last years of his life when he was suddenly quite busy and in demand.  Having the looks of (as a friend once put it) "the universal Wop, Spick or Dago" he would often play the role of the foreign baddie who was bumped off.  He was a good actor though, and sometimes parts did come along that allowed him to show something of what he could do.  He was a modest man and not, by nature, a Networker.  He didn't make efforts to go to the right parties, get in with the right people who might have helped his career along.  He did not have the knack of making money - whenever he tried to do something clever with money it was a disaster.  There is nothing outstanding that one could put on a CV and point to saying, Look - he did this, and this, and that. But each year that passes I have a growing sense of what it was that made him who he was.  I would like to find a word for it, but nothing comes to mind other than goodness. 

He was a good man.  Why do I say this?  It isn't about what he did (he did of course do good things, but that isn't the point) or that he loved each of his six children and they love him (though this is perhaps more to the point).  It is about what he was, and I suppose that this must have something to do with what was alive in him.  When I think of him, I smell apple and spice, and the sandalwood soap he liked to use (this and wholenut milk chocolate were the gifts we most often gave him).  I don't think that he literally went around all the time smelling of these things, but the essence of them are what express, for me, his substance - the sweetness of the man.  His laughter was always infectious because it came from the well of his sweetness, which included his sense of the preposterous, the overblown and ridiculous.  It would stream out at inappropriate times, in the company of bureaucratic officials who were checking his papers (East Germany) or on stage, in the middle of someone's important soliloquy.  He was a well known Corpser - an actor who might get a fit of laughter during a performance.  When the other actors spotted him they caught it too and a couple of times the curtain had to come down. 

He was not always laughing. Sometimes when out of work, he whiled away the moments that lengthened like shadows, stood on the threshold between one room and another as though listening for the rhythm of the day.  But in the middle of such times, there might be a moment like the time my youngest sister asked him to play the piano while she danced, and then insisted that they change places: "I play - you dance."  I never saw this, but it was a story he liked to tell.  Every now and then I picture him dancing in the dustbeams by the grand piano, lumbering around like an old bear doing a turn of tricks, carrying on until the music stops.


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15 comments:

Cusp said...

Well to me he looks a very handsome man with a lovely smile. A lovely tribute to him and your relationship with him.

Odd, isn't it, that spoken out loud '9 years' sounds a long time and yet when our soul speaks of someone so dear, nine years seems akin to yesterday. It was also nine years, last week, since my Mum died so I have some idea of how you're feeling.

Precious memories

Reading the Signs said...

I know, Cusp - time and love make their own rules. It doesn't seem to me that he has been gone that long. Now I feel that he also grows increasingly present.

Zhoen said...

"he loved each of his six children and they love him"


I can think of no finer epitaph.

Anna MR said...

Dear darling Schwessy Signs; that picture of you and him together is so very, very lovely. And you know, of course, how I adore the you-dance-I-play story. Welling up here. Beautiful, poignant, seeped in love and loss and wisdom.

x

Reading the Signs said...

Zhoen, it is something to hold on to - a gift to be able to say that of one's father. Yes, it does him proud.

Anna, I remember now that I did run that 'I Play, You Dance' story by you a while back. It's good to see you again, you know? You know. As do the WVLs who are saying Amypeh.

cakelady said...

How very gorgeous and happy you both look, a thousand words there.

Wendy said...


A beautiful post, Signs. You bring your father vividly to life.

Reading the Signs said...

Hello cakelady and Wendy, :)

Thank you x

Fire Bird said...

this is such an amazing photograph and somehow appears to me as a still from a film (I'd really like to see) from the 60s. Good to hear about your Dad.

Reading the Signs said...

Fire Bird, that's a nice thought :) it was actually still in the 50s - on the outskirts of Berlin - just before the Wall went up. We were right by the border between east and west.

Digitalesse said...

Such lovely memories, long may you cherish them. I love the photo. What a precious moment captured.

I remembered my dad too on St Patrick's Day because he was Irish, and enjoyed his Guinness, and all that stuff, so it's hard not to remember.

My dad may not have conformed to the conventional notions of 'success' either, but he worked hard, as did my mother, so we didn't go hungry. Your dad sounds like an interesting character and you have some great memories.

Mim said...

Green memories!

Montag said...

Did you originally come from Dresden?

Pants said...

Hi Signs

Just one word - exquisite.

xxx

Pants

Reading the Signs said...

I don't know where I come from, Montag. Not Dresden, though. Mother came from Berlin, Father from Bavaria but really all over the place. They came to UK as refugees. We lived in Germany for 3 years when I was a child because my father acted with the Berliner Ensemble.