From Jester To King CV

When I was young I’d go to synagogue with my father until we became estranged and I stopped going for good. And then I got into drugs, and my typical Saturday morning consisted of the convenience store, the Y, loitering and stealing. My father had long since given up trying to put me in line but every Saturday morning he went to the synagogue. And here was just another typical Saturday morning, goofing around on my bike, I’d been to the store and to the diamond, but somehow as I was riding along I had this feeling that all this wasn’t doing it for me anymore, these Saturday morning excursions, and then I thought if I’m not going to ride around aimlessly and do drugs all day, how am I going to fill this big hole? And then as if from nowhere I realised it was still only 10:30 and that meant my father arriving at the synagogue, and more out of a desire to surprise than any virtuous motive to please, I decided to go straight over. And the excitement to get there before he got inside was mounting, I was picturing how he’d react, he was going to have the fright of his life, but the more I thought about it, the more it crept up on me that I was going to make the old man really happy, I mean I knew how he wanted one thing and one thing only from me, and that was to come to shul, and I think I resisted precisely and only because I knew how happy it made him, and so my initial objective of just causing a stir was starting to turn into something entirely more wholesome.

And sure enough as I walk up all the men are standing in line on the left, the women on the right, but there are no women yet as it’s too early, and as I walk up I can swear I spot my father a mile off right at the front, and he looks so demure and ever so slightly forlorn; there’s this decorous little-boy-quality about him, but also this loneliness, he always looked like he was holding it together for a stern headmaster, and this seemed to stack up, as he never spoke to anyone in the synagogue, only sang and prayed, and as I caught sight of him, I could see this loneliness clearly and my heart went out to him, my own father, whose smell I could now smell, whose lines in the face I’d once traced with my finger, and it was all coming back to me and I wanted to throw my arms around him to make him feel wanted.

But as I get closer, start walking along the line, all the men just look almost exactly the same as each other, the same slender 5 foot 7 inch frames so that the person I’d taken for my father wasn’t my father, and it becomes so very disorientating and then I look at another man and it’s the same with him -- the same pleasant face, soft eyes, the endearing hooked nose, perhaps a little more stubble than my father had had -- but this is not my father either, and then I begin to panic as if my father has vanished into thin air, and I scan up and down the line at these fifteen or so men until I look back over my shoulder and there right where I’m standing is thankfully my father.

The relief comes over immediately and I look at him as if to announce I’m here, there’s a surprise for you, but he just looks at me as if it’s no surprise at all, he looks displeased, and I can’t remember what he said or if he said anything at all, and I get the impression he thinks that it’s not good enough just to turn up once in a blue moon, what about all the times I hadn’t come, and of course I feel totally let down by his reaction but then I remember the side of my father, the side that’s so undemonstrative, the side that was embarrassed to show himself in public, the very side that made him look so withdrawn in the line and I wonder whether there might have been this inside smile, this glow, this pride I remember when I used to sit by his side in the synagogue when I was a young boy, but I suppose we were older now and times had moved on.