Very busy week.  Had to work yesterday, usually off Sundays.  Ten hour shift today and twelve hour shift tomorrow, then, dashing straight from work, I'm going to meet friends in Boston.  Wednesday night, I'll be home again with (hopefully) nothing to do.  Working turkeyday.

This is my father's birthday.  November 22, 1919, it was a Saturday.  Of course these things never occur in your conscious mind except abruptly; I inserted the date above, and then it smacked me in the head like a board.  But it has hovered in the shadows of my awareness for days, maybe months.  

How important can a date be?

I spent hours fixing the pic below without changing it noticeably--something to do while I stared at his face.  He had been 41 for two months on January 20, 1961, when this photo was taken; exactly my age now.  Spooky.  He was a good man, and compared to some of the examples I have seen of fatherhood in my life, he was outstanding.  In 1961, I was 2 and surrounded by older siblings, Kennedy was President, Cape Cod was still quaint, we could open the hood of a car and find just an engine, we stood when a priest entered the room, and the year 2000 just didn't exist.  

I'm happy for some of the changes in the last 3 decades, but some things I miss terribly.

I thought it too embarassing to make an entry tonight.  You see, I made a mistake.  My father was born November 24, 1919, not November 22.  He was a great man removed from me by trauma, but that is another story.  I mention that only because it explains my confusion; on this date another great man was removed from me by trauma, in 1963.

John Kennedy was not important to me because he was Catholic, or pacifist, or President.  He was important to me because he was a symbol of my loss.

I was only 5, but already I had suffered a trauma that isolated me from all those who I loved, from all men, and most tragic of all, from my father.  Until Kennedy's assassination, nothing else in my small life compared to the violence I had endured, and was working hard, alone, to survive.  I was 5 when John Fitzgerald Kennedy had his head blown off in public, while seated beside his wife, and a great man who everyone loved, was gone.

That compared.  

November 22, 1963 was close to my trauma in time, and similar to the violence I endured in the depth of loss it represented.  No one knew what happened to me, and no one grieved--not even me.  But all around me was shock, disbelief, loss and tears for Kennedy.  And then, John-John, saluting.  

Daddie's gone.