Bob Jaffee, My Father: Punching Above His Weight

Honor thy father and thy mother.

 

That is one of the Ten Commandments.

 

I hope that I have done so in my life, and I hope that I continue to do so, for my dad and my mom deserve honor.

 

They have given birth to, blessed and taken care of me, under the Lord.  They still do.

 

And they do so with love.

 

That does not mean that I had a perfect relationship with my dad or that I have a perfect relationship with my mother, or with anyone.

 

My dad never liked to say the word, “love,” as I mentioned in a tribute to him in Thrive Global, a tribute that was published on May 15, 2020, on the day that my dad passed away.

 

He was 86 years old and one of the most impressive people I have ever met.

 

God had me headline that Thrive piece, “Punching Above His Weight,” because there is no doubt that my dad, a modestly built man, packed a heavy punch, the punch of a heavyweight, the punch of a champion.

 

My dad overcame so much in his life, most notably the death by suicide of his father, when my dad was 9 years old.

 

As the Lord chanted and wrote in me, my dad’s life was a testament to fortitude, endurance and determination.

 

It was also a testament to love, the power of love.

 

This is because, even if my dad did not like to use the word, “love,” he embodied it; he simply showed it in his own idiosyncratic way.

 

And he was reluctant to use the word, just as he was reluctant to show the extent of his power and its power, as God had me write in another piece on my dad, “The Quiet Man,” published in May 2022, two years after my dad’s passing.

 

Though my dad may not have spoken openly about love, he demonstrated it, as I say, in his own unique fashion.

 

At my request, my dad took me to my first play, a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was being held at the auditorium at Hamden High School in my hometown in Connecticut.  This would have been in the mid-1970s when I was just a little boy, who had fallen in love with old Warner Brothers movies, to which my dad had introduced me.

 

I had not actually seen the 1930s Warner film based on Shakespeare’s comedy, but I knew that it starred James Cagney, who was one of my favorite actors.

 

Thoughtful and supportive, as he was, my dad happily honored my request, and we went to see that Hamden High School rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one that astonished me with its pomp, colorful costumes and magic, akin to cinematic special effects.

 

Theater and film are just two of the joys that my dad ushered into my life.

 

As I have already noted, my dad is the one who introduced me to just about everything I love, theater, old movies, geography, baseball, elephants, whales, dolphins, porpoises, the color green, and many, many other things, animate and otherwise.

 

Not unlike my mom, who taught me to read and sang to me when I was a baby, and Barbara, my wife and soul mate, who nourished me with a love for animals, cats in particular, and Bob Dylan’s music, my dad piqued my love for so many things, including gangster flicks, wartime espionage movies, film noir, Westerns, swashbucklers and boxing pics, among others.

 

My dad, my mom and Barbara are the three greatest influences in my life, under the Lord.

 

God, the Son and the Father, gets all the glory!

 

I am grateful to the Lord for sending such angels into my life.

 

There is no question that all of the articles and books that God has had me write are suffused with the love of my dad, my mom and Barbara.

 

And this is, of course, true of the fiction that bears my name.

 

All of the novels that the Lord has sung in me resonate with a love for Warner Brothers movies.

 

Those novels include Strikeout at Hell Gate, which was published in 1998 and is a baseball novel set in racially torn New York.  My dad deserves credit as the Muse of Strikeout.  He read the book in manuscript form and gave me some helpful suggestions and good feedback.  He also found me a publisher.

 

My other novels will be published in the future.

 

They include the opus, an eight-book Kabbalistic love song to the Lord that Barbara mused and that revolves around mysticism and the eternal.

 

The Lord had me devote 25 years to the opus, and Barbara gets top honors, after God, as the Muse of this masterwork.

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One of my favorite stories concerning my dad and Warner Brothers movies is a story that I have written about before.

 

But I would like to share it again.

 

For a period of time, in my childhood, Errol Flynn, a Warner star, was my favorite actor.

 

At a very young age, I had seen nearly all of Flynn’s Warner Brothers films, which were shown in the 1970s on channel 5, then a New York independent station, now the Fox flagship.

 

For whatever reason, I had not seen The Adventures of Don Juan, one of Flynn’s most famous swashbucklers.

 

When I noticed in the TV guide that the film was playing late one night, I asked my dad if he would awaken me.

 

He said that he would.

 

True to his word, my dad interrupted his sleep and woke me up at two or so in the morning.

 

I was 8 or 9 years old, and I was a little bit afraid of going downstairs by myself at that hour.

 

But there was my dad chirping to me in the hallway upstairs.

 

I can still picture my dad leaning on the threshold into my bedroom and tilting his head, as his voice lilted, “Robert.  The Adventures of Don Juan.”

 

I can still hear that lilt in my dad’s voice.

 

And I can still picture his beatific smile, a smile that, like his voice, beamed with love.

 

Here’s to you, Dad.  You are a beacon of love and imagination, of light and truth.

 

And you overflow with the goodness and grace of the Lord, our God.

 

Amen.

 

Lots of love,

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Robert David Jaffee

Glendale, California

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