Pen-Elayne on the Web

Daddy's Girl

When I was in college I took an interesting course called "Your Family in History." As I recall (bear with me, it was 25 years ago after all, although I note the school still offers it) one of our assignments was to interview family members such as parents to find out how major world events affected them personally. It was the first time my dad and I really spoke about his experiences in World War II. No, he wasn't a combatant. His family was among the relatively fortunate Jews to live in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and was thus not deported to the concentration camps. Notes this website, "The Jews of Bucharest were saved from extermination on August 23, 1944, after the dictator Ion Antonescu was arrested by the king. The German forces close to the city did not succeed in entering it. Adolf Eichmann, who was in Budapest and was supposed to go to Bucharest to begin preparations for the deportation of the Jews, postponed his journey when he learned that the Romanians had broken off their alliance with Germany. The immediate opposition of the Romanian army, and the entry of the Soviet Army on August 30, 1944, prevented Eichmann from ever coming and the Nazis from carrying out their scheme." According to my dad, King Mihai I (or more likely Antonescu) ransomed "his" Jews from Hitler, but I can't find any links to verify this.

In any case, as I listened to my dad recount the times he and his family huddled in bomb shelters as Allied forces flew overhead, dodged sniper bullets during food runs, and endured a horrid winter emigration by boat a year (or two?) after the war ended, it was both wonderful and weird, because it seemed like I was only first getting to know him as a person, but in a sense I was also speaking with a stranger. I also got this impression of "alien in the house" whenever one of his Romanian relatives would call and he'd suddenly switch from English - Dad tongue! - to what I called "the land of Bun Draga" (the only phrase that ever seems to stick in my otherwise-linguistically-inclined mind, despite Dad's best efforts to teach me Romanian even through the present day), or when he talks fast and pronounces his "w"s like "v"s (especially with words like "women"). And I'm grateful for these things, because they've been good lifelong reminders not to be so damn provincial; after all, I'm only first-generation American (as will be my children if I ever find that I'm not barren after all).

Maybe it's the culture clash that's fueled the many times my Dad and I have failed to see eye to eye. I don't know; I spent so much of my first few decades trying to figure all that out that I've long since given up. Like many, my Dad and I have achieved a pleasant detente, where familial love far outweighs our diverse views. I prefer to reflect on cool things, like the way he'd buy me a heart-shaped box of chocolates for Valentine's Day every single year, even after I was well into my first marriage. And how he loved to take us places as kids, everything from roller skating to the New York Botanical Garden to The Sound of Music at Radio City to Lake George every summer. And how excited he gets when he and Mom show us around whatever new casino has just opened in Vegas (where they now "snowbird"). I'm his only daughter, his Elkie, and he's my only Daddy, and I get teary-eyed just thinking about all this, and I have him to blame for it because I've inherited his sentimental streak.

Happy birthday, Daddy, from your "little punkie."