RETROSPECTIVE

In New York City, that venerable Big Apple of my eye, the March 20th Spring Equinox often arrives imperceptibly, falling, as it does, under the shadow of the much-heralded St. Patrick’s Day, flashily celebrated on lush city sidewalks a scant three days earlier. My father, Jim Gallagher, AKA “Irish,” “Broadway Jim,” and divers other self-appointed monikers, created a rationale for a four-day bacchanalia that began at dawn on St. Patrick’s Day and, like a rolling stone, carried on until the wee, small hours of the morning of March 20th, establishing in perpetuity in the mind of this writer, his only child, the notion that one’s birthday should always be preceded by a modicum of advance festivities– in his case, a four-day revelry.

To my father’s way of thinking, St. Patrick’s Day was just a prelude to the main event, a warm-up, as it were, in the run-up to his birthday on March 20th. He saw the entire city, bathed in green bunting as well as green beer, as homage to Irishmen everywhere, and to him in particular. Unlike some birthday revelers who celebrate partially out of a need to be feted, or out of a desire to collect presents, if you were within a handshake of Broadway Jim’s mitts, you were most likely to be treated to a round- or two - or three – of whatever spirits warmed the cockles of your heart. He was the living persona for Will Rogers’ statement, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Jim Gallagher was, himself, a man universally liked and respected, not because he was a hail-fellow-well-met storyteller in the Gaelic tradition who knew how to throw money around (which he was and did), but because he was a man of honor in a world sadly becoming one devoid of it. As the luck of this Irishman went, however, the saying, “If it weren’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any,” was eerily apropos. My mother, Jane, the light of his life, died too young at 44, living out the last eight years of her life confined to a hospital bed at home, tethered to an oxygen mask or sequestered under an oxygen tent, attended usually by nurses and often by nuns, 24/7. On another level of the house, his obstructionist mother-in-law, my doting grandmother, battled cancer for three of those years, while the family cocker spaniel, Buttons, her front left leg in a plaster cast - the result of a collision with 2,000 pounds of moving metal –raced, unbridled, up and down the row-house staircases, terrorizing all who entered the house on 79th Street.

Despite the appalling reality, my father soldiered on without complaint, taking on many of the duties of the times normally left to mothers or housekeepers – the traditional female, nurturing roles of society. In an era when “Father Knows Best” was the prevailing attitude as much as television entertainment, he never imposed his views or expectations on me: he led by example, never taking a sick day from work, doing the grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning without complaint. One of my favorite memories involves a life-long addiction to White Castle hamburgers, which he used to bring home by the sack after working late, waking my mother and me to share in this communion of the square bun.

Nor was my father’s decency limited to his family; when a neighbor, a family breadwinner, unexpectedly died, leaving a wife and three children without a roof over their heads, my father asked them to move into our home for as long as they needed, despite the 3-ring medical circus transpiring all around us. An unassuming man who hid his own light under a bushel, he held out his hand to those in trouble in myriad, quiet ways, a fact not always appreciated by my mother. When he brought home some just-met acquaintances for a late-night breakfast, my mother politely asked them to leave, citing the unexpected and ungodly hour of their arrival. Only after they had safely departed did my mother explain to my father that his new “friends” were at the helm of one of the city’s much-feared mob families. Dad didn’t bring home so much as a cold after that.

As I celebrate what would have been his 100th Birthday this Friday, March 20th, I want to end this walk down memory lane with a piece I wrote in his honor. Although his birthday is synonymous with the arrival of Spring, I drew it from an encounter we had in the Autumn, proving Jim Gallagher was really a man for all seasons.



RETROSPECTIVE
(DAUGHTER)
by
Lynn Gallagher

It is in the autumn that I most clearly
hear my father’s voice,
“Daughter! Daughter!”
his affection palpable across
the crisp New York City afternoon,
calling me amidst the street crowd,
catching me in mid-stride at seventeen.

The surprise of his presence –
like finding a forgotten bon-bon
at the bottom of a Whitman Sampler –
is snatched up and devoured with glee.

Rushing to hug him,
I reach up, and brushing the collar
of his herringbone coat,
catch the barest hint of
“Canoe,” which he wears
in reluctant concession to the women in his life,
remaining steadfast in his refusal to pronounce it properly,
much less acknowledge or
call it what it is – cologne.

With the insouciance that is youth
I hurry on my way without so much
as a backward glance,
expecting him to be there all
the thousands of my tomorrows.

Secure in the knowledge every two-year old basks in,
I know,
not by rote, nor by intellect,
but by some ancient instinct imprinted over
a thousand years of ancestors, that
I am his daughter
and his strength runs through my veins.
Becoming mine.

I take “Simon-Says” giant steps
faster and faster across
Fifty-ninth Street
into the Park
until
I have again disappeared into the crowd.
But I have no fear of being lost
for
I know who I am.

I am “Daughter.”

~~~~~~~