The fatty tumor fondly known as "Billy Bob Jenkins" was removed from my son's back yesterday. He saw it before it was packed off to a pathology lab, and said it looked like "a tiny brain."
I told him that, since he had never gotten the younger sibling he always wanted, perhaps he was trying to grow one, like some Greek god, to spring fully formed from his body.
So Billy Bob, a calcified glob of goo, is no more. But today, my father, long may he wave, is 87. He has survived WWII, which claimed his younger brother, and many other loved ones; the Depression; quadruple bypass surgery, performed back in the '80s, when it was a much cruder and riskier operation; a lifetime without the White Sox winning a World Series; 62 years of marriage; and a whole host of other misfortunes.
Even at his advanced age, his hirsute arms, thick, determined-looking fingers, his stentorian voice -- even the shape of his head, all evoke a kind of awe that I imagine only a father can stir in a son. The loudest he's ever yelled in my presence was at a ballgame. The hardest he's ever hit me was with a pillow. The harshest thing he ever said to me was, at 16, how stupid my pubescent mustache looked (blinded by that curious mix of adolescent self-obsession and self-loathing, I had no idea how right he was).
Next week, God willing, we'll share a cigar on the beach and watch the sun set, together, for perhaps the 1000th time.
Meanwhile, my son, with six stitches on his back and a splint freshly removed from his sprained right wrist, puts his dukes up, his head down, and comes at me like Pamplona's finest.
--T.A.
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