“Because you’re not old enough to make that decision,” my father declared. “You don’t know
what you’re deciding.”
“Yes, I do! I’m deciding to be a priest,” I cried. “I want to be a priest.”
“Ah, you don’t know what you want,” Dad growled. “You’re too young to know what you want.
Mom finally said something. “Oh, Alex, let the boy have his dreams.
Dad was having none of it. “Don’t encourage him,” he ordered, then shot one of his “This
discussion is over” looks at me. “You’re not going to seminary. Get it out of your head.”
I ran out of the kitchen, down the back stairs, and into the backyard. I sought refuge under
my beloved lilac tree, the one that anchored the far corner of the yard, the one that bloomed
not nearly often enough, not nearly long enough. But it was in bloom then. I remember
smelling the incredible sweetness of the purple flowers. I buried my nose in it like Ferdinand
the Bull. Then I cried.
It wasn’t the first time my father had snuffed out the light of joy in my life.
At one point I thought I was going to be a pianist. I mean a professional one, like Liberace,
my childhood idol. I watched him every week on television.
He was from Milwaukee, and everyone in town was agog that
a local boy had made it big. There still was not a TV in every
home—at least not on Milwaukee’s working-class South Side— but, by golly, Dad had
managed to buy a 12-inch Emerson with
a black-and-white picture tube that looked like a set of parentheses. There I’d sit each week,
mesmerized by Liberace’s smile, his candelabra, and those ring-laden fingers flying across
the keyboard.
I had perfect pitch, someone once said. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know I could
sit down at a piano and pick out a simple melody by ear as easily as I could sing it. Every
time Mom took us to Grandma’s house, I’d bee-line it to the upright that hugged one wall of
the living room and start plunking out Mary Had a Little Lamb, or Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
It took me exactly two minutes to find the right notes to any new song I wanted to try, then I’d
play it over and over again, excited at the deepest part of my being with the music I could
make.
At this time in my life (and for many years thereafter), I also worshipped my oldest brother,
Wayne, who could play the piano without reading music, too.
My mom’s son from a previous relationship, Wayne was not very much in favor with my dad.
In fact, that would be putting it mildly. Anything Wayne liked, Dad hated, anything Wayne did,
Dad put down. Playing piano was, therefore, “for bums.”
I couldn’t understand why he kept saying that. I lovedplaying piano—what little I could do of it
at my Grandma’s—and Mom and everyone else saw that I had obvious talent.