Happy Birthday, Daddooooo (I think)

 A somewhat altered version of a previous post or two.

It has always been confusing - was his birthday the 12th or the 14th of October?  One of them was Columbus Day and the other was Herb's Day and to this moment I'm still not sure, especially since the bureaucrats moved Chris's Day to the generic second Monday.

He was a confusing person, so this is not surprising.  I never knew if I wanted to hug him or throttle him.

Deaf-as-a-door-nail, hearing aids with their batteries constantly squealing or dying or the devices resting comfortably in the breast pocket of his plaid wash-and-wear shirt, he monopolized conversations so that he would know what was going on. That works well until your audience hits second grade or so; after that, it becomes a full fledged "Herb Attack."

I know this because I have been guilty of them, myself.

His tales were fascinating.  If the facts weren't really facts, well, they should have been.  He went to City College with Richard Feynman.  He lived down the block from Jonas Salk. He knew every cobblestone, every cornerstone, every brick and street sign in Manhattan.  Serving as tour guide in The Big Apple made him about as happy as anything else I can imagine... and I've been sitting here thinking about it for a while.

Surrounded by his grandchildren-of-a-certain-age, those who were sentient but not yet sarcastic, he could sit for hours, regaling them with stories about the chickens his family kept for pets and eggs on Hessler Avenue; about the boat he and his brothers built one summer, the boat that almost floated; about the time it rained frogs; and about all the times he got into trouble at school, because he just wouldn't stay still.

He was infinitely curious. We moved to California and he took a class on earthquakes at City College, just to be sure our new location was safe.  He checked with the professor's detailed map, and was glad to tell us that if our house ended up across the bay, the ground beneath it would have moved, too.  

He sang opera to himself.  He read the obituaries in the NYTimes every morning, checking to be sure that most of those listed were older than he was. He could ice skate and ride a bicycle and fly a kite.  He could not sit still through an entire game of Scrabble.

He probably deserved a diagnosis or medication; born in 1916, he was "just being Herbert."  A report card from elementary school which I recovered when I cleaned our his desk describes him perfectly - A's in all the academics, F's in all the deportment categories.

He continued being just himself, sui generis as I called him in the obituary I wrote for the New York Times, until the very end.

He died at home, between the first and second commercial of the 10 o'clock episode of Law and Order on the Saturday night before Thanksgiving.  Once again, there's some confusion.  Since the hospice nurse didn't get there to sign the death certificate until early Sunday morning, he died on Saturday but the paperwork says Sunday.  Like his birthday, I need cues to keep the date straight.  Like most things Daddooooo related, this is not now nor has it ever been easy.

The funeral home attendants gave G'ma a moment in the hallway before they wheeled him out the front door.  She leaned over, kissed him, and then admonished him, one last time: "Behave yourself, Herbert!  Don't give them any trouble."  The paramedics were bemused.  My mother looked right back at them.  "If you'd known him, you'd understand."

Happy Birthday, Herb, you strange and singular father of mine.  Happy Birthday to YOU!