Dad’s Staff Reviews
On this day, my father asked me to be his assistant
Yearly, around Presidents’ Day, I write something about my father, a memory from my childhood to commemorate his life on the anniversary of his death in February 2015 at 82.
My father called out to ask if I was almost done with my homework. I said I was. He said he needed my help, but only after I finished. I answered in kind, “Claro que sí, Papi.”
My father was in his bedroom, just off the foyer that served as our dining room, where I was doing my homework at the table. I assumed he was reading the Daily News, handicapping the Aqueduct races. By the time he finished with the sports pages, they would be a smudged mess, marked up with notes and scribbles from his meticulous process, rendering some of the baseball box scores, on the facing page, unreadable.
When I was ready for him, he came out of his room with purpose, carrying a folder with a bunch of papers. He explained that the bank — where he worked in data processing — required him to write a review for each of the guys he supervised. He said these were important, but difficult to write, a pain to make them distinct. And, they had to get done by bank’s deadline, which was imminent. He wanted me to review his English, to correct or improve his grammar, if necessary. He wanted me to make sure he had not made any egregious mistakes that would be embarrassing.
He was nonchalant, belying discomfort about asking for help. In just a few years, I had leapfrogged his English skills that had amazed us only a couple of years earlier when we relied on him to translate everything for us. While I still had much to learn, I was assimilating much faster than he was. I had the advantage of youth, of course, and constant practice at school. He had the disadvantage of learning a language late in life and that many of his co-workers at the bank spoke Spanish, leaving him with fewer opportunities to practice.
I started reading the notes in his elegant printing style that I would emulate, and later recognize, as a cross between an architects’ and an accountant’s hand, likely influenced by his mother who taught calligraphy. He had reviews for couple of the guys I knew from the bank’s soccer team, which made reading those a bit more interesting. Their work mirroring their play on the field. The rest were boring. I helped compose new sentences after he stated in Spanish what he was trying to say. I fixed oddly worded phrases and, where necessary, added missing pronouns and prepositions. It was important to him to get these right, to not have his boss or the personnel department — as it was called then — think poorly of him because of shoddy written work.
As the time-on-task mounted, he realized that I was losing interest. He pushed me, gently, to keep going — it would have been counterproductive to use too much force or to pull rank. He needed my help. He was struggling with these reviews, feeling the pressure to complete them. In future years, my younger siblings would also be recruited to proofread these, but in this first year, I was the only one old enough to help. When we finished, he was grateful, telling my mother what a good and smart assistant I was, with a hint of pride. I felt good that he trusted me with his grown-up stuff.
I feel more than a hint of pride when I think of the challenges my father faced, starting anew in this country, learning a new language, and adapting to a new culture. My father was thirty-five with five kids when he made his daring move to the U.S. His English was minimal, but better than ours which was limited to one sentence when we first arrived: “No speak English.” He was determined to succeed, always optimistic about the future, our future, and America’s future. He worked hard to find success, pulling us along to follow suit, carrying us on his shoulders while lifting the lamp beside the golden door*.
* The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
Last year’s (2019) memory:
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