Saying Shema
The warm embrace of my father’s youth.
By Mark Singer
I loved the dark even when I was young, though I hated going to sleep. Until I was thirteen my father would put me to bed, where we would talk before singing the Shema, the prayer before sleep. Sometimes we would share some little anecdote from our day’s adventure, or talk about baseball, in those lean Yankee years of Horace Clarke, Fritz Peterson and Shea Stadium, but most often we would simply drift into the past, each of us secure in the warm embrace of my father’s youth.
These were my favorite times, and I would rest my cheek against him, sometimes in the crook of his neck, so I could feel his Adam’s apple move as he spoke, or else pressed against his own cheek, so worn and rough against my smoothness. He had a rich voice, even in repose, and I would listen for what seemed like hours as he would tell me of his days at Yeshiva High School in Manhattan, or earlier, in day school in the Bronx. During baseball season he would describe his many afternoons in the stadium in the Bronx, watching Henrich and “King Kong” Charlie Keller and of course, DiMaggio, who made it all look so easy.
If I was sharp, I could get him to tell me the story of how he’d cut school one day and seen Allie Reynolds pitch a no-hitter against the Red Sox. I knew it by heart, but loved to hear…
