My dad has been gone for five years now, but every once in a while, I see his reflection in the mirror (only with hair). His impact on me is still bearing fruit, and these words you are reading are proof of that.
The time that we have with loved ones is never long enough, and strangely, we always think there will be more time. This is no more true than for someone who suffers from dementia. The person I knew had vanished and been replaced by a replica, only without shared memories. I never really had a chance to share with him how much I loved him and learned from him. Since that window of opportunity unceremoniously closed, I will do so here.
My dad escaped from Romania under the fog of totalitarianism with his family when he was only five years old. They settled in an Italian neighborhood in Detroit where he grew up, learned to speak English, had a paper route, and finished his schooling. He graduated from Dental School at U of M and promptly married my mother the same month.
So many lessons just so far. He and his family valued education and prioritized this over everything else. My grandfather, grandmother, and my aunt worked multiple jobs each to put my dad and uncle through dental school. They went without in order to give these boys an opportunity for a better future. Lessons learned: Hard work, sacrifice for others, learning new languages, and a priority on education.
His dental practice was unlike most. Patients were friends, and friends were patients. It was not uncommon for hugs to be the greeting for both. He had an engineer’s mind and loved to figure things out. He applied this to dentistry and in the truest sense of the term, General Dentist, he did it all, surgery, orthodontics, and the usual stuff a dentist would do. He held his dental skills in the highest regard and refined them through study, practice, and attending dental seminars.
His passion did not stop with teeth. He studied human biology, health, nutrition, and natural ways of healing. I remember one family vacation in Toronto when we explored a lab that found new ways to utilize Vitamin E. As you can imagine, this was thrilling for an eight-year-old. Back at home, he and his brother would watch films of dental procedures for fun, while we played beneath the projector’s light. Most of it was gross.
My dad was deeply curious. Before the internet, if you were curious, you read books. There was no Google to find quick answers to complex questions, and he had a lot of complex questions. He would read books, which further piqued his interest, and sometimes reach out to the author to learn more. He was not shy, and to him, each stranger was a friend he had not yet met. This attribute, I can assure you, was devastating to an adolescent boy who just wanted to have a normal dad who did not engage with strangers.
Which leads me to the apex of his curiosity, and that was of people. He was more curious about people than anything else; the more “weird looking” through the eyes of an adolescent, the more he wanted to get to know them. This included gas station attendants, lobster fishermen, farmers, waitresses, scientists, truck drivers, and the list goes on. He had no inhibitions when introducing himself to a person and asking very direct and personal questions. I saw walls crumbling before him, and miraculously, these people would invariably open up to him and share their most personal lives. Maybe it was a Jedi mind trick, or maybe it was his disarming smile and the warmth in his deep brown eyes. Whatever it was, it worked without fail. Lessons learned: Never stop learning, master your profession, stay curious, and people are interesting.
When my dad put his mind to something, it was best not to get between him and his goal. Maybe it was his stubborn Eastern European stock, or maybe it was something else, but he set his mind on something and stayed intensely focused until he mastered it. Not just did it but obtained mastery. Here’s an example: he picked up gardening in his spare time (this was during the empty nest phase of life). As a result, he became a master gardener. He converted our yard into a full English Garden and won Bordine’s Garden of the Year for the state of Michigan. The following several years, he converted the award-winning garden into a Japanese garden complete with a koi pond, stream, bridge, tea house, a Mr. Miyagi “paint the fence” fence, and hundreds of Bonsai trees. I forgot to mention, since he was good at orthodontics, he would painstakingly use wires to train trees, creating amazing bonsai specimens.
He applied the same discipline and desire to excel to the following hobbies: flying an airplane, baking bread, studying the bible, oil painting, photography, building teddy bears, and many other things. It was mind-numbing yet inspiring. Lessons learned: If you are going to do something, do it well; you are your only limiting factor, life is to be lived fully and with vigor.
My father inspired me in so many ways. I don’t have half of the skills he had in anything. Our garden is beautiful, but we are merely maintaining someone else’s vision. I don’t have the patience for oil painting or bonsai sculpting, and I have no interest in flying a plane. But what I do have is a deep desire for knowledge, the discipline to stick with whatever I am doing, and a curious heart for the people whom I encounter.
Once stricken by dementia, I watched this giant of a man (in my eyes) fade gently, and without a fight, into a shadow of his former self. One of our last visits together, before Covid, I used Google Translate (English to Romanian) and an Outdoor Life Magazine to point to the pictures of various animals on the pages. Point to the rață, and he pointed to the duck. Point to the câine and he pointed to the dog. He smiled at me with pride as he knew and understood these words, which were hard-wired into his brain. These early memories and sounds were as familiar to him as anything. He didn’t know me anymore, but he knew what I was saying to him, and somehow that seemed enough.
As I enter into Act III of my own life, I can only hope that I am living it in a way that I will inspire my children. If not for me, for the legacy of my father and his father before him.