Things My Father Taught Me

He was born on a sweltering hot summer day in the early 1920's, to an immigrant Englishman and a petite Bostonian. Growing up rough and ready in a working-class neighborhood, he learned many things from his father, a tobacconist with a shop in Chelsea, and other family and friends before graduating high school at the age of 15 and working for his brother-in-law at the tire store. Enlisting in the US Army Air Corps during World War II, he served as a master gunnery sergeant in the turret of a B25 before mustering out at the war's close and returning to Boston. Meeting and marrying the first love of his life in 1948, he soon moved overseas and became a very successful businessman and civic leader.
Tragedy struck when his wife of 10 years died, leaving him to raise 4 children on his own, and then again when his 12-year-old middle son David died of a congenital heart defect. After spending 16 lonely years as a widower raising his three remaining kids, he met and married the second love of his life with whom he fathered three beautiful and charming girls. They lived an almost existentially happy existence in his adopted country, full of love and life and family. He shuffled off his mortal coils eleven years ago, and will always be remembered by his friends and family as a decent man, an honorable man, and someone who could be relied on in a pinch. Stanley D. Phillips was my father.

Dad was always busy with work or charitable civic events, so I relished any time I could spend with him. Saturday mornings were for religious services and Hebrew school, neither of which Dad attended, but he was adamant that we go and learn, for he felt we should be grounded in our heritage and learn from the community's leaders. Usually Saturday afternoons and Sundays were family time, going to restaurants and the movies. He didn't care what times the movies started, we'd usually enter the theater in the middle of a show and stay through the next showing until we got to the part we entered in. Funny quirk, that, but it did make me appreciate not to let the world's external time-table impose its regiment on me.

Dad would always light up a room when he arrived, he was an almost larger than life character, the life of the party, and everybody listened when he spoke. And when it came to his kids, he would impart knowledge to us with terse yet pithy sayings that often left us puzzled with a quizzical furrow on our brow. Let's face it, he mostly talked in parables and metaphors that at the time would leave us scratching our heads, searching for meaning. As I age through my journey of life, I try to recall and fully grok their meaning so I, too, can learn to teach my children well.....

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." That was a favorite of Dad's, whenever he'd want us to do something that was important to him that we resisted. A signal of his frustration with our youthful recalcitrance, it usually meant the conversation was over with a shrug of his shoulders.

"You make your bed, then you have to lie in it." This one was about responsibility, and taking accountability for our actions. Usually reserved for my older brother, who early on wasn't as responsible as Dad thought he could be.

"Never count your chickens before they hatch." This was especially apropos, as my middle brother David actually had an eletric egg-hatching machine and our back-yard was full of little chickadees while David was alive. I'm not sure I've fully learned this one yet myself, as I'm usually overly optimistic about the future.

"You can't drink champagne on a beer budget." This was a good one that is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, and is a word to the wise to not overspend above one's means.

"Never hit a woman." Period.

"Neither a lender nor borrower be." Obviously taken from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" written in 1603, this line spoken by Lord Polonius has an almost ominous portend of doom that far outweigh the six words within which it was given.

"Never judge a book by its cover." It took me many years to fully appreciate this one, but Dad laid it out for us in this simple way.

Dad always carried with him in his right trouser pocket a silver dollar minted in the year he was born. It was his lucky coin. A thing of beauty that was always kept in pristine condition, when questioned Dad would always joke that as long as he had it he would never be broke. I think behind the fascade perhaps was a deeper meaning, a lesson to be learned, a connection perhaps, to his far-away homeland of Boston and the hot sweltering day he was born to an immigrant tobacconist Englishman and a petite Bostonian, growing up rough and ready in a working class neighborhood.....