Deborah Tannen - Finding my father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow

I ADORED MY FATHER. HES THE parent I felt an affinity with, the one I thought understood me. I trace to him my love of words, of language, of reading, and of writing. When my father was home, he was often sitting at his desk, writing. That remained his favorite place to be, his favorite thing to do, until he died two weeks before his ninety-eighth birthday. I dont know if I was emulating him or expressing the genes he passed on, but when I was a child, the object I loved most was an old black manual typewriter with yellowing keys rimmed in tarnished silver. I typed poems and storiesand letters to my father, telling him what happened to me during the day, often laying out grievances against my mother.

I talked to my father through letters because when I was growing up he was rarely home. The strongest presence I felt in the house was his absence. A sense of yearning for him stayed with me long after I was grown. A dream I had in my thirties was typical: Im having a birthday party. My father is there, but hes suspended about two feet off the floor, with his head near the ceiling. I dont know what hes doing up there; he doesnt seem to be doing anything, just floating in his own world. I cant reach him; he doesnt seem to hear or see me. I desperately try to make contact with him, but hes stuck up there, and I cant get him to come down.

After my father retired at seventy, he had time to spend with me and talk to meand during the nearly thirty years left to us before he died, he did a great deal of both. Yet Im seeking him still. A character in a story by Ethan Canin says, of a TV show he turned on in the middle, I have entered too late to understand. Thats what its like to try to understand our parents: we came into their lives too late. But we keep trying, keep crafting our own personal creation storymaybe creation myth. By writing this book, Im trying to figure out what happened in my fathers life before I came in. My parents both helped by living to be very old: as they aged, their internal censors fell, and they told me things about their marriage that made me question everything Id thought about their relationship; about relationships between women and men; and about the circumstances of my birth. My father helped especially, because he was ever eager to talk about his pastand because he left me mountains of words: not only the hours and hours of conversations we had, but also stacks of letters and notes that he saved, and memories that he wrote down for me.

I think Ive come closer to understanding my father. I know Ive come to see that his life story, as I heard it growing up and embellished it in my mindthe creation story Id devised for myselfwas, in many ways, a myth.

MY FATHERS LIFE traces the history of the twentieth century: he was born in 1908 and died in 2006.

Ive always been proud that my parents were born in Europemy father in Poland, my mother in Russia. When I was a child, I thought it exotic. As I got older, I liked that it gave me a closer connection to my European roots, compared to most American Jews of my generation, whose parents were born here; it was their grandparents who came from Europe. But it wasnt until writing this book that I understood the significance of that difference, the ways that my parents immigration reflects history: they came to the United States at the tail end of the massive influx that brought more than 2 million East European Jews to the United States between 1880 and 1924. The year my father came, 1920, was the last year there were few limits on immigration from Europe. The very next year the Statue of Liberty lowered her torch: in 1921 Congress imposed quotas, and in 1924the year after my mother arrivedquotas were set so low that the doors effectively slammed shut.

My father was raised in a Hasidic household in Warsaw and had astonishingly detailed memories of life in that community before, during, and immediately after the First World War. He turned twelve two weeks after arriving in the United States with his mother and sister; his father had long since died of tuberculosis. At fourteen, my father became the family breadwinner: he quit high school and went to work in New Yorks garment district. He studied high school subjects on his own; passed a law school qualifying exam; attended law school at night; earned a masters degree in law; and passed the bar exam on the first try. But the Great Depression had descended, so he couldnt get work as a lawyer or build up a practice without first working for little or no pay. This he could not donot then, and not for many years afterbecause he was supporting first his mother and sister, then his wife and children. He was a Communist, and was investigated by the FBI; I have a copy of his file. Disillusioned with Communism, he became active in New Yorks Liberal Party, a progressive third party closely tied to the garment workers union, and ran for City Council and for Congress on their ticket. From the time he received his law degree at twenty-one to the time he began earning a living as a lawyer at fifty, he held a dizzying number and array of jobs, including prison guard, parole officer, gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, and, from the time I was born till I was in junior high, a cutter in the garment district. After that, my father was a partner in his own law firm.