FLESH, BONE, AND SONG

My father’s bones are a ver­sion of him. The struc­tur­ing ground inside, a
con­nect­ing archi­tec­ture. Light­weight, strong, dense, his bones pro­tect­ed his heart, his
lungs, held up his bel­ly and all the rest. Bones bind and sup­port, con­nect us to ourselves.
They allow us to move, go for­ward, to change. My father’s bones grew under the
crush­ing weight of a ter­ri­ble ear­ly life: innu­mer­able blows from his father’s large
black­smith hands, the loss of his moth­er to insan­i­ty, and two broth­ers dying of ear­ly and
trag­ic deaths, but some­how from those weight­ed bur­dens, came an archi­tec­ture that
made a man, that held a good life. This was the scaf­fold­ing for this tall, stur­dy, agile man.

His bones, flesh and blood allowed him to climb up high away onto rocks, trees,
tow­ers, tele­phone poles and onto the high iron he worked all of his long work life. His
bones were as stur­dy as the iron his fam­i­ly worked as black­smiths at least for centuries,
in the deep south of Italy. The Claps men worked that abun­dant sub­stance, iron, which
comes from Gaia, moth­er earth. Iron ore lies deep in the planet’s core and also makes up
much of its crust. Iron is the result of fusion in high-mass stars, the last element
to be pro­duced before col­lapse of a supernova.

So iron is deep down in the earth. It’s on the sur­face and it’s made from the
burst­ing stars. It’s one of the most per­va­sive sub­stances that the earth is made of. My
father’s bones were sim­i­lar stuff, struc­tur­al, strong and mal­leable and from the fated
uni­verse. They allowed him to climb up and away from the grind­ing mis­eries in which he
had grown.

My father was also man of the flesh. When he was young he was lean, muscular,
even sculp­tur­al, in his beau­ty. This was the result of a time and place where fruit was an
occa­sion, where hard phys­i­cal work was dai­ly life and where using the body to play often
and extreme­ly was as nat­ur­al as using the body to do bru­tal work 12 hours a day. It came
from the dai­ly busi­ness of iron work: from pick­ing up long, large, heavy pieces of metal;
from car­ry­ing them into place, from affix­ing them into the planes and cor­ners where they
were essen­tial ele­ments of the build­ings he was help­ing to raise. As he lift­ed and carried,
held and weld­ed, an exchange of sorts took place: a dia­logue between struc­tures, his own
and the build­ings he worked on. Doing con­struc­tion built the strength he used to
con­struct more buildings–this con­ver­sa­tion built over time.

To walk across I‑beams 10 or 20 sto­ries off the ground you have to have muscles
that are so sure, so agile it’s not pos­si­ble that they won’t car­ry you across this very
nar­row piece of met­al with casu­al grace. A con­fi­dence comes from that kind of physical
strength and bal­ance that has noth­ing to do with thought or deci­sion. As the rest of us
walk down the street with­out think­ing about it, a spe­cial few lift heavy things with self-
assur­ance, move them at will, climb heights, walk eas­i­ly across dan­ger­ous spaces. My
father was one of those crea­tures, mov­ing with the plea­sure that a strong body gives,
eas­i­ly, play­ful­ly, unself­con­scious­ly, not a cause for arro­gance or pride, but a locus of
plea­sure because your body always does what you want it to as if it is part of your
char­ac­ter or nature, seem­ing­ly what the fates wrote for you, although it’s actu­al­ly a long
slow fab­ri­ca­tion of cul­ture, food, atti­tude and expec­ta­tion cre­at­ed in blood and bone.

He loved heights. My father was called to heights often and ear­ly– his body
pulling him inex­orably up their com­mand­ing dimen­sions. Rocks, roofs, quar­ries and trees
port­ed him first, as a boy toward the sky, up tele­phone poles haul­ing him along close to
heady high volt­age wires. Lat­er high on the iron and over time up every tow­er, tur­ret or
steep stairs he came upon. He was as if com­pelled to go up high­er than his earthly
con­fin­ing boundaries.

““When we were kids, we loved noth­ing bet­ter than to dive from the high­est rock
down into the quar­ry to swim. We’d do any­thing, any­thing at all to impress each other,
climb up onto a roof and jump off, climb to the top of a tree faster than
the oth­er guy and of course we’d climb up the tele­phone polls. Up we’d go vying for who
got to be the first one up there. Nat­u­ral­ly there are live wires up there, the cur­rents are
bad. But we didn’t think –we just had to, had to, had to get to the top of the pole and I
can remem­ber vivid­ly Char­lie say­ing I’m not going up there. And me –now here, he’s my
best, best friend– think­ing how jerky can you be? It just could not, would not be
tolerated.

““It is just nat­ur­al for young boys to be drawn to these things. We thought he was
embar­rass­ing. It was so wrong from the way we looked at things, from, I should say, our
lim­it­ed and fool­ish way of look­ing at things. Actu­al­ly he was right. Those wires could
kill you instant­ly but in our youth, in our reck­less high spir­its, we had no use for that kind
of think­ing. Noth­ing needs must do but we have to get up that pole. We sim­ply weren’t
afraid. Oh, those glo­ri­ous days.”

Lat­er, just as he final­ly began to escape his father’s crush­ing reach, he came upon
my moth­er. She helped him find anoth­er height, anoth­er way out of the primordial
harsh­ness that he was raised in.

On my par­en­t’s first date my father drove out to the Hang­ing Hills of Connecticut.
“I had no idea where he was tak­ing me,” she loved to say lat­er when she told this story.
They climbed the long curv­ing path through the thick woods, past the for­est streams and
flow­ers that would bring them up to the look out tow­er on the top of the hill.

The sun fil­tered through the ver­dant woods. “That was the first time he held my
hand. I wasn’t use to that, with a fel­la. I was so shy. He was so hand­some and strong. I
just went along with him.” The incred­u­lous excite­ment of this first touch stayed with my
mother’s voice all her life. When they reached the look­out tow­er they began their climb
up the stairs inside. Young lean limbs used to hard work would make light of such ascent.
Did they slip light­ly up hold­ing hands one in front of the oth­er, sus­pect­ing, hop­ing what
wait­ed for them up there?

Maybe there weren’t even imag­in­ings, so laden with the antic­i­pa­tion would they
have been as they ascend­ed toward their first kiss wait­ing for them up above the audience
of the soft cas­cad­ing Con­necti­cut hills? Up there that first lean­ing in, her heart caught
and ready, his large hands around her tiny waist draw­ing her to him, his heart pounding
too await­ed their arrival. Each rise up the steps brought them away from the ancient rules
of con­straint, the rules of their peo­ple that young men and women must be kept distinctly
sep­a­rate and super­vised pre­cise­ly because their bod­ies would be pulled to each oth­er in
this place apart? They would be. And were. Their peo­ple were right.

All the bound­aries of the world they both came from were so tight and
con­fin­ing. How did they expect the young ever to come togeth­er to cre­ate the most
essen­tial of fab­ri­ca­tions, a fam­i­ly, from with­in these tight boundaries?

““That was my first kiss. Oh we went there many times after that. That was our
place. I knew I loved him right away. I was just head over heels in love with him.”

If he pre­ferred to be off the earth, above it, away from it, in anoth­er place, not
plant­ed but ris­ing over it per­haps that was because up was the only path he found out of
the encaging ground below.

This was the hous­ing our hand­some, dark haired father’s large and wild spirit
inhab­it­ed when my sis­ter and I were chil­dren. The flesh, bone and spir­it that held and
car­ried us, my sis­ter and me. At the end of a long sum­mer night play­ing with our cousins
up at the farm, he’d pick up the two dead weights of his sleep­ing chil­dren out of the back of
the car, as if we were two small brown paper bags of gro­ceries, one in each arm, and
climb the stairs to our attic rent on the top floor of the Pagano’s house. He’d deposit us in
our bed, brush­ing back sweaty bangs from our fore­heads, pulling the cot­ton cov­ers up
and around and then bend­ing down and kiss­ing our soft skin with the plea­sure of one who
has escaped.

Heights were passed on to us as plea­sure so ear­ly that this pas­sion was no more
vis­i­ble than the air. As he climbed we climbed too, up mon­key bars, up the trees to the
high­est limbs, up the long New Eng­land hills on bicy­cles, up to the high­est div­ing boards
where he taught us to take a three step run out to the tip of the board, bounce down hard
with all our force to spring high into the air, hang there light, grav­i­ty sus­pend­ed with just
enough time to bring the body into the tight shape it must be, legs straight, toes pointed,
hands touch­ing the toes, then out into a long straight point to knife deep into the water.

Up all the steps of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, up any and all tow­ers he could find, up
clock tow­ers, the Empire State Build­ing (where you walk the last floors to get to the
view­ing deck) up onto bridges to walk high over waters to see their views. Up.

One day the Stat­ue of Liberty.

After the long climb up the dark stone stair­well there was a shock of blinding
sun­light, then dis­ori­en­ta­tion. It was uncan­ny, unnerv­ing being up there. There was no
feel­ing of stand­ing in her torch—only one of being on a round veran­da, a bizarre
topog­ra­phy. Her face was too close, her nose was too big; it wasn’t the face that we’d
seen from afar so many times.

We’d arrived on anoth­er plane, a plane of the oppo­site of the nor­mal view from
above—where you look down and see things tiny and minia­tur­iz­ing and therefore
belong­ing to you, briefly being ordained a god on high. Instead we were too close to the
thing we’d come to see, things were too big, to hold their shape and mean­ing. But what I
did know that day, stand­ing next to my father was that he was hand­ing over his great
pas­sion going as high as pos­si­ble, to be above, look­ing out, up here at the edge of
celes­tial life

His father, my Grand­pa Clapps, was the oppo­site; his life was lived low, close to
the ground, embed­ded in the earth­ly core of iron and flesh, iron for work and flesh for
women and bed. The one ele­va­tion he sought each night was the enor­mous amount of
wine he made and drank every night. He gath­ered with his friends to drink, sing and play
cards at the kitchen table where he held court in his kitchen. He was a man with­out a
wife. His wife, my grand­moth­er, had come undone and was off in a locked facility—
con­tained and away. But that volu­mi­nous drink­ing pushed him up above the earth in
plea­sure for short hours before it turned into drunk­en for­get­ting where the wine sank him
down him into a stupor.

The sin­gle ele­vat­ing gioia that my grand­fa­ther and my father shared was that they
both loved to sing. Each and both loved to breathe deep of the air around them send­ing it
deep into their earth­ly cores, where it gath­ered force and read­ied to climb. Supported
from those large cen­ters their big breaths rose up, into throat and mouth, shaped there by
tongue and glot­tis, twist­ing, turn­ing and hold­ing; then send­ing out, sound and voice, on
the breath, on the tongue, of the mouth, of the lips, this thing of music, this thing of love.
Singing gave ele­va­tion, gave them ascen­sion, gave them calm, and imbued their days and
nights with joy and con­so­la­tion, com­fort and ecsta­sy every day; the sin­gle ele­ment of
ascent that father and son shared. Only this sin­gle of same­ness. The rest was difference.

Each of them inhaled and released his voice with the same plea­sure. But they
rarely sang togeth­er. There are only short stretch­es when their voic­es join. We’d been
there for din­ner where my grand­fa­ther has drunk an ordi­nary amount of wine with dinner.
We’ve been upstairs and vis­it­ed with Uncle Paul and Aunt Dora too. While we were
vis­it­ing, my grandfather’s cronies arrived. They sat around the table, drank their wine and
they began to sing. Soon they’d play cards.

My father stood near his father at the head of the kitchen table where my
grand­fa­ther held court each night and joined his father in song for a few vers­es, one of the
old time drink­ing songs too, Non sono piu la sveg­lia. Their voic­es rose togeth­er in
uni­son but as soon as one or two songs were over, despite Grandpa’s urg­ing to stay and
sing with them, my father insist­ed, “Okay, girls it’s time to go.” Did these love­ly old
Ital­ian songs sig­nal that his father was about to descend into too much drink and who
knew what else? My father had wit­nessed too many of these nights. We kissed and left.
Scap­pa­ta.

But song was the one ele­ment he took from his father into his own life. It was a
part of com­ing to con­scious­ness every morn­ing for my father. It wasn’t thought, it was a
part of being awake, alive, a part of being a liv­ing crea­ture, call­ing into the air around
him, to the gods who were or were not present to all who knew or didn’t know him. His
legs swung over the side of the bed and as he pushed off into the day he might begin by
hum­ming a lit­tle to him­self which soon rose into melody and the words. He stood in front
of the bath­room sink lath­er­ing the soap, reach­ing for his dou­ble edged razor, twist­ing his
mouth up and to one side to shave in those tight cor­ners around the mouth, spread­ing the
skin under his lip and going into the inden­ta­tion of his dim­pled chin, while the melodies
if not the words found their way through his turn­ing and twist­ing lips con­tin­u­ing to
emerge from the side of his mouth. I’ll be lov­ing you always, With a love that’s true,
Always.

He reached for his comb on top of the med­i­cine chest, make a clear straight part,
then swept his hair care­ful­ly to one side. He might move into, Some­where over the
rain­bow. He sang through each of these dai­ly rou­tines. He’d go back into the bed­room to
get dressed for work. By now he might be whistling. Back into the kitchen where he
drank his coffee.

He sang or whis­tled as he dressed, as he drove, as he loaded the iron onto his
truck and as he gath­ered up his tools, the met­al of the tools and iron clang­ing banging
nois­es, his voice turn­ing and ris­ing through those sounds as he worked the iron. Up from
his bel­ly res­onat­ing in his chest and mouth sur­round­ing him with an air to walk in.

Lat­er in the day when he got up from his after­noon nap he might begin with a few
whis­tled bars, blow­ing them into a string, grad­u­al­ly the whistling swept up into full lyric
whistling ren­der­ing, “They tried to tell us we’re too young, too young to real­ly be in
love”. Music was as much a part of him as his heart beat, the pulse of his blood, the cells
in his mar­row; music and song cours­ing through with his blood and along his bones.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ings as the light cracked my father often rose to deal with
what­ev­er hadn’t gone well on the job dur­ing the week. I was an ear­ly ris­er too.
And I trailed my father wher­ev­er and when­ev­er I could, so I’d sit at the kitchen table
while he put on his socks wait­ing for him to say, “Can you get dressed quick?” It must be
from one of those days that I remem­ber this. He was load­ing the iron truck down at the
shop before we get on the road to the con­struc­tion site. He was singing, If I loved you all
of that day. He’s picked up a long twelve foot I‑beam, hoist­ing it up onto his right
shoul­der, where he shift­ed it into bal­ance, then walked across the yard over to the truck.
The sheer brute strength of this act jolt­ed me: Even then I knew this wasn’t what the
human body was made for. Yet I could see that it was for him. He walked one beam then
anoth­er over to the truck lift­ed them onto his truck. Had he trad­ed in the bur­dens of
mis­ery of his ear­ly life to car­ry these extra­or­di­nary weights instead? Was it all those I-
beams lift­ed that even­tu­al­ly tilt­ed his body to one side, a list to the right, the slightly
low­ered shoul­der, a down­ward hint in his gait that was so dis­tinct­ly his?

Lat­er on in life my father thick­ened, accu­mu­lat­ing the solid­i­ty of an ancient Greek
col­umn, a man who could sup­port weight, bur­dens. He was a man you could lean into. I
can lean into him and feel his pro­found stur­di­ness still. This was the sim­ple com­fort that
came to me after my father’s death. I can still feel his body’s weight and heft–its volume
and sta­bil­i­ty. This isn’t a cal­cu­la­tion. It’s a sen­sa­tion of him, of his pres­ence in the world,
which lives inside my own body now. I know how much weight there is for me to lean
into. I can feel how much push it would take to move that body off cen­ter. More than I
have. This isn’t a mat­ter of pounds; it’s a mat­ter of know­ing him. For all the
com­pli­ca­tions of hav­ing come from vio­lence, mad­ness, death and mis­ery, he posit­ed this
body against to hold as much mis­ery from my sis­ter and me as he could. I still find great
com­fort in lean­ing into large col­umn that his mem­o­ry is for me when I am feel­ing my
own wor­ries and mis­eries. I find the strength I need there.

When he died it was ten weeks from diag­no­sis to bur­ial. His strength hid all the
sick­ness he har­bored until it was far too late to treat him. He was 80 then. But he still had
“the pulse of a 30 year old,” the doc­tors said admir­ing­ly at the begin­ning. But he was
weeks from death, the can­cer was every­where inside. We just didn’t know it yet. His
strength had dis­guised this fact even from them.

While we wait­ed to be told this treat­ment or that treat­ment could be tried each of
his grand­chil­dren went to vis­it him. Each time he took them to climb the tow­er where he
first kissed their grand­moth­er. The first few times he climbed with us up to the top to
view where a piece of their lives had come from. By the last two vis­its he couldn’t climb
it so he drove us and we climbed up with­out him. We were still sure we could find a way.

There had been so many heights in his life, so many trees and rocks, div­ing boards tow­ers and stairs and high iron scaf­folds along his path and he had one more height to climb. The last day was one of tor­tur­ing pain. That day he woke with such pain that as the day pro­gressed he asked my sis­ter to find a drug deal­er, any­one, to buy some­thing, any­thing, hero­in to help stop the pain. It was the 4th of July week­end –a holiday—a time noto­ri­ous for dan­ger in hos­pi­tals. The nurse con­tin­ued to dis­miss his request for stronger pain med­ica­tion. “You’re just post-oper­a­tive. You have to expect some pain,” she said in ill-dis­guised condescension.

That morn­ing my moth­er was shav­ing him—probably for the only time in their
long years togeth­er when his nurse came in again, “What are you doing?” this officious
nurse asked furi­ous at this indul­gences. She grabbed the razor from my mother’s hand
and hand­ed it to my father. “He can shave him­self?” He shaved him­self sit­ting up in bed,
singing a Willie Nel­son song he sang often a in those last weeks, I’d like to leave it all
behind and go and find some place that’s known to God alone, just a spot we could call
our own.

When his med­ical records arrived after his death there was one clear, impossibly
beau­ti­ful image of my father, a full-body X‑ray—all his bones stretched long for us to
see. The length is there, the heft, the strength too. There was such a shock of recognition.
These were our father’s bones. The list is there too–the slight­ly down­ward tilt of the
right shoul­der, show­ing all the heavy iron lift­ed over the long years of work, all I
beams lift­ed, car­ried into place, all of the weight and wear that impact­ed his body, had
impressed deep into his bones.

It was that tilt that made my sis­ter and I weep when we saw our father’s bones
laid bare. Here was the frame, the under­struc­ture, his very archi­tec­ture, the deepest
delin­eation, a pro­found depic­tion of him. His bones laid long.

With­in that stur­dy frame, all his life, big storms blew the wild winds of his big,
untamed spir­it that some­times had as lit­tle con­trol of itself as the flesh had ease and
knowl­edge. The mis­ery of those ear­ly years were deep inside him, although he tried to
hold them only there—they’d force their way out some­times and the storms would blow
and we all knew where they came from. But the storms were spent now and the bones are
qui­et when he lay stretched for this final X‑ray. He wouldn’t get up to sing again.

After he died in rare moments for mere sec­onds I have allowed myself peer into
the ground and image his bones peel­ing back into just them­selves as they rest in the Gaia-
‑that strong scaf­fold­ing tak­en down, not hav­ing to climb or build or hold or car­ry finally,
but in deep repose in the sol­id earth. My own grief for my father lies down there next to
his bones.

Here to end this song of praise is an ear­ly mem­o­ry of light­ness, heights and my
father.

One lumi­nous night of the first snow­storm he insists that we all bun­dle up and
out while the rest of the city is stilled and hid­den so that he can pull my moth­er, my sister
and me on the back of our sled up the cen­ter of desert­ed streets, run­ning and laugh­ing out
of the pow­er­ful cen­ter of his charmed vital­i­ty. The snow feath­ers against our faces as he
runs up Grove Street through the enchant­ment that has been con­jured that he has
some­how also con­jured. His body is a wild horse of an engine, each thigh rais­ing high to
the gal­lop, each stroke of a leg light­ly grab­bing the snowy ground and push­ing it behind
him, his thick-soled work shoes churn­ing down in through the thick white blan­ket to find
the crunch of ground below pulling us up the hill out of real­i­ty into this aston­ish­ing night.
Mid-gal­lop, mid-flight, lengths from the top of the street, he flings a look over his
shoul­der throw­ing back to us the ecsta­t­ic light this labor cre­ates in him. A rup­ture of light
escapes, crack­ing through him from the abo­rig­i­nal core, fling­ing phos­pho­res­cence out
over the qui­es­cent night. Chains on cars on tires clank­ing slow­ing through the snow three
streets away are not in the same uni­verse with us. He can car­ry his girls through the
snowy night, up steep hills in a world that belongs only to him, only to us. We three, his
girls, ride on wood­en slats. There at the oth­er end of the rope he pulls his weighted
car­go, the clay to his fire, just bare­ly, hold­ing him down to earth.

Joan­na Clapps Her­man, mem­oir, The Anar­chist Bas­tard (SUNY Press) begins, “I often say that I was born in 1944 but raised in the 15th Cen­tu­ry because although I was born in Water­bury, CT, in a New Eng­land fac­to­ry town, in post-WWII, I grew up in a large south­ern Ital­ian fam­i­ly where the rules were absolute, and cus­toms anti­quat­ed.” She has co-edit­ed two antholo­gies Wild Dreams and Our Roots Are Deep with Pas­sion. She is cur­rent­ly writ­ing After the Man­ner of Women, (forth­com­ing, Ford­ham Press, 2014) She has pub­lished fic­tion, poet­ry and essays in lit­er­ary mag­a­zines and antholo­gies. She teach­es at CCNY, The Cen­ter for Work­er Edu­ca­tion and is on the MFA fac­ul­ty in writ­ing of Man­hat­tanville Col­lege. Read­ing, writ­ing and teach­ing are just as impor­tant as cook­ing, eat­ing and drink­ing good wine are to Ms. Her­man. http://www.joannaclappsherman.com