Perhaps I should have listened to my father. "Follow
your heart," he would always say. He encouraged my magic
when I was a little boy, especially the world famous "cut-the-rope-in-half
trick." One trick that I would torture him with daily.
He used to just sit and watch patiently, smiling, waiting for me
to say, "ta da!"
"That's great!" he would say. "Now
put it back together and you'll really have something!" He
would go on to say that he knew my destiny was to someday become
a great magician. Of course the next day he’d say it was my
destiny to be a great surgeon, mechanic, or great banker. "Son,"
he’d say, "as far as I’m concerned, you can be
anything you want to be … except unhappy."
Dad was always happy. He really knew how to
enjoy life, such a joker. I certainly missed my old man. It’s
easy to miss someone who is always happy – funny how you
can remember certain things. When I was very young he once told
me, "James, it’s better to die a happy pauper than a
miserable rich man." Too young to understand the word, "pauper,"
I mistakenly thought that he had said "papa." So, I
asked him if he was a "happy papa." After a laugh, he
told me that he was indeed my "happy papa." That’s
when my childhood nickname for my dad became: "Happy Papa."
He died, my happy papa, when I was just thirteen – I guess
I never really got over his death. Funny how I remember that so
clearly.
My mother, brother and I were left miserably
poor. When father died, being the oldest boy, I felt that I had
somehow inherited the burden of responsibility to raise our
family. At Dad’s funeral, my Uncle Ray put his hand on my
shoulder and said, "You have to be a good soldier and take
care of your mother now." But Mom was the real soldier, in
fact, the General; I never stood a chance against her.
"Hard work puts food on the table –
not daydreams," Mom used to say. I know she resented Dad
for leaving us behind; hell, I resented him, too.
She'd come home from work completely worn out,
but never too tired to tell us how tired she was and to divulge
her secrets to success. "If you don't work hard, nothing
hardly works. The squirrel that doesn't save anything for winter
will starve. Luck stands for labor under correct knowledge. An
honest man works an honest day." It was a steady stream of
platitudes.
