An Unexpected Gift
My Mother was a perfectionist and often critical of me. But my father was not. He could be authoritarian, stubborn, angry, but never critical of me. When I was seven or eight, he used to take me with him on the road when he went to solicit his orders at the Mom and Pops in the Hill District. My Dad was a wholesale grocer; he owned his own company, had workers, but I'd often see him schlepping cases into the stores. He'd hoist a 100 pound bag of rock salt on his shoulder or a case of Bumblebee tuna. Often he'd have me carry in the candy, chewing gum, cigarettes, even a light case. His mother had died when he was four years old and his father was extremely frugal which translated onto my Dad. Since he dealt in canned goods which sometimes got rusty, he'd hold up a rusty can of Argo peas and order us kids to, "Use it up." This was his favorite refrain. At the same age of seven or eight, my parents enrolled me in Hebrew school at Temple Sinai. I remember one da...