As a gay dad, I am living my Iranian father's American -- and Jewish -- dream
It’s June. For me, a lot happens this month. Father’s Day is coming up — my fifth as a father of twin boys. It’s Pride Month, and as a gay Jewish man, married with children, that means something. It’s also my father’s 41st yahrtzeit, the anniversary of his passing.
My dear father, Khalil. Who sweat like a pig in the roasting Philadelphia sun growing peppers and tomatoes next to the house, dressed in what by today’s standards could only be called Daisy Dukes (it was the ’70s). Who made us believe for the first nine or 10 years of our lives that chickens in his home country of Iran gave milk that had magical powers. Who was first a beloved pediatrician and then a psychiatrist, but when it came to helping children get past their nightmares, prescribing sticking feet out from under their blankets rather than drugs.
My dear father Khalil went by Kelly to fit in in his adopted country. When I was 11 1/2 years old, he was told that he had brain cancer and would die within a few weeks. He informed his doctors and my mother that he had lived to see his first son’s bar mitzvah, and he would live to see his other son’s as well. He endured a year and a half of hell on earth and slipped into a coma weeks before I turned 13.
During my tiny ceremony in our living room, to the shock of family gathered, he opened his eyes and extended his arm to me during my Torah reading. He held my hand and closed his eyes for the last time, having delivered a message of love to his younger son more powerful, more profound than anything wound in the scroll from which I was reading.
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