DorisMKeppel

Rite of Passage

Papa was a rather forbidding man. The Great Depression had left him jobless and sullen.
He was slow to speak and quick to anger. As with most children, I yearned for his approval but
seldom got more than a grudging nod when he was pleased. The rare times he spoke to me, were
usually in short sentences and, more often than not, began with "Don't". "Don't make so much
noise," (It disturbed his reading.) "Don't ask for a penny even once more." (It disturbed his
reading.) "Don't let that cat in the bedroom." (It disturbed his nap.) The don'ts were endless and
sounded forbidding, especially when spoken while he had his hand on his belt, ready to slip it off
to demonstrate he meant business.
In among all those "don'ts" were only two that were really important to me. The first
happened on my sixth birthday. Papa sat in a kitchen chair and called me to him. When I stood
obediently before him, he said, "Look at me!" When I finally got the courage to lift my eyes, he
said, "You're a big girl now. Starting today you will stop calling me 'Papa' . Only babies say
that. From now on, you call me 'Dad', you hear?" I nodded mutely. "If you ever call me 'Papa' I
won't answer you." And he didn't! Soon I was calling him 'Dad'. (It was the only way to get that
precious penny I was always begging for.)
The second "don't" is the one I remember most clearly: "Don't you ever let me catch
you smoking!", which he uttered every time he caught me watching him admiringly as he blew
smoke rings. Dad was a heavy smoker but often wished aloud that he could quit "these coffin
nails".
He began smoking when he was 12 and gradually escalated to the point where he chain-
smoked Camels. He seldom drew in the smoke. Rather, he let the cigarette dangle from his lips.
Even as a small child I loved to watch the way the smoke curled gracefully up before his face.
Inevitably, it always headed for his left eye which he protected by squinting it almost shut. The
best part of watching Dad smoke was when the cigarette burned down to a short nub. I loved the
excitement of his sudden outcry and the curse that always accompanied his trying to get out from
under that miniature torch and I was never disappointed.
But now I was a grown woman, all of twenty-one and hiding my smoking as he must
have done when he was twelve. My unmasking came one bright summer afternoon while Mom
was out shopping. Dad and I were sitting at the kitchen table sharing the Daily News and saying
little. Dad jumped as his cigarette butt burned his lip and he cursed roundly. He spat it into the
saucer that served as an ashtray and with no wasted motion picked up his pack and shook it in
that special way that made one cigarette jump up. Instead of putting it in his mouth, however, he
held the pack at arms length toward me. I looked up from my paper and found him grinning at
me. "Go on. Take it. I know you smoke. One smoker always knows another. Here." Hesitantly I
took it, almost expecting to get my hands slapped for touching it. Instead I found him extending
a lit match. As I lit up he said, "Don't smoke in front of your mother and for God's sake, don't
ever tell her I gave you a cigarette. O K ?" I nodded mutely.
With that small gesture he had gathered me in to join him in his adult world. We entered
a new relationship, one of adult to adult. It was the beginning of a friendship.
It took me 40 years to give up that terrible habit and I am still sad that it took something
like smoking to be accepted by my dad.