This is how he loved me first. He worked. A lot.
I don’t remember seeing him much in the mornings, when the rush of getting six daughters out of the house went by in a daily blur. Mom spearheaded the mornings. But we would all rush to greet him when he walked in the door at night, oftentimes after we kids had had our dinner.
Dad would still smell like Paco Rabanne or Clear Water and even after a day at the hospital, perhaps because his fashionable clothes were protected by a white lab coat, he always looked impeccable. I adored him. Born on his birthday, I was supposed to be the much-longed-for son.
He had four daughters by the time I arrived, so they could be forgiven for dressing me in boy outfits and caps for the first couple years of my life. (I looked adorable, thank you very much.) I hero-worshipped him.
This was easy to do. On Sundays after Mass, when we would troop to Medical City and wait for Dad to do his rounds, people would stop us at the halls and tell us how Dad saved his brother’s life, or performed a kidney transplant on her mother and took only a sack of rice for payment. Dad, never one for words, didn’t share stories like this.
Others said it often enough: he was the gallant doctor, always ready to help. He looked like Steve McQueen and sang like Frank Sinatra. As often as we could, we visited his parents and siblings, who lived in a row of houses next to each other along East Pantaleon Road.
With them, Dad was more gregarious and relaxed. He would sit.
