I is for Izzy!

"Whose Izzy is he,
Is he yours or is he mine?
I'm getting dizzy 
Watching Izzy all the time"


Isidore was my dad's name, but all his friends and family called him either Iz or Izzy. My mother loved singing that song to him, dancing around him and making him the center of her attention.  Poor Izzy would shrink away if any of us were in sight; he was a very shy and private person - which was probably why he married my mother the extrovert.

He was a luftmensch, as they say in Yiddish - a man with his head in the clouds.  He started on the rabbi track, but sometime before he was to make the final push, he dropped out and went to engineering school. Then he pursued his engineering religiously, getting a masters and a doctorate. When he wrote to Albert Einstein for advice on whether or not to go for the doctorate, the great man said not to bother.  All you needed for engineering was a bachelor's degree.

But my dad didn't listen. He loved learning, he loved trying things out and experimenting, he loved teaching, and he got that doctorate. He was ready to go for a post doc in math, but my mom begged him to come home and help her with their four growing kids.

My dad the luftmensch. He gave up his post doc dream, but he would talk to me about the absolute beauty of mathematics and how he could do math for hours just for the fun.

He was not big on hugs or "I love you's" but he was there always when we needed him, to help in any way he could. He would fix anything and everything, and watched as I developed a similar interest in doing repairs. Dad hoped I would become an engineer or a scientist, and was not so happy when I went into theater.  But he persevered in that way of his, being there for me when I asked and even when I didn't ask.

My dad loved stories, making them up, reading them, telling them and he loved singing Jewish songs,  So when I became a storyteller, and he heard me tell Jewish stories and sing Jewish songs at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, he stopped regretting my lack of interest in a career in science or math - this storytelling he could identify with.  Eventually, my pops began to brag about me, and tell everyone about "my daughter, the storyteller."

"Whose Izzy is he,
Is he yours or is he mine?
I'm getting dizzy 
Watching Izzy all the time"