Heros and legend

« ‘Relax, Anna,’ he said to her—your dadhad this deep baritone, see, and this British accent.” My grandfathertucks his chin into his neck at this point, to capture the full effect.“ ‘Relax, Anna,’ he said.

‘I only wanted to teach the chap a lessonabout the proper care of other people’s property!’ ”Gramps would start to laugh again until he started to cough,and Toot would mutter under her breath thats he supposed it was a good thing that my father had realized that dropping the pipe had just been anaccident because who knows what might have happened other wise,and my mother would roll here yes at me and say they were exaggerating.“Your father can be a bit domineering,” my mother would admit with a hint of a smile.

“But it’s just that he is basically a very honest person.

That makes him uncompromising sometimes.”She preferred a gentler portrait of my father.

She would tell thestory of when he arrived to accept his Phi Beta Kappa key in hisfavorite out fi t—jeans and an old knit shirt with a leopard-print pat-tern.

“Nobody told him it was this big honor, so he walked in andfound everyone standing around this elegant room dressed in tuxe-dos.

The only time I ever saw him embarrassed.” And Gramps, suddenly thoughtful, would start nodding to himself “It’s a fact, Bar,” he would say.

“Your dad could handle just about any situation, and that made everybody like him.

Remember the time hehad to sing at the International Music Festival? He’d agreed to singsome African songs, but when he arrived it turned out to be this bigto-do, and the woman who performed just before him was a semi- professional singer, a Hawaiian gal with a full band to back her up.

Anyone else would have stopped right there, you know, and explainedthat there had been a mistake.

But not Barack.

He got up and startedsinging in front of this big crowd—which is no easy feat, let me tell you—and he wasn’t great, but he was so sure of himself that before you knew it he was getting as much applause as anybody.” My grandfather would shake his head and get out of his chair to fl ip on the TV set.

“Now there’s something you can learn from yourdad,” he would tell me.

“ Con fi dence.The secret to a man’s success.” Au moment de sa mort, mon père est resté un mythe pour moi, bothmore et de moins qu'un homme.

Il avait laissé derrière Hawaï en 1963, quand je n'avais que deux ans, de sorte que lorsque j'étais enfant, je ne le connaissais que par le biais thestories que ma mère et les grands-parents dit.

Ils avaient tous theirfavorites, chacun transparente, lisse poli d'une utilisation répétée.

Gramps Ican images fixes se renversant sur son vieux fauteuil en peluche afterdinner, en sirotant du whisky et se curait les dents avec le cellophane de son paquet de cigarettes, en racontant le temps que mon père presque jeté un homme hors du belvédère de Pali en raison d'un tuyau .... «Vois, ton papa et maman ont décidé de profiter de cette amie de sa visite touristique autour de l'île.

Donc, ils ont conduit à l'affût, andBarack était probablement sur le mauvais côté de la route tout le chemin là-bas, " «Votre père était un pilote terrible", ma mère me l'explique.

"Il finirait sur le côté gauche,. »