My father has always been of another world, even though I was his son. He came from a large blue collar Irish Catholic family that lived in a small house in New Haven, CT. He gave up a writing scholarship to the University of Iowa in order to become a doctor of emergency medicine, only to become a published poet in his later years. He is my hero, but I was never cut from the same cloth. I never had the laser focus of his intellect, the certainty of my destiny in the world. My life has been a succession of blunders and misadventures.
Every time we were together, one of us would inevitably suggest a friendly game of chess. It was a sacred ritual that we shared.
My father would tell me stories about Bobby Fischer, and the Russian grandmasters. He had many books detailing the great plays and strategies of the ages. I would play it as a game of intuition, a mystery of infinite possibilities. I always ##### lost.
All of my life, for years and years I lost to this dude, but I never stopped enjoying the game. It was really just a matter of "how will he beat me this time?", even though I entered every game with the intention to finally reverse the trend.
I never played chess with anyone else, I was not a chess player. But it was something we shared. After 3 decades I won. Once. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, but I couldn't have done it without the help of my father. After all, I learned from one of the best.
