Today would have been my father's 89th birthday. He died when he was 64 and I was 26. A long time ago. Of stomach cancer. He collapsed on the tennis court, where he was known for the scrappy form he had acquired playing handball on the streets of Brooklyn. He had a leather jumprope that he used his whole life. It kept him fit. He could do this extraordinary trick of hoisting his body absolutely perpendicular to a lamppost and holding it there for an impressively long time. His hands were warm and tanned, with raised veins; they always reminded me of walnut shells. He had a beautiful singing voice and as a youth he earned money singing at weddings. His mother told him to stuff food in his pockets before he came home. They took in a border who was a page-turner for the Metropolitan Opera and he would give my father a nickel for every classical piece he could identify whenever they listened to the radio. Needless to say, my dad knew his Beethoven from his Borodin from his Bartok. He didn't go in for sweets so much, preferring to nibble on Spanish peanuts or salted almonds or cashews while he worked at his desk. Though he did have a weakness for chewy black licorice. And, paradoxically, sugary pecan pie. (I think it was the nuts.) He would have liked this simple cake. Not too sweet, not too fussy.
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