The last important thing I learned from my father was that he was on an American troop ship off the coast of Japan when we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, I am that kid. My father never told me, of course, never told anyone about his experiences in World War II but I found out and I tell you now because I must. My Dad was on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the invasion. In letters home to his sister, Dad drescribed it all, in old letters dated October 1945 from Okinawa, an island he discovered at the age of 36 with a wife, a son and a daughter back home in Philadelphia, letters that I first read eight years after he had died.
My dad was no hero, that's understood. But his lack of heroism amazes me to this day. We would have parades for a man like my father today, a citizen soldier drafted into the army at the age of 33, married with children, who did his duty because, well, that's what men did back in the day. Not once in my lifetime did I hear my father complain about going to war. And this was a man who complained about everything all the time. My dad was a complainer and a blamer. At least, that's what I remember most. He was 40 when I was born, the first of three new children born to Harry and Anne DeLeon after he returned from World War II.
Dad sold plumbing supplies for a living. I remember growing up thinking that American Standard toilets were porcelain gold. When he told me the facts of life -- so awkwardly I almost felt sorry for him -- because I had actually connived to force him to tell me "something" at the age of 13, when I had actually learned the awful truth about where babies came from at the age of 10. I heard the dirty truth on the concrete parking lot/ playground of a Catholic grade school at lunchtime. I didn't believe a word of it. I had heard of the "F" word, understood the mechanics, sort of. But it all sounded like a dirty joke until I found out from one of my classmates, in all seriousness, that THAT'S how babies are made.
And being a true Philadelphia Catholic school boy, I replied as genuinely and innocently and logically as any Philadelphia Catholic school boy would respond to such filth: "Are you telling me that Mary and Joseph did THAT?!" And thus was born the great awakening within me about all these important things about my religion that were talked about all the time, but I had no clue what these words meant. "Virginity" for instance.
Mary was a virgin. Who don't know that? But what's a virgin?
You tawkin' to me? I was a full grown Catholic before I understood, even a little bit, how important sex was or wasn't to my religion. Catholicism is defined by sex, always has been, in one way or another, in the city of brotherly love. Phildephia Catholics are proud because they are Philadelphia Catholics. I love that feeling of knowing what it feels like. And I love the rage I feel at my religion I lost so long ago.
Some people forget, I can't. Some people forgive, I do.
Some people are deeply disappointed by the behavior of our church in general, and in particular by genatalia belonging to clergy.
I trust the Catholic church about as much as I trust the United States government.
And yet to each I pledge my life, my fortune and my sacred honor.
Who said that? You, me or Jesus.
And do you want to know how my father told me the facts of life? He used a plumbing analogy. I had unloaded trucks at my dad's warehouse and I knew from male and female pipes. Dad said, "You know how a male pipe screws into a female pipe?. . ." And. . . well, the rest was history.
He had me with "screws."
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