Papa Bear

Today would have been my beloved grandfather’s 105^th birthday.

Phillip Beshany, (always with 2 Ls) was a special individual.  He was gnome-like in both manner and appearance, always puttering around with some private agenda, walking with a limp from the twisted spine he developed over years of practicing dentistry standing on his feet.  I always tell my husband, who is an oral surgeon, that Papa was the first dentist I ever loved.  He had the biggest heart of any human being I have ever known.  He would give anyone the shirt off his back, without thinking first whether he needed it for himself.

Papa’s family was from Johnstown Pennsylvania—a fact of which he was most proud.  He was a precocious child who skipped from the first to the fourth grade, finishing school in tandem with his older brother.  Together, they attended pharmacy college at Fordham.  As a young 17-year old college boy he met my grandmother, who was only 13 at the time.  Theirs was a love story for the ages, lasting nearly seventy years.

As a child, Papa was serious and religious.  He put on Tefillin daily, studied hard at school and Torah, and planned to become a rabbi.  His older brother Reuben was a bit boisterous, so Papa was often dispatched to make sure he stayed out of trouble.  Both were gifted athletes.  I remember Papa’s telling me that he once jumped nine feet in the standing broad jump at a regional track meet.  On another occasion, the Beshany boys were out playing football with a group of neighborhood kids.  One of the kids offered them a sandwich.  Papa refused because it was not kosher, but Reuben took the ham sandwich and ate it.  Horrified and shocked, Papa left Reuben for dead, running home in tears to tell his parents that his brother had been poisoned.

After college, my grandfather was admitted to dental school at Columbia University.  He was the first of many “doctors” in our family.  I never had much interest in science, but I remember that when my uncle and aunt were in medical school he could hold his own in any debate.  His scientific knowledge may have been cultivated in the 20s, (in the time of the dinosaurs, he would say) but he read every journal and followed every new discovery.  I was just as impressed with his human side as a clinician.  He was so beloved by family, friends, and neighbors that he became a sort of elder statesman in every community in which he lived.  No one sought treatment for any condition without involving him first.  Though this would have been a burden to some, Papa never complained that people relied upon his judgment and his kindness.

And he never refused care to anyone.  Among my earliest memories, my grandparents had a nice apartment on Loring Place in the Bronx.  They lived in unit 1A, which included a dental office attached to their home.  On his own, my grandfather ran a dental practice without so much as an assistant—with the exception of my grandmother, who took calls to schedule appointments.  When they hosted big family dinners for the holidays, my grandfather invariably ended up cleaning teeth or placing a few fillings for anyone who said, “Uncle Phil, would you mind taking a look at something?”

I have to admit, I hated when Papa wore his dentist hat.  He was the first, and for many years, the only dentist I saw for treatment.  He worked largely without anesthesia, and it was immensely painful.  As rambunctious kids, I remember my grandmother’s saying things (that you would never say today) like, “You better be good or Papa will put you in his chair and drill your teeth!”  As idle threats go, it was an effective enforcer.

But the pain he inflicted as a dentist he did with love.  He was a human unconditional-love-generating-machine.  Not once in my life did I hear him refer to my father as his son-in-law.  From the moment my parents were married, he considered my father his own.  The same was true when I brought my Tom home to meet the family.  He pulled me aside and asked:  “That boy over there—do you love him?”  “Yes, Papa,” I said, “I do.”  “Well,” he continued, with a wrinkle of his brow that indicated he had put some thought into it, “then we love him, too.”  With him, it was always just that simple.

I had a very special relationship with this man.  He liked to remind me that although he had lots of grandsons, I was his only grand-daughter.  It was his personal pleasure to spoil me.  When I was younger and my grandparents made their annual visits to Florida, each trip included a planned excursion where Papa would take the grandkids to a special toy store, allowing us to pick out whatever we wanted.  If you were deadlocked between two alternatives, it was not uncommon for him simply to buy both toys.  As I got older, he was always there to offer a “just-in-time” gift:  a new dress for a concert performance, a new pair of shoes, or a folded-up twenty dollar bill slipped undetected into my hand.

Hands down, his favorite sphere of influence was chess.  Papa considered chess to be his domain, and his alone.  No one else was allowed to teach any of his grandchildren chess.  When I reached a certain age, Papa made a special date with me and brought over a chess set.  He explained all the pieces and taught me how to set up the board properly.  But the most important part of the lesson was that of sportsmanship.  He was good at chess and took pride in being able to beat almost anyone.  He liked to kid us, “Why don’t we play a game of chess and I’ll let you win?”  If you gave in to this trap he was very disappointed.  You were expected to say something along the lines of:  “Papa, I’ll only play you if you promise to try your best to beat me.  If not, how will I ever get better at chess?”  When I lost, which was inevitable, I was expected to say “Good game” and offer to play again.  To him, the manner of playing was as much the object of the game as trapping the king.

When I turned sixteen and had mastered “Papa’s rules of chess,” I earned my own chess set. Finding the perfect chess set was an obsession with him.  It was no petty shopping trip; it was a rite of passage.  We combed dozens of gift stores and collector’s shops in pursuit of the perfect artisan-made board and pieces.  In much the way Harry Potter’s magic wand “chose him,” so my chess set chose me.  I was charmed by a Spanish-themed set where the King was a bullfighter and the knights, instead of horses, were sharp-horned bulls with adorable eyes.  Today, although the board is a little worse for wear, the individual chess pieces remain in mint condition.  It is one of my most treasured possessions.

Papa left this world with a broken heart, no longer able to face another day visiting my grandmother in a nursing home, her memory fleeting and her faculties failing.  He folded his hand as an act of mercy, so that she might finally let go—just ten weeks later—of her fight to stay in the present for him.  He was an intensely brilliant man, though he was never a game changer.  His contribution to this world was to live decently and absolutely, to share his life and his love completely, and to ensure that those around him understood unequivocally how much they were loved.

Tomorrow's blog:  Take It To The Limit