My coming of age story became the title song from my first album, Daddy’s Pockets. The lyrics are sparse and intense. People often ask me what the words mean. I usually respond, “They mean whatever they mean to you.”
When I was a child in Boro Park, Brooklyn, every Shabbos my father and I would walk hand in hand, singing in harmony to shul. In the winter I’d hook my arm into the deep cavernous pockets of his pea coat.
One Shabbos he said, “You can’t put your hand in my pockets anymore. You are too old for that.” That is the moment I came of age and became aware of the effect of “aging” as a girl: it quickly accelerates the process of leaving a “religious man’s world.” This process also severed my relationship with my father.
From that day on, for reasons I will never understand, there was little affection and almost no emotional connection with him. I pretended to be fine, but something about that experience cut off the special “daddy’s girl” bond we had been cultivating. I became suspicious of him and started to feel rejected. I could never find my way back to the connection that existed when I was able to put my hand in “daddy’s pockets.”
The person I am now would return back to that moment and argue the point fiercely, or find something funny and undermining to make him see how ridiculous it all was. I would fill his pockets with my snotty tissues. I would stubbornly fight for my right to his pocket. Today, I try to address emotional pain as it happens.
Back then I was too young to learn that lesson. Instead, I stopped going to shul altogether, choosing to stay home and cut lettuce.
Read blogger Stacey Zisook Robinson’s response to Basya Schechter’s Jewel HERE.
