April, 1957

Walter, Mitchell and Michael

Walter never had patience with his eldest son.

The one time the two did anything together as father and son was in 1944 when Mitchell was nine years old when, to prove to his wife that he could be as good a father as any man, Walter had taker his son to the circus. At the circus the child wanted the things most nine year old children want: peanuts, cotton candy, soda. Because the boy had wanted these things, Walter felt he was more interested in those things than the circus, so he became irrationally angry and refused to speak to him during the long trip home, or for the rest of the evening. That night, Mitchell Lipensky cried himself to sleep.

As a child and throughout puberty, Mitchell had felt as though he were a bother to his father, as though unloved by his father, as though he and his father were strangers living in the same house.

True, Mitchell was, what in later years become known as ‘hyperactive’ and, living on the third floor his running and jumping and slamming of doors had made the downstairs neighbors, the Kaplins, crazy, and the Kaplin’s complaints about Mitchell along with their pounding on the ceiling below the Lipensky apartment with a broomstick was a near constant occurrence.

In retrospect, Mitchell could well understand how his ‘hyperactivity’ had caused a problem between his overly impatient father and himself.

Non-the-less, as an adult with his own son, Mitchell Lipensky vowed to never be like his father! To always be close to his son! To always ‘be there’ for his son! And most of all, above all else, to always let Mikey know that he loved him... Always!

A few days after Marsha and Michael returned home, Mitchell discovered the thing he loved to do was to lie on his back on the bed or upon the floor with Mikey, nude, on his stomach, lying upon his daddy’s chest... And at these peaceful, loving times he loved to hold both soft cheeks of Mikey’s ‘tushie’ in his hands, or to feel the fuzzy down of his hair and to listen to him gurgle, and to smell the baby scent of baby powder and baby oil, and Mitchell loved to look at Mikey’s face and his green eyes – Mitchell’s green eyes – then his heart filled with all the love it could hold and  even at those times when his baby ‘made’ upon his chest or ‘spit up’ on his face, Mitchell really didn’t care.