It’s a turn of phrase. It’s the way my hair continues to disappear atop my head. Sometimes it’s the stance I take on certain issues or my philosophy of life. Other times it’s just similar mannerisms that people notice. But those who knew us both often comment about the way I’m very much like my dad.
“Apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” people say.
“As long as I’m happy, what does it matter?” I generally reply. But what I really mean is that I’m happy speaking, looking and even thinking the way either my mother or my father did. It’s a part of an inheritance with which I’m perfectly contented and comfortable.
But more often than not, people tend to look at inheritances as material wealth, dollars and cents. As an example, I was reading an online editorial by MSN Money columnist Liz Pulliam Weston recently. She was commenting on “that big, fat inheritance” that those of us in the baby-boom generation might expect to “make saving for the future unnecessary.”
She points out that economists and researchers believe the planet is on the cusp of the biggest inheritance boom in history. She quotes a couple of Boston College economists, who claim the transfer of wealth might be between $41 and $136 trillion. That works out to about half a million dollars to each of the world’s 76 million baby boomers.
But all of that’s just numbers. And here’s the proof.
Our daughter Whitney – who now makes part of her living performing as a jazz singer – recently discovered that perhaps the greatest inheritance in the Barris family may well have skipped a generation. And if you don’t mind (and with her permission) I’ll let her words tell the story:
“Not long after my grandfather Alex Barris died, the family helped my grandmother Kay sift through possessions in what had been hers and Alex’s condo. We came across trunks full of hand-made linens and wedding presents, American dollar bills she’d squirreled away as a young girl. She nodded and sighed, smiled and wiped a tear now and again.
“Among the books and tablecloths I took home that day,” Whitney wrote, “was a small brown trunk filled with what would be the most valuable inheritance a burgeoning jazz singer could ever receive – over a dozen sheets of music. Original music. Songs composed by my late grandfather Alex. I took one of the songs, ‘Don’t Say No If You Mean Maybe,’ a sweet melancholy love song, had it arranged and did a rough recording.
“That same year, I started to perform as a jazz soloist. The song became part of my repertoire. It’s now often requested when I perform. Following that, I added another of his original songs to my repertoire, the song we now call the Tiger Woods song, a sharply witty ditty called ‘(You’ve Got) Too Many Irons in the Fire.’
“Feeling a new determination to bring back Alex’s songs as well as seeing their popularity in my performances, I did a little more digging in that small brown trunk. I came across at least 20 more songs and a couple of 45-RPM records. The date on the peel-and-stick label is a handwritten date: August 31, 1946. Each of the records plays two songs. Songs that correspond with sheet music apparently published in 1941. Alex’s name appears on the sheet music.
“I immediately listened to the discs,” Whitney continued. “The singer sounds young, but lyrical and gentle, a definite example of the singers of that era. It wasn’t until a boisterous ride on the 501 Queen streetcar on a Friday night, listening passively to my ipod, that I realized the voice was almost certainly that of my Popou, my grandfather Alex. I started to cry. It wasn’t just the voice of my grandfather, a young man full of potential and love of music, a history yet to unfold. I was listening to my lineage. My own history, not just as a Barris, but as a singer. Here was the man, the voice that I came from. My Inheritance.
“So now, I’m committed to reviving these songs, yet unsung gems of music,” Whitney concluded. “Working with my favourite Toronto musicians, we will bring these songs back for their Canadian premiere. And somewhere, at the back of the room, I know my Popou will be there, listening. No doubt having a cigarette and a sipping a Scotch.”
And I’ve already figuratively pulled up a chair beside Alex, so we can compare bald spots, our philosophies of life and the priceless gift my dad left my daughter – an inheritance of words and music.