Adults were giants when I was growing up in the 1950s. My parents were gods, powerfully stomping into the village of my childhood. Their forbearing “fe-fi-fo-fum” lauded over my brothers and sister and kept me in a perpetual state of intimidating awe. My mother and father hoarded information like misers garner gold. If I asked either one how old they were the answer was “over 21” or “old enough to vote.” They usually responded to questions with “go look it up.” If it wasn’t in Funk and Wagnall’s encyclopedia, I was out of luck. Why wouldn’t they just tell me?

Standing on one of the elliptical machines at Gleason’s Boxing Gym in Brooklyn, my eyes followed my 28-year-old daughter Jillian. It was the first night of the qualifying fights for the Golden Gloves in 2016 and the gym was packed. She was competing in the 132 lb. women’s open division. We both belong to Mendez Boxing in Manhattan. She trains, I try to keep the beast of aging away. I am 66 years old. It is with a crippling pride, I watch her compete.

The gym was packed and I was sitting with friends. We were opposite Jill’s gold corner and behind her opponent in the blue corner. Moises Sanchez and Lupin Guzman were working the gold corner with Jillian. Their rugged good looks and rope-like bodies reflect over a century of boxing’s tattoos in their skin. They reminded me of a couple of alley cats letting their kitten take on a gnarly rodent for the first time. I couldn’t sit still when Jillian entered the ring. I was already digging my fingernails into my palm under a clenched fist. Pain is a great diversion from fear. I had to move and went to the machines.

Boxing gyms have an odor that you want to bite and chew the succulent mildew of sweat and hard work. Muhammad Ali would train at Gleason’s’ when he had a fight at Madison Square Garden.  Mike Tyson had an office there at one time. Andy Ruiz Jr. trained at Mendez’s Boxing Gym for weeks before defeating Anthony Joshua for the heavyweight title. Andy Lee the middleweight champion from Northern Ireland trained at Mendez before he defeated KeAndrae Leatherwood at the Garden. It was Andy’s last professional fight. The kindness I have consistently encountered in these gyms always seemed incongruent with the brutality of the sport. I rarely encounter so much love in one place. We hit the same bags; shadow boxed our reflections in the same wall of mirrors and moved around the same rings, I refer to it as the office. It is an honest hierarchy; regardless of your size or weight, you earn your status with humiliating hard work and determination. Sweat unites us; Ability separates. I wonder if I absorbed any champion DNA from the sweat on the bags. Certainly appears as if my daughter Jillian did. The NY Post once commented on her “missile-like right ” and “very good footwork,” after one of her wins on the road to “The Gloves.”

Jillian credits me for her involvement in the “sweet science.” I might have turned her onto it but she has made her own mark.

Ever since she was a kid, she was always surprising me. If I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom she’d call out from her crib sometimes climb out excited that we were going out to do something. Jillian always had this juice, an intensity that whetted her appetite for some lunacy. She also has a great capacity to be alone and enjoy herself. Like a “Jack In The Box” she’d pop out of her solitude with a plan as to what’s next. One day boxing was next.

I wrote her a Christmas card a couple of years ago and commented how she was always full of surprises, wonderful ones. She handed me a beautiful watercolor of a rain deer she had made for me. I didn’t know she painted.

By the time I was 22, I had dropped out of college twice and was arrested at least six times. When I became a father, I was terrified I’d mess it up. My daughters’ ability to excel always astounded me with a reverence and a profound relief that at least I didn’t screw them up. But to take some credit or acknowledgment I have something to do or helped them become who they are was like thinking I was a great poet or artist because William Blake and I have the same birthday. I chalked it up to chance. It didn’t feel like I did much but enjoy them and love them. When they were young I did drive them around a lot. Maybe it’s a constitutional zest for some action we share. The internal gusto that can help you excel or want to set yourself on fire.  Possibly, my daughters and I learned to transcend this intensity together.

My philosophy of parenthood was simple. I tried to let my daughters do whatever they wanted.  It’s not that easy. I was interested and wanted to support them but not interfere. Trying to control somebody’s life is for overseers and correction officers. You do that to someone; you are teaching them to be either chumps or rebels. I did recognize my parental duty to impart some philosophy; I am their father after all. Two of my favorites are making a stink if they ate Pringle Potato Chips in my presence, (The identical chips are unnatural and I suspected were a subliminal message towards conformity).  The second was you were taking a tremendous risk if you took a test or notes with anything other than a Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencil.

I always tried to catch them when they fell or at least nab them on the first bounce.

At Jill’s fight, I had to move again after realizing I was amidst her opponent’s entourage. Your entire id comes out when you’re invested in a fight. They were acting like their blue girl was winning, sounding like they wanted their girl to kill Jillian. You need more than enthusiasm to win in the ring.  Jillian was dominating from the first bell and I desperately wanted her cortege to go home disappointed. Sometimes her opponents look mean or showboat in the ring. Jillian is tall and beautiful. She smiles and is looking forward to having a good time. She is a disciplined fighter, old school; first you go for the body and wear your opponent down. Francisco Mendez was an early trainer for Jillian. He always said she fights like a Mexican. I wonder if Jill’s demeanor is more threatening than those deadly stares some fighters try to develop.

If I can focus and become fearful of her opponent it helps me want my daughter go in and murder. Her fights are nights of borderline ulcers for me.

It is much easier to get hit than watch someone you love be hurt. Getting banged in the nose feels like some creature crawled up a nostril and opened a can of Freon. It can throw your strategy off or get your head into the fight. That night, Jillian was fighting her fight.

Jillian knocked her opponent to the canvas twice for standing 8 counts in round 1 and 2 and won by TKO in the beginning of the third round. She has won the New York Golden Gloves twice and the Ringside World Championship in 2015.

Often when I’ve sparred or work with a trainer hitting the pads they comment,” Ah, I see where she gets it from.” My response is, “You got it backwards, I got it from her.” They laugh like I made some kind of joke. I didn’t joke and I got it from her.

Jillian has an older sister named Jenna. She caught the biggest striped bass I ever saw one night on a beach in Cape Cod at about 3 AM. I was looking at the tide chart that afternoon and high tide was hitting Nauset Light beach around 2:30. It was going to be a full moon making it perfect to fish off the beach. Jenna’s endless curiosity had tremendous momentum, familiarity brought on mystery. She asked if she could come with me. Why not? Jenna was maybe 12 years old.

When Jenna was choosing colleges she told me she wanted to go to the Rhode Island School of Design. I had never heard of it. While in grammar school and a couple of years into high school Jenna danced. She got into the Joffrey Ballet School when she was about 13 years old. One day I met her after a class she had and she was suppressing a laugh.

“Hey Dad, you know what Ms. Liz said to us today, if you girls don’t work hard now you’ll wind up going to college.” We thought that was hysterical.

Jenna was always rattling some cage. It wasn’t that she was fearless it was that her tenacious ambition was greater than any temptation to avoid some quest she deemed necessary. Her intensity was unsettling at times. Jenna is a troublemaker in the best sense of that tradition.

One day it was time for her to shake things up. “Hey Dad, I want to quit dance… You’re not mad are you?”

Had my pride and enthusiasm about her dancing put pressure on her? “Hey Jenna that’s fine, I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to do it.”

“No, no” she said, “its just you have been so supportive and now I want to stop. I thought you’d be disappointed.”

“No, no, it’s fine, did something happen?” I asked.

Jenna continued, “No, I’ve been thinking about it, I feel like a puppet on someone’s strings when I dance and I want to be the one pulling the strings. I want to go to art school.”

The articulation of her experience stunned me. How did she know herself so well? Where did her courage to be herself come from? I was relieved she didn’t want to be a lawyer or an accountant. She is beautiful and I would have loved her anyway.

In our neighborhood it wasn’t uncommon for girls to have lavish sweet sixteen parties. These events resembled weddings and were costly. I asked Jenna what she would like for her 16^th birthday. Granted, I would have arranged for a celebration had she wanted it. There was a part of me that found that possibility dreadful. Jenna after a few days told me she had thought about it and what she’d really like is a trombone. How cool is that? Hey a trombone let’s throw in a year of lessons.

Jenna did graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating she spent time in Providence and Boston editing a film for a well-known documentary filmmaker and making money as a waitress. It was on the job training for her. When she was done, it was time for her to go to New York. Her boy friend at the time wanted to stay in New England. The reason was he had a really good job. Jenna’s response was it’s a day job; you will become that job if you want to be an artist it’s time to go to NY and make art. We’ll figure out how to survive. Jenna left without him.

She stayed for a couple of years got itchy and it was time to up the ante again. Jenna decided to go to graduate school, in London. She told me afterwards at her interview they asked her why did she want to go there her response was something like it’s time to dive into my art more I could stay in NY and keep having lunch with my dad but it’s time.

“You said that?” I asked.

“Yes.” Jenna

“What did they say?” me.

“They laughed.” Jenna.

Jenna got her Masters of Art in Fine Art from Slade Art School in London.

One day she invited me to a talk on Lincoln Detox at the Bronx Museum. We arranged to meet there before it started.

In 1982, I was a social work intern at Lincoln Hospital’s Substance Abuse program and wrote a proposal to get funding from the city. They got the money and I got a job as a social worker. I made my professional bones in that place. The program was on 140^th street and Alexander Avenue in the South Bronx.  

I used to come home from Lincoln and comment that someone should make a film about the place. Jenna was a baby while I was working there.

Twenty-seven years later Jenna was making a film about that place. The detox program was started by a group of Young Lords and Black Panthers. After they occupied the hospital, the revolutionaries demanded that the city start a detox program using acupuncture to treat the people in their community that used drugs or alcohol. In the early 80’s the YL and BP were gone but the memory of them was palpable through out the place.

On my way to meet Jenna for the symposium, I had fantasies that one of the speakers would acknowledge me from the podium as a former employee that was integral in developing the program that now existed. Jenna would be so proud of her Dad. People, I had worked with would talk about how brave and tough I was. My daughter would look at me while I humbly basked in all that glory.

I arrived early and didn’t recognize anyone. No one recognized me. When Jenna arrived she was met with enthusiasm by all of the former Young Lords and Black Panthers. They were hugging her and confirming interview times.

She was gracious introducing me to all of her friends. Everyone I met that night were people my daughter introduced me too. They were all so grateful to her for getting their story out there. It was much better than the proud moment I had imagined. Jenna did finish the film; it’s called “The People’s Detox.”  

Sometimes my pride in them feels self indulgent, like I’m taking credit for something I didn’t do. Disappointments make them work harder. They intuitively knew things it took me years to figure out, like talent is dedication to practice. After you learn your craft then you can do things with distinction, as an artist. It was clear I didn’t want to train them to be bossed around and I remember parading around the house singing, Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm,” after I had some type of victory. That was the typical extent of my lectures.

My parental childhood awe re-emerged when they were born and has only waxed since then. I was able to tell them I didn’t know a lot of things when they asked me things I often said, “I don’t know, lets go find out.” We’re still learning a lot of stuff and they know exactly how old I am.

– John Bliss