This morning’s coffeewalk. Eleven degrees and snow flurries and beautiful. Warmed by thick winter layers, my travel mug of coffee, and memories of my father. Gone fourteen years today.

Dan Kalikow, 3/2/43-2/26/09. We called him Nurn, because it was silly and he adored silliness.

If you know me even a little, then you know him a little. His face is in my mirror in the mornings. I’ve got his jaw and cheekbones, his eyes, his nose.

I’ve also got his temperament, to some extent. He had a certain gregarious awkwardness. And a terrible penchant for puns. In the days before dad jokes were a thing, he’d say, “That reminds me of the classic story…” and he’d be off into one of his immense repertoire of long-tailed jokes which made us groan as kids, but which I find myself telling more and more often now… so if you laugh, you can thank Nurn, and if you don’t, you can blame him. ; )

I wouldn’t coffeewalk if I weren’t his daughter. I’ve got his love of nature; not that my mom doesn’t have that too, of course, but Nurn is the one who had a favorite tree in the neighborhood that he’d detour to marvel at in every season. He’d wake up before dawn on vacation to take timelapse movies of the sunrise. On the other end of the day, he’d applaud the sunset. He brought the first springtime forsythia, slim red-brown branches laden with bright yellow blossoms, to his own father’s hospital room as Grampa faded out, trying desperately to reconnect him to the rhythmic seasonal beauty of this place they both loved.

He had a special kind of pure-hearted integrity. Nurn was Nurn to his absolute core. I’m not idealizing; I was 37 when he died, old enough to know that he was a human being, a full person with complications and imperfections. But there was a fundamental simplicity to him that shone out into the world. He beamed at babies and they beamed back. He struggled to understand cruelty and duplicity, because they were so alien to him. Dr. Cornel West once said, “Justice is what love looks like in public,” and that is exactly why Nurn, with a heart so full of love, became more of a social justice warrior with every year of his life.

So when I saw this on my walk this morning, it spoke to me of him. Not *from* him; he was way too much of an atheist for that. But what could you possibly call this, other than a blossom of snow?

“Blossom of snow
May you bloom and grow
Bloom and grow forever”

From a song whose subtext is about loving the beauty of your native place, and saying goodbye to it. About loving your country, and standing up to fascism. Now that I look it up, the last song written by Oscar Hammerstein as he was dying of stomach cancer.

Nurn died of bowel cancer fourteen years ago, in the early hours of the morning. He slipped away with all of us around him. We thought we’d have a few more weeks with him, but it was okay. He’d already given us the gift of letting us know he was ready to go. And that he was ready for us to move on.

Onwards. With love. Always.