Another year, another synagogue retreat

Posted on May 2, 2011 by 40andover

This year’s synagogue retreat didn’t provide as much blogging material as last year’s. But I have a gift of missing the whole point of a spiritual retreat. But someone said that G-d is in the details. That can’t be correct; see below.

The retreat started the same as last year, with the welcome sign that dared me to wreak such havoc that the sign would be revised to read “Maybe we are blessed by your arrival”.

Next year, I hope to report back that my efforts were successful.

The theme of the retreat was “transitions”. Actually, throughout the retreat, there were some really poignant and insightful observations as to certain life cycle and relationship transitions. Even I have to admit (grudgingly) that the discussions and religious services did strike chords in me.

There was a specific emphasis on inclusion of members of the transgender community and their stories and issues. Accordingly, our name tags listed our preferred pronouns, such as “she/her” “ze/hir” “he/his” “they/their”. My selections were so ordinary:

We got an upgrade from our accommodations last year. As you may remember, we stayed in a bungalow that the forest was in process of reclaiming. Apparently, nature correctly recognized it as a compost before the retreat management did. This year, our accommodations ranked a few levels above girl scout camp:

Ok, maybe just one level above girl scout camp. But we did have a mini-fridge.

The camp keeps the Sabbath and maintains a kosher kitchen. So, no coffee on the Sabbath. A riot almost breaks out each year. I heard someone offer anyone $1,000 for a latte. That night, the same person was offering even more for a shot of tequila, right after everyone found out there was no wine with dinner. Ok, the camp maybe “shomer shabbos” (Sabbath observant) but us visitors, well, not so much.

Also, the food was not so kid-friendly (cholent, quinoa with fruit and string beans, etc.), so one family broke the Sabbath and drove their kids to McDonald’s because the kids could find nothing to eat. Hey, living by Torah means that you can’t let your kids starve. (We packed enough snacks, yogurt and fruit so that TLP (our son, the little prince) would have enough to eat. We also had to rely on this stash.)

But there are helpful reminders to everyone about religiosity, especially in one’s most private moments:

(Same sign as last year, but good material is good material.)

The camp is also a working farm, so we saw Hasidic Jews tending to the goats. There was goatyurt for sale, “blessed” goat cheese, and other kumbaya stuff. In fact, the gift shop offered bottles of essence of peace of mind and women’s cycles.

Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya. Oh, Lord, kumbaya.

I don’t know if POB (partner of blogger) can convince me to go for a third time.

Closing in on 47

Posted on April 26, 2011 by 40andover

I know that 47 isn’t a “big” birthday.

However, when I was 43, two people told me on separate occasions that I looked great for 47.

Adding the corresponding years, I must look great for 51. And 51, I shall be.

That means I am one year overdue for that introspective, moribund deconstruction of my life. [Cue: music from triste French films of the 60s and scenes of deep, deep contemplative monosyllabic conversations with long pauses and spectacular sensual exhalation of cigarette smoke.]

Our discussion at Seder this year about free will made me think about choices I have made and wonder about whether they were in fact choices or dictated by my learned responses. Does free will always have the caveat, “to the extent that your upbringing and life experience haven’t made the choice for you”?

That is a big question that I cannot answer tonight.

All I know is that my skin is not as radiant as it was last week. But then again I was 46 last week and this week I will be 51. I think that I just now understand the difference between accrual- and cash-based accounting.

Georgia, long time passing

Posted on April 24, 2011 by 40andover

Dear Georgia:

It has been five years since you gave POB (partner of blogger) your blessing and then left this world shortly thereafter.

It was characteristically non-dramatic and understated: you pronounced yourself satisfied with our first Passover and with the matzo balls that floated.

I was keeping an eye on you (for signs of approval) at that Seder and you looked like you enjoyed the ritual, the discussion and the food. You looked comfortable and relieved that the traditions would continue for another generation. Dare I say proud of POB? I have told POB my observations over and over again so she could imagine it and derive solace from it.

Yesterday, POB and I recited Kaddish on this fifth anniversary of your death. How is it possible that time speeds by?

I don’t know how close your final resting place is to us and whether you need a telescope. So, I will catch you up a bit on life after you left.

POB ultimately found her bearings. For a while it was too much for her gentle heart. And, she and I, we have different ways of mourning. I mourn out loud and POB mourns quietly, in a more dignified way. But that also means so much was bottled up for too long. I watched, unable to help. With time, POB re-emerged, stronger than ever. (We are now more able to navigate our times of stress and unhappiness in a way that brings us together.)

TLP (our son, the little prince) is a marvel. Sometimes, he speaks like a character in a British novel. I have to laugh; that is you in him. I can draw a direct line in the family tree — no dilution in that gene. He just put on some Persian rock music for me to hear. He said he really thought the melodies and rhythms were cool. Need I say more?

TLP and SOSOPOB (son of sister of POB) are deeply bonded and both are growing up to be sweet, smart boys. That makes us all happy; two kids without siblings reaching out to each other as more than cousins — perhaps, brothers.

FOPOB (your husband and father of POB) is, as you used to say, “more so”. His personality is getting distilled and some of it is too sharp to let roll off. Of course, you aren’t here to soften his edges. He tells other people how proud he is of POB. POB would like to hear it directly, but I emphasize that the point is that the message gets delivered.

He dotes (to the extent he has that gene) on SOSOPOB and SOPOB (sister of POB). I don’t think it is always easy for us because while we don’t need FOPOB’s generosity (to the extent that is a noun applicable to him), we would like him to be in TLP’s life. Nevertheless, we are grateful for his interest in SOSOPOB. And, the Blogger family is incredibly fond of SOSOPOB.

Your daughters are finding their grooves. POB gets more fabulous each day. And, she even looks more and more like you.

Georgia, your line continues, strong and resilient, older (and maybe a little sadder) but infused with your memory. Please try to visit POB in her dreams. I know she would like to see and hear you again.

~~ Blogger

Twas the day before Passover, and all through the house. . .

Posted on April 17, 2011 by 40andover

It is really the day before the eve of the holiday (because we celebrate holidays from sunset to sunset) but every creature was stirring. Heck, 15 people are coming over.

POB (partner of blogger) made a vat of chicken soup. She rendered chicken fat which, if you’ve done it, you know that is a disgusting necessity for light, floating matzo balls. The whole house smells like a barn. And while we are talking about matzo balls, I need to note for the record that the Blogger family tradition is that matzo balls sink, not float. Their intended purpose — so say those in my tribe — is to line your stomach for the coming week of no bread and also give you a reason to complain about intestinal issues, e.g., (in a Yiddish accent) “I ate such a heavy matzo ball that it is cement in my stomach, and boy-oh-boy, have I got troubles getting anything out!!”. However unpleasant, it is my inheritance.

But MOPOB (mother of POB), may she rest in peace, made floating matzo balls. And since Passover is all about MOPOB (my mother’s memory is invoked on Thanksgiving), we “sinkers” just sigh and “boing” the matzo balls with our figures, wondering if, with a little push, they might sink. No such luck these past few years. So part of our Passover narrative (“and you shall tell your children on that day . . . “) also includes the sinker-floater dichotomy, because as surely as there were Israelites on the shore of the Red Sea, they were also arguing about whose matzo was better. So, it is just in keeping with the tradition. So I shall tell my child that “on that day” there were no floaters in the land of Egypt. Ok, that isn’t fair because there weren’t sinkers either. There wasn’t matzo ball soup. But history is written by the conquerors and vanquished loud-mouths. I can live with being in the latter category on the matzo ball issue.

Those of you who aren’t Jewish may not appreciate that importance of this. This is a divide that can splinter families. We are talking about our grandmothers’ and great grandmothers’ recipes. We are talking about the overbearing, tyrannical beings that, upon death, miraculously turned into angels in everyone’s memories. We are talking about tradition. [Start singing from Fiddler on the Roof.] This is big.

But MOPOB’s traditions must prevail. She was terminally ill at our first Seder in our home in 2006. She pronounced herself satisfied with the celebration — a high compliment and tantamount to a blessing on our home and us — and then, within 36 hours was hospitalized and soon died. You can’t mess with that heavy trip.

I needed chairs and an extra table from my Dad. We had lunch and then went down to the storage bins in his apartment building. Dad is looking great these days, although slower since his fall two weeks ago. Still he grabbed the hand truck at the entrance to this scary storage room in the bowels of his apartment building. Only one light worked. He and I were feeling around in the dark for his folding table and chairs. We found them and managed not to fall or otherwise hurt either of us. Every year we go through this ritual and I make a note to self to remind the doorman about the lighting. Every year, Dad and I forget. Every year, we grope in the dark until we find what we need. So far, it has worked for us. Tradition.

Tradition.

Tradition.

Remembrances of things past

Posted on April 14, 2011 by 40andover

TLP (the little prince, my son) checked out a library book on fishing. We had to read about each fish, length, weight, best bait and whether the species would put up a fight. Also we had to go through the various baits (it WAS a how-to book, after all) and the only thing I could add was when we got to fly fishing. I told him we could go on the Orville’s Fly Fishing School website (I silently prayed it had not gone into Chapter 11 or dissolved).

When it came time for me to read about a fish that was a pesky fighter, I recounted my family’s trip to San Francisco, circa 1968. Mom and Dad took us to eat at the Fisherman’s Wharf, which — at that time — was an exotic dining destination. My parents were dressed in evening wear, so I presume that after dinner we were being dropped off at the hotel with a sitter, but I can’t remember. I do remember fishing for our dinner and Dad’s having caught a pesky, fighting fish that flailed in and out of his tuxedo jacket. Mom and Dad must have eaten that fish (I think we kids stayed with hamburgers).

That was the first and last time we went fishing with Dad or anyone. Too traumatic. If TLP wants to go fishing, Uncle HOSOB (husband of sister of blogger) or Cousin Gentle will have to take him. Thinking back 43 years ago, I am still traumatized.

Even more tales from the 60s

Posted on April 14, 2011 by 40andover

I mentioned to POB (partner of blogger) that if I don’t write down these memories, soon they will be lost because my brain is maxing out.

The 60s were not all days of wine and roses. Some of it was very confusing to a little kid.

I remember when our Jamaican-born baby nurse was not allowed to go into a Sutton Place apartment building to speak to the mother of a boy who hit my sister. Even in our own building, she had to stare down the landlord who told her she had to take the service elevator. She took the main passenger elevator. I was wide-eyed and only later understood what happened.

And yet, for years after his assassination, our baby nurse reminisced about that day that then Senator Bobby Kennedy held the door open for her on his way to the tennis club in our building. People born after those times don’t see how big that was.

Mom used to tell us that her secretary told her not to marry Dad because he was a Jew. Mom had to break the news to her secretary that Mom was also Jewish. To Mom’s credit, she continued to work with that secretary.

I look at it more practically: Mom was dropping an intimidating Polish last name for a generic Jewish one. In those days, it was also a question of: “pick your poison”.

PLaza3-9285

Posted on April 10, 2011 by 40andover

That was my family phone number for 50 years.

Not 212 753 9285.

PL3-9285.

PL for PLAZA, meaning midtown east.

My dad’s office phone was JU2-1455. JU meant Judson for midtown west. There was MU for Murray Hill, etc. GR for Gramercy Park. POB (partner of blogger)’s home phone was GR3-9119.

And it wasn’t just a series of numbers, but it located you in area of town. Like old-fashioned GPS. Your phone number made you less anonymous. And you couldn’t take your home or business number with you if you moved across town. Wires and technology couldn’t handle that. So, if you had a GR or MU or JU or PL number, you lived or worked in a geographically defined area.

And our zip code was 22, not 10022. In the 1960s, you didn’t need five-digit zip codes, let alone the new nine digit ones.

Of course, some people (very few still alive) remember 6-digit phone numbers. They probably think I am late to the game of recognizing the lost nuances of day-to-day life in New York City.

But, today, I came across my birth announcement, among the memorabilia that I, as family archivist, need to preserve. And it held more information than the fact of my birth (as a result of which my family was forever changed — some say for the better, others say “not so much”). It captured a time and place in New York in the 1960s, where my family’s PL prefix in our phone number and our home address reflected upward mobility, into places where Jews mostly couldn’t find apartments. It also suggest certain life that fashioned after JFK’s Camelot (at least until private school tuition kicked in).

The 60s gave way to the 70s and the urban decay. Then came the late 70s, 80s and 90s and urban renewal and soaring population growth. The end of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st gave rise to untold fortunes and a sea change in the socio-economic-racial-cultural urban landscape.

The nuances of numbers and two-digit zip codes were irrelevant and unworkable even in the late 70s. Every now and again, I see a decades-old advertisement on a building that time forgot (until the lot next to it was demolished to build a high-rise) that has a six-digit phone number with a prefix that refers to a neighborhood.

And I think, I was born in a small town. I was raised in small town. It just got big and anonymous during my lifetime. And these strangers don’t know the secrets of my small town.

And that’s good enough for me.

Carpe Diem

Posted on April 5, 2011 by 40andover

Tonight SOB (sister of blogger) and I had dinner with our uncle. He is 81 years-old. He has been in a slow decline in the last two or so years but able to dance (his life-long passion) and go about his life.

Unfortunately, he has aged rather dramatically in the last month. So, SOB and I needed to convince him to let us help. Just when we were bracing ourselves for the image we had, when he walked into the restaurant, the even further downward trajectory was so profound that it was hard not to cry.

He has our aunt, his partner of 60+ years, and he has SOB and me. There is no one else close by. (And our aunt has her own medical issues.)

He always said he lived every day as he wanted. He said he hated going to sleep because he never wanted to end a day.

But living life on his terms and according to his muses often meant that he didn’t show up for his family (his parents or my mother — his sister) in their times of need.

I guess carpe diem means different things to different people.

As SOB and I helped him into our aunt’s apartment building (they have always lived separately), he lurched for the elevator and forgot to look back or kiss us goodbye.

Life on his terms.

The world is too much with me today

Posted on April 4, 2011 by 40andover

I have been close to many in my life who did not have children. They were/are blood relatives or relatives-by-love.

Now, another set needs SOB’s (sister of blogger’s) and my help. These two people were the heroes of our youth, the fun and youthful aunt and uncle. They had lives in theater, dance, and the arts. They knew interesting people and were “mod” when “mod” was cool. They lived life on their terms and expanded our imaginations behind where our parents tried to direct our paths.

They are old now and much diminished. A generation slipping through our fingers, as we try to make the twilight comfortable and the darkness not so scary. They once were kings and queens of their destiny and audaciously bohemian in their lifestyles.

And now their nieces, a doctor and a lawyer exactly as their parents had planned, must introduce — gently, very gently — the calculable reality.

Because even free spirits need grounded guides through the indignities of aging. But we have to learn their terms and conditions for aging. There is no room for hubris in thinking we know what they want. We have to ask and we have to listen.

When Mom died, we knew what she wanted — we had talked about it for years, as the cancer began to win — and it was easier to do what needed to be done. It was excruciating but the details and the path forward were clear. How ironic.

And yet I am concerned and sad, but not “down” because we are trying to do what must be done in the gentlest, most honest way possible.

Wish us luck.

The Sandwich Generation

Posted on April 3, 2011 by 40andover

The Sandwich Generation doesn’t mean just taking care of your parents while you raise your children. It means taking care of your parents’ siblings and their spouses, if there aren’t children capable of stepping up.

So, after taking care of our mom, tending to our our dad (still on-going), and my taking care of a childless couple who were surely as much family as any aunt or uncle, SOB (sister of blogger) and I need to focus on Mom’s brother and his non-wife of 60+ years.

We have to tread gently. At my grandfather’s deathbed, he made me promise that I would take care of my aunt and uncle. I made a promise. A solemn oath. SOB and I knew our responsibilities before Grandpa asked. But a deathbed oath to a 99 year-old man has a depth and complexity and a moral imperative that cannot be expressed in mere words.

We know what our parents wanted/want for the end of their lives. They made it as clear as possible.

We need to understand our uncle’s and aunt’s wishes, as they age and grow infirm.

But our aunt and uncle lived life on their terms and we have to learn those terms. We will also have to learn things about their lives and their unfulfilled aspirations that children and nieces needn’t ever know. Aside from the medical and logistical realities of failing relatives are the truths of their lives — their yearnings, their losses, their unrequited dreams, their failings and, we hope, their senses of triumph. But we don’t know where this road leads.

Our goals are simple: maximum comfort and independence, and sense of fulfillment for our aging relatives. We can strive to provide the first prong.

It is a religious, moral and social compact that binds the generations. It is our sacred duty, even if the day-to-day makes us crazy (ok, crazier). I will complain about it, I will always be mindful of, and grateful for, this compact.

40 — oh wait, yikes!! 50 — andoverblog

Aging and living in urban US

Category Archives: Aging