So cold. But you know, you can't just stay home because it's cold. Shabbas ends early, around 5:15, so there are parties and shiva houses, and of course, there are my parents who wouldn't mind a visit.
We take our time, putter around cleaning up dishes, putting things away, and the other doc runs off to see a patient in the hospital. It is a patient who has no insurance, who has no money, who has no resources, either. He will spend the next few days unraveling her mystery, and I'll listen to the upshot, because frankly, other people's troubles, don't sound so bad, somehow. Something about degrees of separation.
I hear him honk lightly and face the chill, for that's all it is, really. There's no snow left on the sidewalks, for people have shoveled (the good people have shoveled, the bad ones have not). First stop is my parents' house.
They're happy to see us, both still dressed (it's awful when people are in their robes in the early evening, she writes, in her bathrobe). They look good, smiley, happy he's back from the hospital and has resigned himself to the limitations of having a nondisplaced fracture. He walks with a walker and uses the raised toilet seat. The visiting nurse is God, and they will listen and obey.
No more falls, no more trouble, he'll have PT and OT and it is all good.
We talk about Florida. I say, "Maybe next year. Wouldn't that be great?"
My mother looks at me. "Who are you appeasing?"
I guess not. No Florida, not next year, not unless an angel appears who will take care of them there. They're self-sufficient, if you call leaving the house for a full hour on a given day to get to the fruit store or the beauty parlor self-sufficient.
We make plans for Monday's dialysis. One of us will be there to help him into the car. I'll take the morning, the doc will get free for the return home in the afternoon. He'll get to see the garage, how I've moved things around to make room for the car, the fishing poles, the golf clubs, the gardening gear, the plumbing supplies, and he'll wonder what I threw out.
Flying Bubbie, grounded
NaBloPoMo link
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Unmanageable
It's hard to admit it, it really is, when your life has become unmanageable. You have to be an alcoholic in recovery, seriously, or you have to work with these wonderful souls, to even be aware that there is such a thing, limitations, and that we should be respectful of our own.
Anyway.
It's why I haven't blogged since September. This proverbial sandwich, you know, people like me, the meat. I like the position, there seems to be power in there somehow, barging in and out of people's lives at their will.
Dad's been in and out of the hospital, each time it seems life-threatening, each time he leaves smiling that smile that says, "Did you see the fish I brought home? Have you ever seen fish like that?"
I'm deep in flashbackland. We're not talking about tropical fish, not the kind that I raise, but the type that real fishermen fish for, with a real rod and reel, real hooks and worms, whatever.
I can hook a worm, learned with the best. Caught a huge trout once, too. Huge.
There's much to say, so much to catch up on. This is one of the parshiot (Hebrew: rhymes with or sounds like, car-tree-oat) of life, chapters of life that is well worth recording. And even though it feels as if there certainly isn't time to record it, I intend to try.
The pasta is hot and in the winter, we Chicagoans get it while it's hot. The post says it published on New Year's Day, but the truth is, I wrote it on January 3, 2010.
Does that make me a bad person?
Flying Hopeful, if at all, despite the meshuganah kup who wanted to blow up that flight to Detroit.
Flying Bubbie
Anyway.
It's why I haven't blogged since September. This proverbial sandwich, you know, people like me, the meat. I like the position, there seems to be power in there somehow, barging in and out of people's lives at their will.
Dad's been in and out of the hospital, each time it seems life-threatening, each time he leaves smiling that smile that says, "Did you see the fish I brought home? Have you ever seen fish like that?"
I'm deep in flashbackland. We're not talking about tropical fish, not the kind that I raise, but the type that real fishermen fish for, with a real rod and reel, real hooks and worms, whatever.
I can hook a worm, learned with the best. Caught a huge trout once, too. Huge.
There's much to say, so much to catch up on. This is one of the parshiot (Hebrew: rhymes with or sounds like, car-tree-oat) of life, chapters of life that is well worth recording. And even though it feels as if there certainly isn't time to record it, I intend to try.
The pasta is hot and in the winter, we Chicagoans get it while it's hot. The post says it published on New Year's Day, but the truth is, I wrote it on January 3, 2010.
Does that make me a bad person?
Flying Hopeful, if at all, despite the meshuganah kup who wanted to blow up that flight to Detroit.
Flying Bubbie
Monday, September 21, 2009
Going Out of Your Way
My spouse of over 34 years, he should live and be well, says to me, sometime over R"H:
Me:
I wake up at 3 and he's not back from shul; I think he must be asleep on the couch.
4 o'clock, he's not there.
4:30, I get up to make coffee before the fast, sure he's making pancakes. Don't smell anything.
He's gone.
Still at selichos?
Nah.
He's busy doing mitzvos, 3rd day of the year, already to Springfield. Can I complain?
Obviously not.
Flying Bubbie, saluting Driving Saba
I'm going to go to St. Louis to see my brother, probably Sunday night or early Monday morning after selichos.His brother got a kidney, 'kain yirbu', two days before year's end, the kidney and he should live and be well, they should live happily ever after together, HaShem Yisborach!
Me:
You're not driving to St. Louis alone on Sunday night. Are you crazy? Fly there.I forget all about this conversation. A lot happens inbetween, mainly Rosh HaShana. We go to bed Sunday night after the holiday at 9:30, exhausted from yuntif (and all the food). He generally gets up at midnight to go to selichos.
I wake up at 3 and he's not back from shul; I think he must be asleep on the couch.
4 o'clock, he's not there.
4:30, I get up to make coffee before the fast, sure he's making pancakes. Don't smell anything.
He's gone.
Still at selichos?
Nah.
He's busy doing mitzvos, 3rd day of the year, already to Springfield. Can I complain?
Obviously not.
Flying Bubbie, saluting Driving Saba
Atlanta
Well, my son and his family moved into a new home, a real home of their own with a back yard, mosquitos, and everything. They're renting, but who cares? It's just wonderful.
And I, of course, had to visit. I couldn't face people on Rosh Hashana who would ask me about it without having had a firsthand look.
Hannah was pleased to see me, really happy, I think, and generally used me for support against her parents. This is how it goes with grandchildren. I played the fence as well as I could, but mostly told her to play along, try not to kick her brother.
She stopped doing that, at least during my visit, after the story about the bigger kid. There's always someone bigger, is the truth. How I wish I could remember that story now. No idea. She might.
Anway, as soon as we got home from the airport the two of us ran circles around the yard, which is huge, so that knocked us out. After that we basically played on the swing set and tossed a beach ball, your usual stuff with 3 year-olds.
At some point we're inside and I set down my glasses, because I'm at the age where you just do this all the time, set down your glasses, because they don't work, so you take them off, set them down. But this time, since I had hit the wall, I whipped them off in Stage One sleep.
I wake up from the power nap of dreams, a very fast cycle, maybe five minutes, a little confused. And when you're confused, you want your glasses. So I look for them to no avail. This makes me nervous, for although they're no good reading. . . for driving and seeing distance, they're life itself.
I give up, put on one contac lens. This works, actually.
The day plods on and every once in awhile we look for the glasses. Nada.
I picture them in a few pieces. They're glass, I think.
Then Hannah, hands behind her back, proclaims,
My daugher-in-law, who did an unbelievable job making me feel comfortable and putting weight on me, oh, that peach cobbler, called me the next day to ask if I'd seen, by any chance, a magazine with recipes in it. I mentioned I had wanted one of them. Any chance?
I should have said, "Look under the ottoman," of course.
"No idea," I tell her, "but if you find it, shoot me that brisket recipe."
She never gets back to me. But right before the holiday tells me, "Mom. It was under the ottoman. That magazine."
If I didn't know better, I'd say there's a pattern here.
Seeing Bubbie
And I, of course, had to visit. I couldn't face people on Rosh Hashana who would ask me about it without having had a firsthand look.
Hannah was pleased to see me, really happy, I think, and generally used me for support against her parents. This is how it goes with grandchildren. I played the fence as well as I could, but mostly told her to play along, try not to kick her brother.
She stopped doing that, at least during my visit, after the story about the bigger kid. There's always someone bigger, is the truth. How I wish I could remember that story now. No idea. She might.
Anway, as soon as we got home from the airport the two of us ran circles around the yard, which is huge, so that knocked us out. After that we basically played on the swing set and tossed a beach ball, your usual stuff with 3 year-olds.
At some point we're inside and I set down my glasses, because I'm at the age where you just do this all the time, set down your glasses, because they don't work, so you take them off, set them down. But this time, since I had hit the wall, I whipped them off in Stage One sleep.
I wake up from the power nap of dreams, a very fast cycle, maybe five minutes, a little confused. And when you're confused, you want your glasses. So I look for them to no avail. This makes me nervous, for although they're no good reading. . . for driving and seeing distance, they're life itself.
I give up, put on one contac lens. This works, actually.
The day plods on and every once in awhile we look for the glasses. Nada.
I picture them in a few pieces. They're glass, I think.
Then Hannah, hands behind her back, proclaims,
I found something.She shows me the glasses.
Where did you find them?! Hugs, kisses, whoops.
Under the ottoman.She's three and uses words like ottoman. Probably most of them do, right?
My daugher-in-law, who did an unbelievable job making me feel comfortable and putting weight on me, oh, that peach cobbler, called me the next day to ask if I'd seen, by any chance, a magazine with recipes in it. I mentioned I had wanted one of them. Any chance?
I should have said, "Look under the ottoman," of course.
"No idea," I tell her, "but if you find it, shoot me that brisket recipe."
She never gets back to me. But right before the holiday tells me, "Mom. It was under the ottoman. That magazine."
If I didn't know better, I'd say there's a pattern here.
Seeing Bubbie
Monday, July 27, 2009
The T-Bird
My father has a white late-model T-bird with tan leather seats and he's pretty proud of it. He made FD drive him to the hospital in it a few weeks ago. You sit pretty low in this car. He just loves it.
Last week he was admitted to the hospital so the professionals could encourage his kidneys to pump out some of the water he he's gained. Twenty-eight pounds later, they released him. But while he was there, the subject of his pace-maker popped up. It's due for a new battery in a few months, and one of the wires doesn't work.
The young cardiologist says to him, as he sits helplessly connected to various IV's, kindly (he thinks) but with a voice full of authority, "If they told you that you had a body wracked full of cancer, would you bother with a new pace-maker?"
A mean thing to say to an old guy, I thought, when I heard it. Wish I had been there, would he ever have heard it from me in the hallway.
Let's put it another way, give the guy a fighting chance.
"If you had an old car, a really, really old car, one that needed a lot of work, would you bother putting a new engine in it?"
My father would say, in a heartbeat, "If I liked the car."
Flying a Little Angry. Still.
Last week he was admitted to the hospital so the professionals could encourage his kidneys to pump out some of the water he he's gained. Twenty-eight pounds later, they released him. But while he was there, the subject of his pace-maker popped up. It's due for a new battery in a few months, and one of the wires doesn't work.
The young cardiologist says to him, as he sits helplessly connected to various IV's, kindly (he thinks) but with a voice full of authority, "If they told you that you had a body wracked full of cancer, would you bother with a new pace-maker?"
A mean thing to say to an old guy, I thought, when I heard it. Wish I had been there, would he ever have heard it from me in the hallway.
Let's put it another way, give the guy a fighting chance.
"If you had an old car, a really, really old car, one that needed a lot of work, would you bother putting a new engine in it?"
My father would say, in a heartbeat, "If I liked the car."
Flying a Little Angry. Still.
Hobbies
Yesterday FD and I met with my brother and sister-in-law, had dinner at Bagel Country. We rode our bikes up to Skokie and I didn't even care how I looked. It's Bagel Country.
But we stopped off at my parents first.
"What's on your skirt?" first thing my mother says to me. I'm wearing blue culottes and there is some weird white chalky-looking something on my backside, something from the wash. I tell her it's very 9 days.
She's in the basement sweeping the floor and doing laundry, and my father is out buying plants for his award winning, were there an award in Skokie, garden. He has his landscaper put them in. His attention to this, when the doctors wrote him off just last week, is equivalent to mine with the fish tanks, but better.
Mother complains to me that my father has taken the car and gone to get some lunch, but it's been over an hour and she's worried. He didn't take his phone, either. He hasn't told her the truth, that he's buying plants.
We walk upstairs (I've fallen down this narrow stairway and cringe every time I see her do this, G-d should protect her) and I once again offer to install a washer-dryer in the bathroom upstairs. She won't do it, even if we pay. And she WON'T use the cane. This is for old people.
My father walks in the door he looks like he's about to say Shmah, seriously.
"Where've you been shmaying?" I ask. Now I understand the origin of this Yiddish for wandering.
"I can't talk," he says and sits down on the couch in the den. "Tired." He revives with a little with water, like his plants. My mother walks in and screams at him. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? He whispers something about flats of plants in the T-bird. I tell him how nice his garden is looking, and it is.
FD asks why the cell phones are on the floor. My father gives over the obvious answer. They're charging. "But you might trip on the cords. Why don't you. . ."
My father waves it away, whatever he's going to say.
Flying North
But we stopped off at my parents first.
"What's on your skirt?" first thing my mother says to me. I'm wearing blue culottes and there is some weird white chalky-looking something on my backside, something from the wash. I tell her it's very 9 days.
She's in the basement sweeping the floor and doing laundry, and my father is out buying plants for his award winning, were there an award in Skokie, garden. He has his landscaper put them in. His attention to this, when the doctors wrote him off just last week, is equivalent to mine with the fish tanks, but better.
Mother complains to me that my father has taken the car and gone to get some lunch, but it's been over an hour and she's worried. He didn't take his phone, either. He hasn't told her the truth, that he's buying plants.
We walk upstairs (I've fallen down this narrow stairway and cringe every time I see her do this, G-d should protect her) and I once again offer to install a washer-dryer in the bathroom upstairs. She won't do it, even if we pay. And she WON'T use the cane. This is for old people.
My father walks in the door he looks like he's about to say Shmah, seriously.
"Where've you been shmaying?" I ask. Now I understand the origin of this Yiddish for wandering.
"I can't talk," he says and sits down on the couch in the den. "Tired." He revives with a little with water, like his plants. My mother walks in and screams at him. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? He whispers something about flats of plants in the T-bird. I tell him how nice his garden is looking, and it is.
FD asks why the cell phones are on the floor. My father gives over the obvious answer. They're charging. "But you might trip on the cords. Why don't you. . ."
My father waves it away, whatever he's going to say.
Flying North
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The iPhone and the Nine Days
It really isn't right, not fair, just my luck, that I chose to upgrade to the new iPhone during the Three Weeks, those sad weeks before Tisha B'Av when we don't buy new clothes or listen to music, at least not so everyone knows about it.
But my phone is shot and it won't let me answer sometimes, and why have a phone if you can't answer it? So it was a choice between the iPhone and the Blackberry, because I need a smart phone, and they cost almost the same, so after much eeny meenie minee moe,
I chose i.
But to get it, to pick it up, set it up, sync everything and not listen to music is truly torture. Can you imagine? And all my daughter's songs, her iTunes that we put on my laptop hoping they would play but they wouldn't play because my computer simply didn't have the clout, THEY WORK!
(I know this, but didn't play them, honest).
The good news is that ATT gave me a lousy headset so if I wanted to listen to music I couldn't.
It's back to the store I go.
Flying Almost Musical
But my phone is shot and it won't let me answer sometimes, and why have a phone if you can't answer it? So it was a choice between the iPhone and the Blackberry, because I need a smart phone, and they cost almost the same, so after much eeny meenie minee moe,
I chose i.
But to get it, to pick it up, set it up, sync everything and not listen to music is truly torture. Can you imagine? And all my daughter's songs, her iTunes that we put on my laptop hoping they would play but they wouldn't play because my computer simply didn't have the clout, THEY WORK!
(I know this, but didn't play them, honest).
The good news is that ATT gave me a lousy headset so if I wanted to listen to music I couldn't.
It's back to the store I go.
Flying Almost Musical
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
While You're Up There
I'm at the airport and the stupid Bluetooth is going off in my ear, a Star Wars theme maybe, I don't know, and the Airtran sales rep is barking at me, offering me a free trip if I sign up for a credit card, which is something we all need, another credit card.
I answer the phone and think it's FD, but it's my son. "I have bad news."
It's noisy so I walk into a restroom where there is less noise and he says, "Miriam passed away. Mo's mother."
I walked out of the restroom to cry, emote, feel the shock and outrage, to be among people. NO!
Mo is my son's best friend. Mine continues, "I'm going to come in on Sunday to pay a shiva call. I hope that will be enough. I just can't get there for the funeral."
They're calling me to board. I'm in a trance all the way home. A tzedikat has been taken from us. I can't believe it. The best person in the world, no longer with us. What will we do?
Which is the question on everyone's mind at the levayah, the funeral this morning. Whatever will we do without her? She was the reason the world kept spinning, one of the reasons. As her spouse the rabbi said, she represented the best of all daughters, the best of all mothers, the best of all sisters, the best of all friends. And she loved her own family so much that she treated everyone else as extended family, there was so much love, excess love.
The first speaker, Rabbi Gedalia Schwartz didn't ask why so much as, Why do we pray (for he had just noticed, this past week, during tachanun), why do we pray not to be struck by makas ha maves? The blow of death. Isn't death an inevitable part of life? Why would we pray that He mercifully spare us?
The Rav tells us that when someone passes on before his or her time, someone wonderful, someone that the community needs, that it is a slap to the entire community, a much different slap, much harder, than when an older person passes on. We feel the pain much more, it is community pain. And there was not a dry eye, I am not exaggerating, in the synagogue, everyone at the levayah crying. Everyone her best friend. She was everyone's teacher.
The next speaker, the principal of the school where she had taught for a few dozen years or more, bereft, a mourner himself, spoke of losing a colleague who was better than himself, who had a work ethic that never flagged, no lunch for Miryam, no break. No time to chit chat. Too many children to help. And she saved hundreds, no, thousands, educationally, many of whom may not even remember what she did for them.
Then Miryam's spouse, the rabbi, a beloved friend of all in the community, sobbed as he shared with us his life with her, his stories, gifts. He reminded us how she suffered so many illnesses with a smile, how she never complained, never burdened anyone, as seriously ill as she was, you never knew. He didn't know how she felt half the time; she didn't complain, not even to him.
Just to confirm, reality check, we were not best friends Miryam and I, and I wasn't even a half-way decent friend, although I owed her, because she helped us with our children, as she helped everyone. But we liked each other (she loved everyone, really), and when we talked on social occasions she would vaguely refer to her various physical problems, only when asked, as if they were no big deal.
We were together yapping at a kiddish in shul, seems like yesterday but it has to have been several months ago, maybe even a year, and she asked me, "What do you think? Should I get a PhD?" Me, so out of it, "Why not?!" She smiled as if to say, "So impossible, silly, as if I don't have enough to do already."
She taught us everything, how to be truly serious about life and yet to laugh at it. Once she sat next to me in shul, many, many years ago, looked over my shoulder and laughed at me.
"What's so funny?"
She says, "You're reading the divrei Torah in the Leckutai Peshatim!"
(Leckutai Peshatim is supposed to be a leaflet of thoughts and stories about Torah, learning, but most read it for the community announcements on the back page.
She continues, "You're the only one I've ever seen who reads it from front to back." Then! Now, every time I start from back to front I feel guilty about it.
The rabbi, her husband, tells us that she was more religious than anyone he knew, much more religious than himself. Her dream was to open a hotel with a barn in Yerushalayim.
Why a barn? "The third Bais haMikdosh will be built and there will be a need for korbanot so why not have a barn?"
Then why a hotel? "Everyone will be there. They'll need someplace to stay." She totally believed this.
Her son, Mo, spoke next to last. Mo is a very funny man and as wrecked as he is, he still says a few subdued, but slightly humorous things. It hurts to laugh, and very few in the full house do, and he surely doesn't mean what he says to be funny so much as to represent his mother's sense of humor, always on. She had the face of an angel, by the way, a sweetness and sincerity that you rarely see, and yet a dead-on gift to capture the joke, the uber-meaning in things.
Oh, how does this happen?
Then her brother compared our grieving, our outrage, to Israel's when Miryam died and the well dried up. The well had to dry up for there could be no one to take Miryam's place, no one compared, there is no comparison, is there? No replacement, no one from whom to draw more water. Now shovel, her aggrieved brother, our friend's brother literally cries to us, Take your shovels. And dig for water.
On my way to work, for the living, you know, go on living, I think to myself, "We'll forget, and her family will not, they'll grieve all the time, whereas we'll grieve just here and there, on occasion, when we think of her."
But I don't believe it. We'll think of her often. She'll really be missed.
On my bike I do a little self-chastisement for asking her for a favor during the levayah. You ask forgiveness, sure, at a levayah, but a personal favor for your kid? Even now? Intercession in Shamayim? But why not do both, ask forgiveness and ask for a favor, assuming she isn't too busy up there.
The correctness of this, whether or not it's really out of line to ask a favor of the deceased, I'm telling you, is something I would ask Miryam if she were around. She would know these things.
Flying Sad Like Everyone Else
I answer the phone and think it's FD, but it's my son. "I have bad news."
It's noisy so I walk into a restroom where there is less noise and he says, "Miriam passed away. Mo's mother."
I walked out of the restroom to cry, emote, feel the shock and outrage, to be among people. NO!
Mo is my son's best friend. Mine continues, "I'm going to come in on Sunday to pay a shiva call. I hope that will be enough. I just can't get there for the funeral."
They're calling me to board. I'm in a trance all the way home. A tzedikat has been taken from us. I can't believe it. The best person in the world, no longer with us. What will we do?
Which is the question on everyone's mind at the levayah, the funeral this morning. Whatever will we do without her? She was the reason the world kept spinning, one of the reasons. As her spouse the rabbi said, she represented the best of all daughters, the best of all mothers, the best of all sisters, the best of all friends. And she loved her own family so much that she treated everyone else as extended family, there was so much love, excess love.
The first speaker, Rabbi Gedalia Schwartz didn't ask why so much as, Why do we pray (for he had just noticed, this past week, during tachanun), why do we pray not to be struck by makas ha maves? The blow of death. Isn't death an inevitable part of life? Why would we pray that He mercifully spare us?
The Rav tells us that when someone passes on before his or her time, someone wonderful, someone that the community needs, that it is a slap to the entire community, a much different slap, much harder, than when an older person passes on. We feel the pain much more, it is community pain. And there was not a dry eye, I am not exaggerating, in the synagogue, everyone at the levayah crying. Everyone her best friend. She was everyone's teacher.
The next speaker, the principal of the school where she had taught for a few dozen years or more, bereft, a mourner himself, spoke of losing a colleague who was better than himself, who had a work ethic that never flagged, no lunch for Miryam, no break. No time to chit chat. Too many children to help. And she saved hundreds, no, thousands, educationally, many of whom may not even remember what she did for them.
Then Miryam's spouse, the rabbi, a beloved friend of all in the community, sobbed as he shared with us his life with her, his stories, gifts. He reminded us how she suffered so many illnesses with a smile, how she never complained, never burdened anyone, as seriously ill as she was, you never knew. He didn't know how she felt half the time; she didn't complain, not even to him.
Just to confirm, reality check, we were not best friends Miryam and I, and I wasn't even a half-way decent friend, although I owed her, because she helped us with our children, as she helped everyone. But we liked each other (she loved everyone, really), and when we talked on social occasions she would vaguely refer to her various physical problems, only when asked, as if they were no big deal.
We were together yapping at a kiddish in shul, seems like yesterday but it has to have been several months ago, maybe even a year, and she asked me, "What do you think? Should I get a PhD?" Me, so out of it, "Why not?!" She smiled as if to say, "So impossible, silly, as if I don't have enough to do already."
She taught us everything, how to be truly serious about life and yet to laugh at it. Once she sat next to me in shul, many, many years ago, looked over my shoulder and laughed at me.
"What's so funny?"
She says, "You're reading the divrei Torah in the Leckutai Peshatim!"
(Leckutai Peshatim is supposed to be a leaflet of thoughts and stories about Torah, learning, but most read it for the community announcements on the back page.
She continues, "You're the only one I've ever seen who reads it from front to back." Then! Now, every time I start from back to front I feel guilty about it.
The rabbi, her husband, tells us that she was more religious than anyone he knew, much more religious than himself. Her dream was to open a hotel with a barn in Yerushalayim.
Why a barn? "The third Bais haMikdosh will be built and there will be a need for korbanot so why not have a barn?"
Then why a hotel? "Everyone will be there. They'll need someplace to stay." She totally believed this.
Her son, Mo, spoke next to last. Mo is a very funny man and as wrecked as he is, he still says a few subdued, but slightly humorous things. It hurts to laugh, and very few in the full house do, and he surely doesn't mean what he says to be funny so much as to represent his mother's sense of humor, always on. She had the face of an angel, by the way, a sweetness and sincerity that you rarely see, and yet a dead-on gift to capture the joke, the uber-meaning in things.
Oh, how does this happen?
Then her brother compared our grieving, our outrage, to Israel's when Miryam died and the well dried up. The well had to dry up for there could be no one to take Miryam's place, no one compared, there is no comparison, is there? No replacement, no one from whom to draw more water. Now shovel, her aggrieved brother, our friend's brother literally cries to us, Take your shovels. And dig for water.
On my way to work, for the living, you know, go on living, I think to myself, "We'll forget, and her family will not, they'll grieve all the time, whereas we'll grieve just here and there, on occasion, when we think of her."
But I don't believe it. We'll think of her often. She'll really be missed.
On my bike I do a little self-chastisement for asking her for a favor during the levayah. You ask forgiveness, sure, at a levayah, but a personal favor for your kid? Even now? Intercession in Shamayim? But why not do both, ask forgiveness and ask for a favor, assuming she isn't too busy up there.
The correctness of this, whether or not it's really out of line to ask a favor of the deceased, I'm telling you, is something I would ask Miryam if she were around. She would know these things.
Flying Sad Like Everyone Else
Monday, July 6, 2009
Mary Poppins
I took the pic on Sunday, FYI.We're outside by the pool, not swimming, it's Shabbas.
I say to my granddaughter,
What do you want to play?She quips right back.
"I know. You're Mary Poppins and I'm Jane."The kid's a prophetess, seriously.
Okay.
"Now hold your umbrella." (She pantomimes daintily holding up an umbrella.
Okay. (I hold my imaginary umbrella as daintily as possible)
"When the wind blows in, you fly in. And when the wind blows out, you fly out."
FLYING WITH UMBRELLAS
You're Outta' Here
I get here before Shabbas and my granddaughter finds out that I'm sleeping in her room.
She looks at me steely-eyed.
It's so funny and the story is repeated over and over and I can tell she's embarrassed and I feel bad for telling it again and again, but it is really funny.
FLYING OUT OF THE HOUSE
She looks at me steely-eyed.
ONE peep. Just ONE little noise. And you're OUT. You're out of my room.Well, okay.
I'm pretty quiet, honey.
ONE tiny noise and you're OUT! OUT OF THE HOUSE!
It's so funny and the story is repeated over and over and I can tell she's embarrassed and I feel bad for telling it again and again, but it is really funny.
FLYING OUT OF THE HOUSE
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Flying Again: Love is. . .
Milk and honey, what else?
A quick Hannah story. We're outside by the pool, alone, it's hot. We have a couple of squirt guns.
We're shooting at random things, bears, tigers, badguys (her idea, not mine).
She sees a heart. "I see a heart! Get it!"
We shoot. "We got it!"
She sees love.
"I see love!" she cries. "Shoot it!"
"Shoot love?"
"Yes, quick! Shoot love!"
"Love?!?!? Kill love?"
"Yes.
"Fine." We shoot love.
"Love is dead," she says.
She's three.
Flying Happy
Monday, June 29, 2009
Simple Happy
Our boy Sim had a flight home on Friday for an NCSY advisers meeting.
I got the dreaded text while seeing patients in the morning.
A couple of hours later he texts me that he'll be in around 3:30, only an hour later than we expected him. Big, happy sighs of relief. It's just always a happy thing when the kids come over, no matter from how near or how far.
We hardly saw him on Shabbas because FD and I were comatose by ten o'clock on Friday night and he didn't get back from his oneg until midnight. I sure didn't hear him come in.
And shul was mobbed for a Bar Mitzvah, and always afraid someone will yell FIRE, I skipped out of the kiddish with only a few bites of popcorn. But Dov and Cham were expected for lunch, and I set for Safta, too, although doubted she'd join us.
She's nursing a bus injury, or a dancing injury. Either she jumped off the bus too quickly (I'm so careless!) or Israeli dancing twice in one week did her in. We're calling it a pinched nerve, by the way. She needed something to tell people, some diagnosis that made sense to her.
Anyway, Saturday night we watched Rear Window (because we're real party animals, you know, couldn't even bother to rent something) except I fell asleep for the last fifteen minutes and went to bed at 1:00. Sunday's a work day for crying out loud.
And Sunday was beautiful day. A perfect Chicago day, not hot, not cold, but very windy. We thought we had a wedding at night, but were mistaken, so made a barbecue in Sim's honor instead, and Dov and Cham stopped by. They walked in on the end of My Cousin Vinnie, perhaps one of my favorite movies of all time. Marisa Tomei, unbelievable.
It helped that chuck steaks were on sale at Jewell last week so I had some in the freezer (this happens maybe twice a decade, we grill steaks, we're very low on the food chain people in general, although you would never know it, reading this post.) Anyway we had a lot of potato kugle left, and tons of guac, for some reason. FD and I both bought avocados Friday, he had his shiur coming over and that means snacks and fruit for the month.
Ira (our ben bayit, aka known as boarder) joined us and we made plans for his birthday, determined it would be birthday pie, not cake, that Shabbas, and his girlfriend should set aside that Friday night for the party.
By eleven, after packing up cookies and cold-cuts and hotdogs and meatballs for Sim to take back to Maryland, this Bubbie was totally wiped, and this morning, around four, said good-bye to him, got to working on my screen play, something that I'm literally knocking out in about ten hours, total. Tina Fey, obviously, should get the lead, but we'll accept Marisa Tomei.
Sim's going to buy that George Foreman, in case anyone wants to know.
Flying Good
I got the dreaded text while seeing patients in the morning.
Flight canceled. Don't know if I'll make it home."Emunah, darling," I write back. "It's early and the day is long."
A couple of hours later he texts me that he'll be in around 3:30, only an hour later than we expected him. Big, happy sighs of relief. It's just always a happy thing when the kids come over, no matter from how near or how far.
We hardly saw him on Shabbas because FD and I were comatose by ten o'clock on Friday night and he didn't get back from his oneg until midnight. I sure didn't hear him come in.
And shul was mobbed for a Bar Mitzvah, and always afraid someone will yell FIRE, I skipped out of the kiddish with only a few bites of popcorn. But Dov and Cham were expected for lunch, and I set for Safta, too, although doubted she'd join us.
She's nursing a bus injury, or a dancing injury. Either she jumped off the bus too quickly (I'm so careless!) or Israeli dancing twice in one week did her in. We're calling it a pinched nerve, by the way. She needed something to tell people, some diagnosis that made sense to her.
Anyway, Saturday night we watched Rear Window (because we're real party animals, you know, couldn't even bother to rent something) except I fell asleep for the last fifteen minutes and went to bed at 1:00. Sunday's a work day for crying out loud.
And Sunday was beautiful day. A perfect Chicago day, not hot, not cold, but very windy. We thought we had a wedding at night, but were mistaken, so made a barbecue in Sim's honor instead, and Dov and Cham stopped by. They walked in on the end of My Cousin Vinnie, perhaps one of my favorite movies of all time. Marisa Tomei, unbelievable.
It helped that chuck steaks were on sale at Jewell last week so I had some in the freezer (this happens maybe twice a decade, we grill steaks, we're very low on the food chain people in general, although you would never know it, reading this post.) Anyway we had a lot of potato kugle left, and tons of guac, for some reason. FD and I both bought avocados Friday, he had his shiur coming over and that means snacks and fruit for the month.
Ira (our ben bayit, aka known as boarder) joined us and we made plans for his birthday, determined it would be birthday pie, not cake, that Shabbas, and his girlfriend should set aside that Friday night for the party.
By eleven, after packing up cookies and cold-cuts and hotdogs and meatballs for Sim to take back to Maryland, this Bubbie was totally wiped, and this morning, around four, said good-bye to him, got to working on my screen play, something that I'm literally knocking out in about ten hours, total. Tina Fey, obviously, should get the lead, but we'll accept Marisa Tomei.
Sim's going to buy that George Foreman, in case anyone wants to know.
Flying Good
The Purple Door
There are people who think Chicago's kind of boring, but nothing could be farther than the truth. I road my bike to work yesterday, same route I've taken for years, and noticed that one of the houses has a purple door.
How many people do this? Paint their doors purple. I just love these people, that's all I can say.
Flying Purple
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Alter Bubbie and Zaidie and the Computer
That does mean older, right? Alter?
I'm talking to my mother last night, she's 82. She tells me that my father's upset because he's having trouble with the Internet. He's going on 89.
"I'll come over in the morning," I say. "I was going to come over anyway."
We make a date. Her schedule is worse than mine. She has the beauty parlor at 9, physical therapy at 12:30. Yesterday it was Canasta.
So in the morning I run into Best Buy to get a new router because Mom wants me to set her up with a separate computer. I envision the two of them online together, each with their own terminals, working katy corner. At some point my father says, 'Wouldn't you like some orange juice,' a hint that he wants some orange juice.
It seemed like such a nice thing, such an easy thing to do, and my old laptop isn't that bad. It works-- just a little slow, is all. Like all of us.
I drive up to their house about 10:am and Mom does, too, in her car. She's still driving and uses a hand break.
"Where were you shmaying this early in the day?" I ask. She looks marvelous, white slacks, make-up is perfect.
"I was at the beauty parlor! Can't you TELL?"
"Oh, right! Of course! You look great!"
"Sure," she murmurs, bending down to pick up the newspaper on the driveway. She moves slowly, but she moves.
"I'm thinking," I say, "that I should be taking a lot of video of you and Dad. You both look fabulous, and people in my generation are all kvetching about their aches and pains, and you would be a good example of how people just buck up, you know, still function and don't complain. Still smiling."
She's not sure what to make of this.
I find my father asleep on the sofa, the TV blasting. I nudge him and he opens his eyes, surprised. "Let's fix that computer of yours," I say.
He turns off the tube and we head to the bedroom, my brother's old bedroom, now a museum of old cords and boxes, disks, routers and other equipment. Printers he has in spades.
"I got rid of AOL now," he tells me, "and signed up for EarthLink. And now I got nuttin'"
"Did you install it?"
"Yes. But they want my password and I don't know what it is." He shows me a piece of paper with his hieroglyphics and I see where I got it from.
This is taking a long time. I'm working every algorithm, every combination of cables and routers, plugging and replugging, getting nowhere.
He's dropping off, clearly tired, but patient and hopeful we'll get somewhere. He's upset that he's so tired, however.
"I can't believe I got this way. I never thought I'd be this way, so tired all the time. So tired that it's work just to stand up." He struggles to his feet and shrugs.
I look him in the eye and say, "You had a good run, Dad. You made the most out of every day. You ran, ran, ran until a couple of months ago. Your whole life you ran. It's okay. So you don't have to run so much. You can behave like you're retired, now."
"I played gin the other day with some really good players. These are really sharp men, keen minds. Very smart guys. And I won."
"See? You're not so tired."
"I can't believe it's me," he says, and shuffles off, probably for some orange juice.
I continue to furtutzel around for another half our (didn't charge him) and still, no Internet. I'm getting nervous because I do have to get to work. I finally give in and call the cable company and they tell me, "Someone canceled your Internet, signed up with another provider."
Ah.
That's what he meant when he chose EarthLink over AOL. Not just an email address. He changed providers.
I reinstall Earthlink, find that slip with the log on/password, and we're rolling. While we wait for EarthLink to configure the EarthLink router (nothing else will do, so Mom won't have a laptop after all), he points to a couple of framed photographs of himself on the wall.
In one of them he's solo, wearing a mustache. In the other he's next to my mother at their wedding, clean-shaven.
"Look at these two pictures," he says. "Am I younger in this one (the one with the mustache) or in this one (the one with my mother)?"
"You look older in this one (the one with the mustache)" I say with confidence.
"Wrong," He tells me. "I had the mustache in high school. I grew it to look older."
He thinks this is hysterical.
"I grew it back after we got married, but shaved it because your mother didn't like it. But then I grew it back. Do you know why?"
I have a memory that this is connected to my brother's death, something about shaving and bad luck.
"No, why?"
"Because I shaved. Then I walked into the kitchen and said to your mother, 'Do you notice anything different about me?' And she said, 'No.' So I grew it back."
He's still got it, of course.
Flying Wired
I'm talking to my mother last night, she's 82. She tells me that my father's upset because he's having trouble with the Internet. He's going on 89.
"I'll come over in the morning," I say. "I was going to come over anyway."
We make a date. Her schedule is worse than mine. She has the beauty parlor at 9, physical therapy at 12:30. Yesterday it was Canasta.
So in the morning I run into Best Buy to get a new router because Mom wants me to set her up with a separate computer. I envision the two of them online together, each with their own terminals, working katy corner. At some point my father says, 'Wouldn't you like some orange juice,' a hint that he wants some orange juice.
It seemed like such a nice thing, such an easy thing to do, and my old laptop isn't that bad. It works-- just a little slow, is all. Like all of us.
I drive up to their house about 10:am and Mom does, too, in her car. She's still driving and uses a hand break.
"Where were you shmaying this early in the day?" I ask. She looks marvelous, white slacks, make-up is perfect.
"I was at the beauty parlor! Can't you TELL?"
"Oh, right! Of course! You look great!"
"Sure," she murmurs, bending down to pick up the newspaper on the driveway. She moves slowly, but she moves.
"I'm thinking," I say, "that I should be taking a lot of video of you and Dad. You both look fabulous, and people in my generation are all kvetching about their aches and pains, and you would be a good example of how people just buck up, you know, still function and don't complain. Still smiling."
She's not sure what to make of this.
I find my father asleep on the sofa, the TV blasting. I nudge him and he opens his eyes, surprised. "Let's fix that computer of yours," I say.
He turns off the tube and we head to the bedroom, my brother's old bedroom, now a museum of old cords and boxes, disks, routers and other equipment. Printers he has in spades.
"I got rid of AOL now," he tells me, "and signed up for EarthLink. And now I got nuttin'"
"Did you install it?"
"Yes. But they want my password and I don't know what it is." He shows me a piece of paper with his hieroglyphics and I see where I got it from.
This is taking a long time. I'm working every algorithm, every combination of cables and routers, plugging and replugging, getting nowhere.
He's dropping off, clearly tired, but patient and hopeful we'll get somewhere. He's upset that he's so tired, however.
"I can't believe I got this way. I never thought I'd be this way, so tired all the time. So tired that it's work just to stand up." He struggles to his feet and shrugs.
I look him in the eye and say, "You had a good run, Dad. You made the most out of every day. You ran, ran, ran until a couple of months ago. Your whole life you ran. It's okay. So you don't have to run so much. You can behave like you're retired, now."
"I played gin the other day with some really good players. These are really sharp men, keen minds. Very smart guys. And I won."
"See? You're not so tired."
"I can't believe it's me," he says, and shuffles off, probably for some orange juice.
I continue to furtutzel around for another half our (didn't charge him) and still, no Internet. I'm getting nervous because I do have to get to work. I finally give in and call the cable company and they tell me, "Someone canceled your Internet, signed up with another provider."
Ah.
That's what he meant when he chose EarthLink over AOL. Not just an email address. He changed providers.
I reinstall Earthlink, find that slip with the log on/password, and we're rolling. While we wait for EarthLink to configure the EarthLink router (nothing else will do, so Mom won't have a laptop after all), he points to a couple of framed photographs of himself on the wall.
In one of them he's solo, wearing a mustache. In the other he's next to my mother at their wedding, clean-shaven.
"Look at these two pictures," he says. "Am I younger in this one (the one with the mustache) or in this one (the one with my mother)?"
"You look older in this one (the one with the mustache)" I say with confidence.
"Wrong," He tells me. "I had the mustache in high school. I grew it to look older."
He thinks this is hysterical.
"I grew it back after we got married, but shaved it because your mother didn't like it. But then I grew it back. Do you know why?"
I have a memory that this is connected to my brother's death, something about shaving and bad luck.
"No, why?"
"Because I shaved. Then I walked into the kitchen and said to your mother, 'Do you notice anything different about me?' And she said, 'No.' So I grew it back."
He's still got it, of course.
Flying Wired
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