Hello, Esteemed Readers. I apologize for the infrequency of my posts here of late. Those who are aware of my situation are reading my third blog, The Concentrated Mind. And those who are not will get to see my usual end of year greeting because how could I end the year without a greeting?
This has been an unusual year. Suffice it to say that it has had the most wonderful of blessings and the most difficult of challenges all rolled into one - like the Forrest Gump chocolate that you never would choose to bite into. As I write this, my Elder Daughter sits in front of me holding our six week old grand-daughter, a little package of love that arrived in November and showed up at our veriest doorstep on Thanksgiving Day just as we were about to chow down. Being unable to drive her own-self, she was accompanied by Elder Daughter and Elder Daughter's partner (hereafter known as E-Man). So there's something very new in our lives: Dee and I are actual grandparents, a status we had always hoped to achieve and were gifted with before the year's close.
Another major change: after almost twenty years at Chez Elisson (Marietta) we are now living nine miles up the road in Chez Elisson (Woodstock). After several years of pestering on Dee's part I finally yielded to the inevitable. Early in 2018 we managed to pull off the amazing feat of both selling our old house and replacing it with a much more size-appropriate town home, with the closings being conducted on the same morning. How about that for tap dancing, huh? It was a brilliant maneuver for which I am forever grateful to Dee and her persistence. We now have successfully removed most of our old crap, replacing it with a whole assortment of new crap - but more about that later.
One of the biggest surprises was that my sweet younger brother, The Other Elisson (hereafter to be referred to in these pages as Uncle Dang) has pulled off the remarkable feat of marrying someone who not only seems to be his absolute soul mate but who also may be familiar to those who read these pages - the irrepressive, effervescent Erica Sherman! This perhaps is one of the amazing and unpredictable events of 2018, despite the fact that Uncle Dang has had a whole stadium of people cheering him on to this happy and inevitable conclusion. Think of it! By the time you read this, the happy event will be safely in the past with a broken glass to commemorate the occasion. (If I were the wedding planner, we might have used a plastic Death Star, but let that go.)
But now we have the elephant in the room to discuss. In March of this year I began noticing some ominous physical symptoms, which led to a diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). At least Lou Gehrig managed to squeeze a baseball career out of life before being hit with this shit, but not this boy. As I sit here dictating the contents of this post to you it is almost exactly six months after having received my diagnosis and my case has been moving like a freight train. I wear a breathing machine almost every minute. I am almost completely immobile, my limbs being virtually useless. I cannot stand up, much less walk. I spend all of my days either in a power wheel chair or in my bed. My speech is reduced to a whisper. At this point in my journey, I've been under 24-hour care several of the past weeks, and while it's impossible to know the exact time table in cases like this, it means it's a good bet that I won't be at the fucking Kentucky Derby next year - nor at my 45th college reunion, which is something I actually had hoped to attend. I need assistance for every task I do, including writing and composing this post.
Having ALS is a very unpleasant situation, but it does carry with it a few silver linings. One of the most important is that it has given me a renewed appreciation for my family and friends - and anyone who gives care to others. Without them, I could not survive - nor would there be a reason to.
It's with tears in my still alert eyes and a break in my weakened throat that I acknowledge the relentless, gentle, and constant presence of my first and foremost caretaker - my Mistress of Sarcasm - without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything. This is where it gets difficult to dictate these posts - because she is the one who has to write them. She dropped everything to come down here and spend every day of her life with her deteriorating old man. Of course, the Mistress of Sarcasm is not doing this all by herself: she has been helped by Elder Daughter and Dee, the latter of whom this whole bloggy exercise would have largely been a miserable and pointless adventure. I am in this way perversely blessed, but it is indeed a blessing. The things - the physical detritus - mean nothing to me now, but family, as they surround me with their glowing love, they mean everything. And you, my esteemed readers, who have given me the gift of self-aggrandizement and useless time-wastage for all of these years, you do too. May this next year bring you all the blessings of success and health that you care to have, all without limit to any good thing. Hopefully, I will be around to enjoy some of them with you, but if I am not, know that it was a hell of a trip.
Showing posts with label Mushpucker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mushpucker. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2018
Monday, April 9, 2018
WILD WILD COUNTRY
I have written numerous times about my perverse ability to make up dopey songs - or dopey lyrics to actual songs - a talent that has, on occasion, caught my daughters flatfooted.
F’r example, there was the time Elder Daughter was attending a performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Boston with a group of her college friends. It’s an outdoor performance on the Common, and ED and her buddies are all singing along:
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ -
Who are you, what have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ, superstar -
Who in the hell do you think you are?
At this point all eyes swivel toward Elder Daughter. “Hey, those aren’t the right lyrics!” And she responds, “Yes, they are! I learned them from... (growing realization that she has been duped)... my Dad! Aaarrrrgggh!”
And then there was the time Allison E., the daughter of family friends - roughly the same age as Elder Daughter - was playing French horn in a concert. The program included a selection from George Frederick Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus - “See, The Conqu’ring Hero Comes!” and as she began playing, she completely lost her shit. Wait, what?
Elder Daughter, back in her Snot-Nose Days, was learning Suzuki method violin, and when she began learning that particular little chunk of Judas Maccabeus, I made up some of my trademark Nutty Lyrics to go with the tune:
Zippy the Pinhead
Has a polka-dotted suit
And he thinks that he is cute
In his dotted suit.
Zippy has a friend named Shelf-Life
He’s got great big lips
Shelf-Life has a girlfriend, Vizeen
She’s got enormous hips...
I like to believe that my little tune kept ED interested in violin at least long enough to learn “See, The Conqu’ring Hero Comes!” - but who knows? She and her friends (including Allison E.) found it amusing enough. What I do know is that when Allison remembered it some twenty-odd years later, French horn in hand, mouthpiece to her lips, she lost both her composure and her embouchure.
Which brings me to today’s story.
Apparently, both Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm have been watching a series on Netflix: Wild Wild Country, a documentary about one Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru, and the eponymous community he established in Oregon: Rajneeshpuram.
Both girls had the same reaction when the Bhagwan appeared on the small screen. Why is this dude’s name so strangely familiar?
And that, of course, is when they remembered... from early childhood, another of Daddy’s stupid songs:
Excuse me - I have to pish
Don’t you know I am a follower of
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
He’ll satisfy your ev’ry wish
Just as long as you’re a follower of
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh...
(sung to the tune of “Forty-Second Street”)
Until they started watching Wild Wild Country, they had never known that the Bhagwan was an actual person - but they had known his name for three decades. How ’bout dat?
[Why do I do this? I blame Mad Magazine.]
F’r example, there was the time Elder Daughter was attending a performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Boston with a group of her college friends. It’s an outdoor performance on the Common, and ED and her buddies are all singing along:
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ -
Who are you, what have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ, superstar -
Who in the hell do you think you are?
At this point all eyes swivel toward Elder Daughter. “Hey, those aren’t the right lyrics!” And she responds, “Yes, they are! I learned them from... (growing realization that she has been duped)... my Dad! Aaarrrrgggh!”
And then there was the time Allison E., the daughter of family friends - roughly the same age as Elder Daughter - was playing French horn in a concert. The program included a selection from George Frederick Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus - “See, The Conqu’ring Hero Comes!” and as she began playing, she completely lost her shit. Wait, what?
Elder Daughter, back in her Snot-Nose Days, was learning Suzuki method violin, and when she began learning that particular little chunk of Judas Maccabeus, I made up some of my trademark Nutty Lyrics to go with the tune:
Zippy the Pinhead
Has a polka-dotted suit
And he thinks that he is cute
In his dotted suit.
Zippy has a friend named Shelf-Life
He’s got great big lips
Shelf-Life has a girlfriend, Vizeen
She’s got enormous hips...
I like to believe that my little tune kept ED interested in violin at least long enough to learn “See, The Conqu’ring Hero Comes!” - but who knows? She and her friends (including Allison E.) found it amusing enough. What I do know is that when Allison remembered it some twenty-odd years later, French horn in hand, mouthpiece to her lips, she lost both her composure and her embouchure.
Which brings me to today’s story.
Apparently, both Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm have been watching a series on Netflix: Wild Wild Country, a documentary about one Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru, and the eponymous community he established in Oregon: Rajneeshpuram.
Both girls had the same reaction when the Bhagwan appeared on the small screen. Why is this dude’s name so strangely familiar?
And that, of course, is when they remembered... from early childhood, another of Daddy’s stupid songs:
Excuse me - I have to pish
Don’t you know I am a follower of
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
He’ll satisfy your ev’ry wish
Just as long as you’re a follower of
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh...
(sung to the tune of “Forty-Second Street”)
Until they started watching Wild Wild Country, they had never known that the Bhagwan was an actual person - but they had known his name for three decades. How ’bout dat?
[Why do I do this? I blame Mad Magazine.]
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
THIRTY YEARS BEYOND THE VEIL
The Momma d’Elisson, in her Brooklyn College yearbook photo.
Today is Mom’s Yahrzeit - the anniversary of her death as reckoned by the Hebrew calendar.
It has been thirty years since she slipped beyond the veil that hides the World to Come from we who live. Thirty years! And still my heart aches for her.
I mourn for all the days she missed with us... and especially with her granddaughters. I mourn for the family occasions at which she was no longer here in physical form.
And like many adults, there is that part of me that mourns for my lost childhood, the days when my cares were the simple cares of children and when my mother and father were there to love, care for, and nurture me. We grow out of those childhood days in the natural course of things. If we are fortunate enough, we survive middle age, we grow old, we eventually become elderly. Yet no matter how long our years, no matter how raddled with forgetfulness our minds, we never lose that little bit of longing to recapture those sweet times when we were loved, cared for, and nurtured.
I cannot bring her back. But I can light a candle for her and remember how wonderful life was when she was with us in the World That Is.
Mom at age fifty-eight. Looka dat smile!
Monday, March 12, 2018
ANOTHER YEAR WITHOUT HIM
Eli (1925-2014) in his college graduation photo.
Today, the twenty-fifth of the Hebrew month Adar, is my father’s Yahrzeit - the anniversary of his death.
There are traditions to be observed. When the day begins, we light a memorial candle, a candle that will burn at least 24 hours. Watching it flicker on the mantel in the darkened family room always makes me think of the transience of life while simultaneously reminding me of the soul’s eternal nature.
At sunrise I attend the morning service. I recite the ancient words of the Kaddish, a doxology that, despite its association with mourning and bereavement, makes no mention of death. And I intone the mournful litany of the Memorial Prayer.
After services, I treat the minyan crowd to breakfast - my way of thanking them for ensuring that enough people are present at services. It’s a peculiar local custom, but one I enjoy. (We observe birthdays the same way.) Today is a bit different because we have an appointment which requires that we postpone our group breakfast, but them’s the breaks.
All this rigmarole is intended to keep alive the memory of our Departed Ones, and I therefore cherish it... but, strictly speaking, it is unnecessary. For I keep Dad’s memory alive in so many little ways.
I see traces of his hand in my signature. Traces of his wit in my shaggy dog stories, poems, and horrible puns. Marks of his creativity in our daughters. And certain tunes - the ones he would play on the grand piano that graced his home for as long as I can remember - always bring a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat.
The Memorial Prayer
Eil maley rachamim, shokhein bam’romin, ham’tzei m’nuchah n’khonah tachat kanfei ha-sh’khinah, b’ma-alot k’doshim u-t’horim k’zohar ha-rakia maz-hirim, et nishmat avi v’morati Eliyahu ben Ya’akov she-halakh l’olamo, b’gan eiden t’hei m’nuchato. Ana, ba’al ha-rachamim hastireihu b’seiter k’nafekha l’olamim, utz’ror bitz’ror ha-chayyim et nishmato, Hashem hu nachalato, v’yanuach b’shalom al mishkavo, v’nomar amen.
Exalted, compassionate God, grant perfect peace in Your sheltering Presence, among the holy and pure who shine with the splendor of the firmament, to the soul of my my father and teacher Eli, son of Jacob, who has gone to his eternal home. Master of mercy, remember all his worthy deeds in the land of the living. May his soul be bound up in the bond of life. The Lord is his portion. May he rest in peace. And let us say: Amen.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
VALENTINE
Valentine, circa 1938, from collection of Dee’s late Dad.
This business of Valentine’s Day - as I have often reflected on these Electronickal Pages - has always been a source of amusement for me, as well as an opportunity to make social observations.
It has, in this country at least, become a celebration of the restaurant, chocolate, flower, and greeting card industries - one of the occasions on which they can, almost assuredly, make bank. (There are no holidays unsullied by commercial interests these days, with the possible exception of Shavuos, which gets no respect.)
But that’s OK. It’s a day on which to celebrate love in all its forms: childhood affection, preteen crushes, teenage romance with all of its hormonal components, the love of family, and the mature love that grows out of long years.
Dee and I have been together, one way or another, for over forty-two years. We’ve brought two daughters from infancy (even from their embryonic existence!) unto full-fledged adulthood, and we have ridden the roller-coaster of marriage through relocations, job changes, peaks and valleys, challenges, fears, and delights. And we are, still, each other’s Valentines.
May you and your Valentines - whoever they may be - enjoy the day.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
STICKIN’ WITH YOU
It occurred to me recently that, of my two sets of grandparents, I can only recall hearing music in my paternal grandparents’ home.
Mom’s parents probably liked music as much as anyone, but I just don’t remember any evidence of it. Maybe after my mother decided not to be a piano prodigy, her folks gave up on music in frustration. Who knows?
On the other hand, Dad’s parents - or at least his mother - liked having a little melody in the house.
They had an actual record player - a turntable with a record changer! - and a tuner, in case they got bored listening to records. If my memory serves, the turntable/tuner assembly was housed in a cabinet with speakers, and it was on some kind of sliding drawer affair that enabled one to pull it out in order to load a stack of records.
I remember listening to “South Pacific” on that thing. It was a real old-school record album, a pile of 78 RPM shellac discs that were stored in - literally - an album. You would take them out of their sleeves and load them onto the changer. After the first sides all played, you’d flip the whole stack over at once and listen to the other sides. (The turntable could also be used to listen to those new-fangled vinyl LP’s.)
Grandma liked her music, she did. In the late 1960’s she became a Tom Jones aficionado, and whenever one of the local FM stations would play “Delilah,” she was entranced. Nice going, Grandma - a song about a romance-fueled murder. I suspect Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead were a little too much for her.
But what I remembered from my little-kid days was a rockabilly number that she would listen to incessantly... hardly the kind of thing you’d expect to appeal to a little old Jewish lady in Brooklyn, but there you are. And the lyrics got engraved in my brain thanks to ceaseless repetition:
Be-bop - I love you, baby
Be-bop - I don’t mean maybe
Be-bop - I love you, baby
I’m stickin’ with you
I’m stickin’ with you...
Thanks to the miracle of the Inter-Webby-Netz, I was finally able to track this little tune down - a song by one Jimmy Bowen with which he kicked of his recording career in 1957. The song charted at #14 - not bad for a flip side - but Bowen eventually decided to work on the other side of the mike. I’m happy to report that he’s still walking the planet.
Have a listen:
Mom’s parents probably liked music as much as anyone, but I just don’t remember any evidence of it. Maybe after my mother decided not to be a piano prodigy, her folks gave up on music in frustration. Who knows?
On the other hand, Dad’s parents - or at least his mother - liked having a little melody in the house.
They had an actual record player - a turntable with a record changer! - and a tuner, in case they got bored listening to records. If my memory serves, the turntable/tuner assembly was housed in a cabinet with speakers, and it was on some kind of sliding drawer affair that enabled one to pull it out in order to load a stack of records.
I remember listening to “South Pacific” on that thing. It was a real old-school record album, a pile of 78 RPM shellac discs that were stored in - literally - an album. You would take them out of their sleeves and load them onto the changer. After the first sides all played, you’d flip the whole stack over at once and listen to the other sides. (The turntable could also be used to listen to those new-fangled vinyl LP’s.)
Grandma liked her music, she did. In the late 1960’s she became a Tom Jones aficionado, and whenever one of the local FM stations would play “Delilah,” she was entranced. Nice going, Grandma - a song about a romance-fueled murder. I suspect Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead were a little too much for her.
But what I remembered from my little-kid days was a rockabilly number that she would listen to incessantly... hardly the kind of thing you’d expect to appeal to a little old Jewish lady in Brooklyn, but there you are. And the lyrics got engraved in my brain thanks to ceaseless repetition:
Be-bop - I love you, baby
Be-bop - I don’t mean maybe
Be-bop - I love you, baby
I’m stickin’ with you
I’m stickin’ with you...
Thanks to the miracle of the Inter-Webby-Netz, I was finally able to track this little tune down - a song by one Jimmy Bowen with which he kicked of his recording career in 1957. The song charted at #14 - not bad for a flip side - but Bowen eventually decided to work on the other side of the mike. I’m happy to report that he’s still walking the planet.
Have a listen:
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
BIRTHDAY IN ABSENTIA
Earlier today, Dee and I were going through a small corner of the massive Archive d’Elisson, trying to decide what to hang on to and what to pitch. That’s especially challenging for us, given that every single household move we’ve made for the last thirty-nine years has been a corporate affair... which means that we’ve carted around Stupendous Amounts o’Crap simply because we could. Occasional decluttering notwithstanding, we are overdue for a massive inventory reduction.
Books are just one corner of the Archive, and getting them moved to the basement - a stage in their eventual onward travels - is an exercise in Letting Go. And some things, we’re just not ready to let go.
Case in point: a book of nursery rhymes that Mom gave the Mistress of Sarcasm for her fourth birthday. When we opened the book and found the inscription on the flyleaf - an inscription in my mother’s distinctive handwriting - I just about came unglued. It was just one tiny reminder of a hole in our lives. A Missing Person.
We all - most of us, anyway - have those Missing Persons. As we get older, their numbers increase, until eventually (but not too soon!) we join their ranks. And my mom went missing almost thirty years ago. You get used to that feeling of loss, because you have no other choice... but it’s always there. And once in a while, in addition to formal occasions of remembrance (for us Red Sea Pedestrians, five times a year), you get reminded informally.
A scrap of handwriting. A photo album. Perhaps an old video or even a home movie.
Or an inscription in a book. It’s so appropriate. She and my Dad devoured books like most people snarf up salty peanuts. I owe my love of books - especially SF books - to her. She could (and did) discuss Childhood’s End with a seven-year-old Elisson who had read it and was blown away by the ideas contained therein.
Damn, I miss her.
Today is her ninetieth birthday. It’s a perfect day to toast her memory with a Rob Roy - her favorite cocktail for Special Occasions.
Mom celebrates at Cousin Stef’s wedding, October 1987. This is how we remember her: an irrepressible spirit.
Books are just one corner of the Archive, and getting them moved to the basement - a stage in their eventual onward travels - is an exercise in Letting Go. And some things, we’re just not ready to let go.
Case in point: a book of nursery rhymes that Mom gave the Mistress of Sarcasm for her fourth birthday. When we opened the book and found the inscription on the flyleaf - an inscription in my mother’s distinctive handwriting - I just about came unglued. It was just one tiny reminder of a hole in our lives. A Missing Person.
We all - most of us, anyway - have those Missing Persons. As we get older, their numbers increase, until eventually (but not too soon!) we join their ranks. And my mom went missing almost thirty years ago. You get used to that feeling of loss, because you have no other choice... but it’s always there. And once in a while, in addition to formal occasions of remembrance (for us Red Sea Pedestrians, five times a year), you get reminded informally.
A scrap of handwriting. A photo album. Perhaps an old video or even a home movie.
Or an inscription in a book. It’s so appropriate. She and my Dad devoured books like most people snarf up salty peanuts. I owe my love of books - especially SF books - to her. She could (and did) discuss Childhood’s End with a seven-year-old Elisson who had read it and was blown away by the ideas contained therein.
Damn, I miss her.
Today is her ninetieth birthday. It’s a perfect day to toast her memory with a Rob Roy - her favorite cocktail for Special Occasions.
Mom celebrates at Cousin Stef’s wedding, October 1987. This is how we remember her: an irrepressible spirit.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
AN EVENTFUL WEEKEND
Twenty years ago today, Dee and I were in Boston, depositing Elder Daughter at what would be her new home for the next four years: Boston University.
We had done the obligatory College Search Trip, E.D. and I, the previous summer, visiting several schools in the Northeast. But it was pretty clear from the get-go that she was interested in one college, and one college only, from the moment her feet touched ground on campus - and that college was Boston University. And so that is where she decided to go.
The intervening year - Senior Year! - passed all too quickly, and before we knew it, it was time to transport our daughter and her Critical Belongings to Boston.
Logistics were a bit tricky, since we were living in Houston at the time - a Gawd-awfully long distance away by any surface transportation. Fortunately, since E.D. would be living in a dormitory, there was no need to schlep furniture. We would simply pack whatever miscellaneous clothing and supplies she would need in boxes and ship it up there by UPS, freeing us to fly without a monumental amount of checked baggage.
What we didn’t plan on was a UPS strike. Ah, well. The stuff got there eventually.
It was an eventful weekend, what with our scurrying about and helping to get our daughter situated in her new digs. Still there was more: It was Dee’s birthday.
And then came the shocking news from England about the tragic accidental death of Princess Diana.
The United Kingdom and the remnants of its Empire mourned... and we Americans mourned with them. It was a sad coda to what had started out as a fairy-tale story, one that had gradually developed darker tones as the years passed. Ah, well. Sic transit gloria mundi.
But our concerns were more immediate. We had a birthday to celebrate! And we had the bittersweet task of getting our firstborn settled in to her dormitory room, ready to begin her independent adult life. It was a bittersweet day.
I’ve written about that day before, and yet I can still conjure up the emotions I felt back then, a peculiar stew of joy, agitation, horror, grief, excitement, and unabated love. What else can you expect from an eventful weekend?
We had done the obligatory College Search Trip, E.D. and I, the previous summer, visiting several schools in the Northeast. But it was pretty clear from the get-go that she was interested in one college, and one college only, from the moment her feet touched ground on campus - and that college was Boston University. And so that is where she decided to go.
The intervening year - Senior Year! - passed all too quickly, and before we knew it, it was time to transport our daughter and her Critical Belongings to Boston.
Logistics were a bit tricky, since we were living in Houston at the time - a Gawd-awfully long distance away by any surface transportation. Fortunately, since E.D. would be living in a dormitory, there was no need to schlep furniture. We would simply pack whatever miscellaneous clothing and supplies she would need in boxes and ship it up there by UPS, freeing us to fly without a monumental amount of checked baggage.
What we didn’t plan on was a UPS strike. Ah, well. The stuff got there eventually.
It was an eventful weekend, what with our scurrying about and helping to get our daughter situated in her new digs. Still there was more: It was Dee’s birthday.
And then came the shocking news from England about the tragic accidental death of Princess Diana.
The United Kingdom and the remnants of its Empire mourned... and we Americans mourned with them. It was a sad coda to what had started out as a fairy-tale story, one that had gradually developed darker tones as the years passed. Ah, well. Sic transit gloria mundi.
But our concerns were more immediate. We had a birthday to celebrate! And we had the bittersweet task of getting our firstborn settled in to her dormitory room, ready to begin her independent adult life. It was a bittersweet day.
I’ve written about that day before, and yet I can still conjure up the emotions I felt back then, a peculiar stew of joy, agitation, horror, grief, excitement, and unabated love. What else can you expect from an eventful weekend?
Sunday, May 14, 2017
MOTHER’S DAY
In a 2007-vintage photo, Dee and our daughters relax on a rainy afternoon in Washington, D.C.
Today is when we remember our mothers, without whom we would have a devilishly difficult time existing on Planet Earth. They are the ones who not only contributed half of our genetic material - the stuff that makes us us - but they’re the ones who had to schlep us around for something on the order of nine months, enduring (in some cases) nausea; bloat; enlarged abdomens (coupled with bladders squished down to the size of raisins); sleepless nights, and swollen extremities. They are the ones who cleaned us up after we crapped our diapers; the ones who wiped our noses, applied bandages to our scraped knees and - later - our scraped egos. They were the first ones we would run to for help when help was needed... because Mom!
We are fortunate to still have Dee’s Mom walking the planet with us. Mine is long gone - twenty-nine years - but she remains in my heart, always.
We have our precious Mamacita, our adoptive 89-year-old mommy, who loves her brood of “framily” children as her own.
And then there’s Dee, herself, who was, is, and continues to be a role model in the mothering business. She has many talents and capabilities, and she has given me many gifts over the years, but the gift of our daughters is one that daily brings a smile to my face and warmth to my heart.
Happy Mother’s Day, sweetheart! And happy Mother’s Day to all moms - family, friends, and members of the great human family... because Mom!
Friday, April 7, 2017
GOLF SEASON... AGAIN
The Momma d’Elisson of blessèd memory, in her college yearbook photo.
We Red Sea Pedestrians are a strange lot.
Birthdays don’t matter all that much to us. Sure, we celebrate ’em... but that’s a secular activity that is driven mainly by our participation in the American popular culture. There’s no religious observance that attaches to birthdays, save for the recognition of a child as a Bar or Bat Mitzvah at the age of thirteen (for boys, and as early as twelve for girls).
We pay more attention to the date on which a person moves on to Olam ha-Ba, the World to Come.
The anniversary of a person’s death - the Yahrzeit - is observed by the people who mourned that person in life, a permanent ritual of remembrance. Traditionally, one lights a candle that burns for a full twenty-four hours. It is also customary to attend services so that one may, in the presence of the required quorum of ten worshipers, recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer which, despite its name, is not an expression of grief but rather a call-and-response expression of praise.
It was explained to me once that birthdays are less meaningful than Yahrzeits because a person is, at birth, a mass of unrealized potential. Upon his or her passing, however, that person has (it is to be hoped) affected other lives and brought some measurable change to the world. He or she is, at least to the extent possible, has become a sort of Known Quantity. You can take that explanation or leave it, but it does - at least, to me - make some sense.
If you translated Yahrzeit literally, you’d get “year-time” - anniversary. But the term has a further implication, that of “season,” rendered Jahreszeit in German. It’s not just that a year has passed; it’s that a particular time of year connects us to our long-gone loved ones in a unique, powerful way.
With my mother, that season is the springtime, the days leading up to the Passover holiday. It’s a time when the days get longer and warmer, when trees are in bloom, when the yellow blossoms of forsythia (one of her favorites) paint the neighborhood. (Yes, I know we throw a memorial dinner for her every year on the first night of Chanukah, but there’s another story behind that peculiar observance.)
I suspect that this time of year, she would have mostly been thinking, “Golf Season is here!” She was, after all, an inveterate golfer, playing two or more times a week at a time when most of the neighborhood’s housewives were deciding whether to fix a meatloaf or hot dogs for the family supper, or what kind of pie to bring to the school’s bake sale. Always athletic, she also played tennis and bowled, covering both the white-collar and blue-collar sides of the sports spectrum.
We can only speculate upon what she would have been like in her Golden Years, had she lived to enjoy them. Would she have slowly grown cranky and obstreperous like her own mother had done, or would she have continued to be the fun-loving Doting Grandma to her beloved granddaughters? We can only wonder... but I like to think that she would have avoided the trap of Excessive Cantakerousness.
Tomorrow is Mom’s twenty-ninth Yahrzeit. For almost three decades now, she has been playing her heavenly Golf Game from the side of the fairway where the pointy part of the tee goes, and we who have been left behind to mourn her have had to do without her warmth, humor, and common sense.
This evening I’ll light that candle, and I’ll be at shul tomorrow to say Kaddish. Perhaps I will toast her memory with a perfect Rob Roy - her favorite cocktail - and ponder the bittersweet realization that I have even now walked the Earth over four years longer than she had the opportunity to do. Alas.
[Adapted from my original post dated March 22, 2013.]
Monday, March 27, 2017
DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY
Edith and the Mistress of Sarcasm enjoy a Tranquil Moment together. It’s the picture of poifect contentment, I tells ya!
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
FUNNY VALENTINE
Eli (hizzownself) in the Army Air Force...all of twenty years old. [Photo: Ansalone’s Studio, Brooklyn, NY]
This evening marks the onset of Dad’s third Yahrzeit... the anniversary of his passing according to the Hebrew calendar.
I am a skeptic in matters supernatural - I am my father’s child, after all - but I still believe that there are mysteries having to do with the World to Come. Those mysteries might explain the peculiar earworm I have been dealing with these last few days: a piano rendition of “My Funny Valentine.”
He played the piano, as many of you know. And out of all his repertoire, “My Funny Valentine” is the song that most stood out to me. Whether the piano was in tune or not (“Desafinado,” the Antonio Carlos Jobim classic, was another favorite), it would drift through the house whenever he sat down to play.
I miss hearing my Daddy play the piano. I miss his convoluted jokes, many of them told in equally convoluted Yiddish. I miss his incisive mind, his menschlichkeit, his willingness to do what he believed was right even at personal cost. I wish he were here to see his granddaughters again, and I wish he could see how happy my brother - The Other Elisson - is these days. Alas, he is at an impenetrable remove: so much for wishes.
But when I hear that earworm, I know he is not far away. Perhaps he will hear me chant the Memorial Prayer and recite the Kaddish... and he will know that we remember him.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
SUPERTASTER
“Hey, I canna taste that whisky - it’s frozen!” [Photo of Eric at his 2010 birthday party courtesy of Erica Sherman.]
The Mistress of Sarcasm - our younger daughter - is a woman with many talents, but the one most people are not aware of is her prodigious ability to detect the subtlest nuances of aroma and flavor. She is a supertaster.
It’s an ability she most likely inherited from her mother, who is also blessed with a remarkably capable palate. Dee can detect certain flavors with the same precision as a 200-inch telescope peering into a field of distant galaxies. Woe be unto the butcher who grinds up a pile of beef hamburger without thoroughly removing all traces of the batch of ground lamb immediately preceding it: Dee can sniff that lamb out at concentrations of mere parts per billion. I’ve seen her do it. Liver, lamb, onion - any of the Foods that Dee Will Not Consume can and will be detected and rejected in minute concentrations that normally require a mass spectrometer to measure.
In this regard, The Mistress is an apple that fell very close to the tree. She could have made a career out of being a cognac or whiskey blender... or a wine expert.
Recently, as I was sipping an Islay malt, she complained that my drink smelled like a Band-Aid™. And it’s not a bad characterization, in its own way. She had managed to sniff out the trace aroma of iodine in my whisky... from several feet away. It was a masterful catch: peaty Islay malts typically have a noticeable iodine pong, probably owing to the amount of seaweed that finds its way into the peat used to dry the malted barley.
I’m telling you - the kid could’ve been a master distiller. Too bad she doesn't drink.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
THE DAY EVERYTHING CHANGED
Forgive me if I don’t always welcome the arrival of Christmas in the spirit appropriate to the season.
It’s not because I’m a Red Sea Pedestrian. Sure, Christmas is not my holiday... but what gives my neighbors and friends joy gives me joy as well. And besides, it is just as well that we Jews do not celebrate Christmas: If we did, the observant ones among us would find ways to inject an unbelievably complex layer of laws, regulations, and customs into the proceedings.
No, it’s simply that Santa has not been especially nice to us lately. Christmas has brought us a few unpleasant lumps of coal in our figurative stockings.
Christmas Day 2011 was the day my dad - Eli, hizzownself - suffered a massive stroke. He lived a little over two years after that, but never again was he really hiszzownself, having been changed instantaneously from a vigorous, athletic man into a hemiplegic invalid.
And it was exactly one year ago today - Christmas Eve, 2015 - that Dee suffered the fall that simultaneously shattered her wrist, broke her hip, and left lasting scars on her self-confidence.
No, not the door to a stateroom on a cruise ship, alas.
It was rough going for a while. A Christmas Day surgery to put bones together and implant the necessary plates, screws, pins, and spikes, followed by months of recovery. It made the transition into 2016 challenging, with yet more challenges to come as the new year wore on.
Dee is doing much better now, and this evening we enjoyed our traditional first night of Chanukah dinner - takeout Chinese food and Dee’s incredible potato latkes, a bizarre combination with which we memorialize my mother, gone now for twenty-eight years. Yes, it was Christmas Eve. But we were celebrating with dear friends, and so I did not fear the arrival of the Man in the Red Suit with his sometimes perverse gifts.
Happy Chanukah to our fellow Red Sea Pedestrians... and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! May the holidays bring blessings of health and peace to you and all you love.
(And for the rest of us, there’s always Festivus.)
It’s not because I’m a Red Sea Pedestrian. Sure, Christmas is not my holiday... but what gives my neighbors and friends joy gives me joy as well. And besides, it is just as well that we Jews do not celebrate Christmas: If we did, the observant ones among us would find ways to inject an unbelievably complex layer of laws, regulations, and customs into the proceedings.
No, it’s simply that Santa has not been especially nice to us lately. Christmas has brought us a few unpleasant lumps of coal in our figurative stockings.
Christmas Day 2011 was the day my dad - Eli, hizzownself - suffered a massive stroke. He lived a little over two years after that, but never again was he really hiszzownself, having been changed instantaneously from a vigorous, athletic man into a hemiplegic invalid.
And it was exactly one year ago today - Christmas Eve, 2015 - that Dee suffered the fall that simultaneously shattered her wrist, broke her hip, and left lasting scars on her self-confidence.
No, not the door to a stateroom on a cruise ship, alas.
It was rough going for a while. A Christmas Day surgery to put bones together and implant the necessary plates, screws, pins, and spikes, followed by months of recovery. It made the transition into 2016 challenging, with yet more challenges to come as the new year wore on.
Dee is doing much better now, and this evening we enjoyed our traditional first night of Chanukah dinner - takeout Chinese food and Dee’s incredible potato latkes, a bizarre combination with which we memorialize my mother, gone now for twenty-eight years. Yes, it was Christmas Eve. But we were celebrating with dear friends, and so I did not fear the arrival of the Man in the Red Suit with his sometimes perverse gifts.
Happy Chanukah to our fellow Red Sea Pedestrians... and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! May the holidays bring blessings of health and peace to you and all you love.
(And for the rest of us, there’s always Festivus.)
Monday, December 5, 2016
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM
Mom, age 21 - her college graduation photograph from 1949.
Today is Mom’s eighty-ninth birthday. Too bad she’s not around to enjoy it with us.
On the first night of Chanukah, we will celebrate her special day the same way we’ve done for the last twenty-nine years - by eating potato latkes and Chinese food. But since the first night of Chanukah coincides with Christmas Eve this year, we have a few more weeks to wait.
On birthdays, most of us have cakes on our minds. While a potato latke is, technically, a sort of cake, it is not what we think of when we think “birthday cake.” We usually imagine some sweet production, often with icing or a glaze. And candles... because birthday.
Mom wasn’t much of a cake person... at least, not in my recollection. (The Other Elisson may remember things differently.) As far as I know, she baked one - one! - cake in the entire time I lived at home with her, a rather tasty spice cake. She bought enough coconut custard pies and blueberry tarts to keep the Dugan man in business, but her favorite treat was a bowl of ice cream, devoured in front of the teevee set in the late evening.
So I suppose it would be entirely appropriate to celebrate her Special Day by having a nice big bowl of ice cream, perhaps with a forest of candles crammed into it. Burnt Alaska.
 |
| A perfect Rob Roy - Mom’s favorite. |
Ut absente mater mia. I hope you’re enjoying a Rob Roy in the World to Come.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
THE MUSICAL AGE
In 1969, Zager and Evans had a hit single: “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus).” It was noteworthy mainly for being the only hit single Zager and Evans ever had. They managed the rare feat of dropping a chart-topping hit (it was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks that summer), after which they never again made the charts. Impressive.
I hated that song, partly because it was played to death in the summer of ’69 and partly on account of the jejune lyrics, but mostly because it spoke of a future that I would never live to see. The year 2525, after all, was a good ways off. It would be the year of my father’s six-hundredth birthday.
There were other songs, though... songs that hinted at a future that I would perhaps live to see. The most noteworthy (and popular) probably was the Beatles number from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “When I’m Sixty-Four. ”
When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight
If it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck, and Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
Paul McCartney had written the song as a youngster of sixteen, and it was frequently employed to fill time at The Cavern in Hamburg. It was the first track recorded for the Sergeant Pepper album. A music-hall style number, it paints a charming picture of a young man speculating about the possible life he and the lady he fancies might have after long years together. Will he still be useful? he wonders. Will he be loved? Tolerated? Good questions to be asked by anyone in a relationship of long standing.
Sergeant Pepper came out on June 1, 1967. I was fourteen at the time, a high-school freshman four months away from my fifteenth birthday. Actually being sixty-four was quite far from my mind, it being an event that, for me, would be some forty-nine years down the road. Damn near a half-century.
But time flies when you’re having fun, they say - more accurately, it flies whether or not you’re having fun. And here we are, with my officially having attained Beatles Age as of the time and date of this posting. It saddens me that two of the Beatles never made it this far.
It is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to boot. That’s fairly unusual, but who am I to argue with the vagaries of the lunisolar calendar?
Compared to my fourteen-year-old self, I have definitely lost some hair. Not all of it, thankfully. There’s no need for me to mend a fuse when the lights have gone, owing mainly to our having circuit breakers. I can, nevertheless, manage light electrical work, although plumbing is another matter.
I don’t do the garden or dig the weeds: I pay someone to do those tasks. And Dee doesn’t knit. But I hope I continue to stay on her good side. We have another Musical Milestone to which we aspire.
I want to get to Simon and Garfunkel Age, when it’s so terribly strange to be seventy. (“Old Friends,” from the 1968 Bookends album.) Hey, only six years to go!
I hated that song, partly because it was played to death in the summer of ’69 and partly on account of the jejune lyrics, but mostly because it spoke of a future that I would never live to see. The year 2525, after all, was a good ways off. It would be the year of my father’s six-hundredth birthday.
There were other songs, though... songs that hinted at a future that I would perhaps live to see. The most noteworthy (and popular) probably was the Beatles number from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “When I’m Sixty-Four. ”
When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight
If it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck, and Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?
Paul McCartney had written the song as a youngster of sixteen, and it was frequently employed to fill time at The Cavern in Hamburg. It was the first track recorded for the Sergeant Pepper album. A music-hall style number, it paints a charming picture of a young man speculating about the possible life he and the lady he fancies might have after long years together. Will he still be useful? he wonders. Will he be loved? Tolerated? Good questions to be asked by anyone in a relationship of long standing.
Sergeant Pepper came out on June 1, 1967. I was fourteen at the time, a high-school freshman four months away from my fifteenth birthday. Actually being sixty-four was quite far from my mind, it being an event that, for me, would be some forty-nine years down the road. Damn near a half-century.
 |
| The Beatles envisioned as oldsters: painting ©1969 Michael Leonard. |
It is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to boot. That’s fairly unusual, but who am I to argue with the vagaries of the lunisolar calendar?
Compared to my fourteen-year-old self, I have definitely lost some hair. Not all of it, thankfully. There’s no need for me to mend a fuse when the lights have gone, owing mainly to our having circuit breakers. I can, nevertheless, manage light electrical work, although plumbing is another matter.
I don’t do the garden or dig the weeds: I pay someone to do those tasks. And Dee doesn’t knit. But I hope I continue to stay on her good side. We have another Musical Milestone to which we aspire.
I want to get to Simon and Garfunkel Age, when it’s so terribly strange to be seventy. (“Old Friends,” from the 1968 Bookends album.) Hey, only six years to go!
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
A VIEW TO THE PAST
In the process of deinventorying and cleaning out the Elisson Basemental Archive ’n’ Miscellaneous Debris Storage Facility, Dee came upon an item I had not seen for almost two decades. I knew it was somewhere, but the “where” had escaped me.
It was a Brumberger 3-D slide viewer, a little contraption that was designed for looking at 3-D transparencies. Made sometime in the early 1950’s, my parents had purchased it some 63-plus years ago.
In the box with the viewer were a handful of cardboard slide mounts, each one containing a matched set of two Kodachrome transparencies. You would stick a mount in the viewer, look through the binocular eyepiece, and push a button to illuminate the photo in all its three-dimensional glory.
Imagine the wonderful things you could see in realistic stereovision! The Matterhorn. The Eiffel Tower. The Empire State Building. Pike’s Peak. But no, my parents had bought the device for a much more prosaic application: to look at photos of their baby.
How they got the damned kid to sit still for the photographer, I have no idea. Probably they drugged him. There seem to be two different sets of photos, one earlier, the other taken some months later. In the first set, the kid clutches a blanket while parked on a bed fitted with white sheets. He does not look happy in many of these pictures, unless you stretch the definition of “happy” to include “mildly bilious.” In the later session, clothed in a fashionable little set of plaid overalls, the little guy looks like he has put on a few ounces and displays a more positive demeanor. Possibly this is because of the various vinyl toys with which he is playing. A giraffe! A fish! A lamb! Look there, is that a smile? Or is he just squeezing out a deuce?
The viewer needed a little reconditioning. The D-size batteries that had once powered it had unleashed a flood of corrosion that had to be cleaned up. Happily, a little work with Mr. Dremel and a pair of needle-nosed pliers and the old Brumberger was right as rain.
As for the pictures, it had been a long time since I had been able to look at them... but there they were, with their familiar stereovision charm. They had held up pretty well for having been about sixty-three years old... better, perhaps, than their subject. And I cannot exactly describe the sensation of looking at little old me in three dimensions. It is a peculiar feeling.
Of course, you’ve already figured out that the photos were of Yours Truly... probably around the time you reached the word “bilious.”
It was a Brumberger 3-D slide viewer, a little contraption that was designed for looking at 3-D transparencies. Made sometime in the early 1950’s, my parents had purchased it some 63-plus years ago.
In the box with the viewer were a handful of cardboard slide mounts, each one containing a matched set of two Kodachrome transparencies. You would stick a mount in the viewer, look through the binocular eyepiece, and push a button to illuminate the photo in all its three-dimensional glory.
Imagine the wonderful things you could see in realistic stereovision! The Matterhorn. The Eiffel Tower. The Empire State Building. Pike’s Peak. But no, my parents had bought the device for a much more prosaic application: to look at photos of their baby.
How they got the damned kid to sit still for the photographer, I have no idea. Probably they drugged him. There seem to be two different sets of photos, one earlier, the other taken some months later. In the first set, the kid clutches a blanket while parked on a bed fitted with white sheets. He does not look happy in many of these pictures, unless you stretch the definition of “happy” to include “mildly bilious.” In the later session, clothed in a fashionable little set of plaid overalls, the little guy looks like he has put on a few ounces and displays a more positive demeanor. Possibly this is because of the various vinyl toys with which he is playing. A giraffe! A fish! A lamb! Look there, is that a smile? Or is he just squeezing out a deuce?
The viewer needed a little reconditioning. The D-size batteries that had once powered it had unleashed a flood of corrosion that had to be cleaned up. Happily, a little work with Mr. Dremel and a pair of needle-nosed pliers and the old Brumberger was right as rain.
As for the pictures, it had been a long time since I had been able to look at them... but there they were, with their familiar stereovision charm. They had held up pretty well for having been about sixty-three years old... better, perhaps, than their subject. And I cannot exactly describe the sensation of looking at little old me in three dimensions. It is a peculiar feeling.
Of course, you’ve already figured out that the photos were of Yours Truly... probably around the time you reached the word “bilious.”
Monday, August 1, 2016
A FAMILY HEIRLOOM GETS A NEW LIFE
Once upon a time, Dee had a widowed grandmother who lived in a modest little house in Foat Wuth, Texas. It was a house built by the work of her hands, paid for with the income from her lifelong work as a seamstress. What it may have lacked in size it made up for in years of family memories.
Nanny lived in that house until a dramatic decline in her health around Thanksgiving of 1987, when she was rendered insensate by the double whammy of a simultaneous heart attack and stroke. We wouldn’t have given odds on her surviving the week, but Nanny was a tough old bird who managed to hang on for over four years, even outliving my own mother.
Among the furnishings she left behind was a 1946 Chambers B-Model gas stove. We arranged to have it shipped to our home in Houston, and eventually it found its way to Atlanta with us, where it has resided ingloriously in our basement for the past eighteen years.
A few days ago, Dee had a decorating brainstorm. We had just converted our sunroom into a casual dining room, and there was an empty space near the eastern windows that cried out to be filled. What about the old Chambers stove? she suggested.
Her idea put me in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, the old stove would be perfect for the place she had in mind for it, and with a little elbow grease and cleanser it would look good as (almost) new. Not bad for a seventy-year-old appliance. But on the other hand, I knew that it would be a serious job of work to schlep that massive stove up from the basement. We were talking about a massive chunk of cast iron and porcelain weighing something on the order of four hundred pounds.
And we did it.
Aside from Dee, credit goes to Gym Jim, my personal trainer, and to Home Depot - the former for extra muscles to supplement mine, the latter for the strap dolly we used to horse the damned thing up our front steps. (We dodged the need to go up the basement stairs by rolling it outside at ground level, across the side yard and out to the street.)
Once we got that big boy settled in its spot, we had to partially dismantle it to replace the old wiring for the lamps on either side of the backsplash: The old wiring’s insulation had literally crumbled with age. As soon as the everything was reassembled and new bulbs installed, we plugged it in. Success!
The Family Heirloom: a 1946 Chambers B-Model gas stove. The canisters were handed down from Dee’s great-grandmother and sat atop that selfsame stove back when it belonged to her Nanny.
No, we have no plans to hook this baby up to the gas supply. But it would be a formidable appliance were we to do so. It has three surface burners plus a deep well burner for slow-cooking soups, sauces, and stews; it also has a built-in griddle. And man, is it solid. They really don’t make household appliances this substantial any more.
I’m not entirely sure that this was a coincidence, but the day after we put the Chambers stove in its new upstairs home was the forty-first Yahrzeit of Dee’s sister. After remembering Polly at morning Minyan, we and a group of good friends came back to our house for a special breakfast - a breakfast in the presence of Nanny’s old stove. Polly had known that stove well - it was the source of so many of Nanny’s family dinners all those decades ago. I like to think that she was looking down upon us from her residence in the World to Come and getting a little bit of nostalgic joy from seeing it again - a Family Heirloom sculpted in cast iron and porcelain.
Nanny lived in that house until a dramatic decline in her health around Thanksgiving of 1987, when she was rendered insensate by the double whammy of a simultaneous heart attack and stroke. We wouldn’t have given odds on her surviving the week, but Nanny was a tough old bird who managed to hang on for over four years, even outliving my own mother.
Among the furnishings she left behind was a 1946 Chambers B-Model gas stove. We arranged to have it shipped to our home in Houston, and eventually it found its way to Atlanta with us, where it has resided ingloriously in our basement for the past eighteen years.
A few days ago, Dee had a decorating brainstorm. We had just converted our sunroom into a casual dining room, and there was an empty space near the eastern windows that cried out to be filled. What about the old Chambers stove? she suggested.
Her idea put me in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, the old stove would be perfect for the place she had in mind for it, and with a little elbow grease and cleanser it would look good as (almost) new. Not bad for a seventy-year-old appliance. But on the other hand, I knew that it would be a serious job of work to schlep that massive stove up from the basement. We were talking about a massive chunk of cast iron and porcelain weighing something on the order of four hundred pounds.
And we did it.
Aside from Dee, credit goes to Gym Jim, my personal trainer, and to Home Depot - the former for extra muscles to supplement mine, the latter for the strap dolly we used to horse the damned thing up our front steps. (We dodged the need to go up the basement stairs by rolling it outside at ground level, across the side yard and out to the street.)
Once we got that big boy settled in its spot, we had to partially dismantle it to replace the old wiring for the lamps on either side of the backsplash: The old wiring’s insulation had literally crumbled with age. As soon as the everything was reassembled and new bulbs installed, we plugged it in. Success!
The Family Heirloom: a 1946 Chambers B-Model gas stove. The canisters were handed down from Dee’s great-grandmother and sat atop that selfsame stove back when it belonged to her Nanny.
No, we have no plans to hook this baby up to the gas supply. But it would be a formidable appliance were we to do so. It has three surface burners plus a deep well burner for slow-cooking soups, sauces, and stews; it also has a built-in griddle. And man, is it solid. They really don’t make household appliances this substantial any more.
I’m not entirely sure that this was a coincidence, but the day after we put the Chambers stove in its new upstairs home was the forty-first Yahrzeit of Dee’s sister. After remembering Polly at morning Minyan, we and a group of good friends came back to our house for a special breakfast - a breakfast in the presence of Nanny’s old stove. Polly had known that stove well - it was the source of so many of Nanny’s family dinners all those decades ago. I like to think that she was looking down upon us from her residence in the World to Come and getting a little bit of nostalgic joy from seeing it again - a Family Heirloom sculpted in cast iron and porcelain.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DADDY
Eli plays the piano in this photo taken in 2009.
Today is Dad’s ninety-first birthday. Alas, he is no longer here to celebrate it with us... and yet he will always be with me.
I cannot play the trumpet or piano like he did. But I can still tell some of his jokes, almost (but not quite) as well as he did.
In our tradition, birthdays - especially those of departed family and friends - are not nearly as important as their Yahrzeits, the anniversaries of their departures. Perhaps that is because a person is a blank slate at birth, and the full measure of their accomplishments is only known after they pass.
And yet we still like birthdays, don’t we? It’s got to be for more than just the cake.
Happy birthday, Daddy. I miss you.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
THIRTY
Bill, in his Navy days - ~1946.
“My daddy’s been gone 30 years. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.”
Today is Bill’s thirtieth Yahrzeit - the anniversary of his passing according to the Hebrew calendar. (On the Gregorian calendar, purely by coincidence, that anniversary is tomorrow.)
I cannot add or change a single word that would make Dee’s words any more eloquent.
We miss you, Bill. Every day.
Bill, the barbecue maven, as photographed in the late 1970’s.
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