I Want to Hold Your Hand

I have just finished writing the manuscript for a new book for middle school kids on the World Refugee Crisis. It’s filled with scary numbers—such as the fact that 1 of every 118 people in the world today has been forced to flee from their family homes because of war, political unrest, or religious persecution. Not to mention natural disasters.

But what really drives most of these 68.5 million people to choose to flee rather than stay home is the overwhelming sense of chaos and disorder that surrounds them at home. They are looking for the same thing—a feeling of safety and security. There is a lot of research about basic human needs. I wonder how high on the list feeling safe and secure ranks.

The need for security is demonstrated in so many ways. My new favorite way is when our rabbi’s two-year-old daughter places her hand in mine in synagogue to help her balance during a climb up stairs or just to hold on when she is feeling a little shaky. Of course, mine is just a surrogate hand when her mom’s is occupied, but I like the feeling, and I think she does too. My children are far from hand-holding age any more, but I can still remember when they would willingly take my hand to cross a street or to protect them when they entered an unfamiliar place. It made us both feel more secure.

Little hands, big hands

On the opposite end in the human life cycle is “fear of falling” that aging adults and their highly concerned children experience. Literally losing balance seems truly frightening to me. As I get older, that is more on my mind. Wearing a fall alert necklace or bracelet can bring help, but I’m not sure it assures a feeling of safety for the potential faller. Just in case, I have been working regularly with a trainer at my gym who specializes in us older trainees. I asked him once why we spend so much time focusing on balance. “To make sure you keep getting up and staying up,” he explained. So I’m bending and stretching. Remember the Romper Room lady who urged us to “bend and stretch, reach for the sky”? My reach is a lot more limited, but maybe soon I’ll be able to touch the floor at least.

It’s not just people who have a need to feel safe and secure. Our dog Tess walks pretty well off the leash. She wanders around a little bit and sometimes seems aimless, sniffing everything in her path. But luckily she never takes off on her own journey. When I do take charge and clip on Tess’s leash, she seems to pep up and there is aim in her step. Maybe she is just following my aim, but I like to think that we both are happier and more secure.

Tess on a not-so-tight leash

Tess’s behavior differs from that of our first dog Seymour, also a solid black Scottie, who often took off to look for female companionship, or so we surmise. He almost always returned on his own, though he often seemed just a little tired from his amorous adventures. He came to a tragic end on a dark night in a dark street.  It may be significant that Tess has been crate-trained, and Seymour was not. On gloomy days or especially when there is thunder in the air, Tess often beds down in her crate to wait for sunnier or quieter times. Loud noises also drive her inside. The crate door is open, but she feels safe and secure staying inside.

I came across a website recently that urged all of us to embrace the chaos. One of the 12 reasons that most appealed to me was “so that you will become a better person…faster, stronger, leaner and sharper.” I would settle for leaner at least.

The site also led me to a quote that may have come from the Buddha himself: “The mind is like water,” he said. “When it's turbulent, it's difficult to see. When it's calm, everything becomes clear.”

So maybe what we are looking for isn’t only safety but calmness and clarity as well. And maybe that’s what the Beatles were singing about when they said, “Yeah, you got that somethin' . . . I think you'll understand . . .; When I say that somethin' . . .I want to hold your hand.”

 

Body and Soul

When I was growing up, I lived in a Reader’s Digest home. We were middle class, literate, and apt to share with each other stories of what we found funny or touching in our everyday lives. We not only fit the Reader's Digest characteristics, we also subscribed. There were always several copies of the magazine lying around on tables in our den and even volumes of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books on our shelves or coffee table. My mother particularly loved the magazine, which came to our house 10 times a year and was a great source of a wide range of informative or helpful articles and short, funny stories from real life, such as this one:

We rushed our four-year-old son, Ben, to the emergency room with a terrible cough, high fever, and vomiting. The doctor did an exam, then asked Ben what bothered him the most. After thinking it over, Ben said hoarsely, "My little sister."

Perhaps my favorite regular feature was the occasional essays from readers submitted under the heading:  “My Most Unforgettable Character.” I even determined whom I would write about if I decided to submit my own Reader’s Digest essay. It was an easy choice—a Savannahian named Jack Berliner. I visited Jack several times a year at his house on 56th Street. He was the best listener and sharer I have ever met.

I don’t remember just how I felt during my first visit with Jack, though I can imagine that I was both nervous and a little frightened. I had been filled in on some of his back story before going with my father or older brother to his house. Here’s what I was told:

When Jack was 18, he was a counselor at the Jewish Educational Alliance Day Camp. He was practicing some tumbling in the exercise room, missed the mat, and suffered a horrific fall, breaking his neck. He lost the use of his legs and torso and went through endless surgeries and rehabilitation to regain the use of his arms and shoulders. Now he lived at home with his older brother Sam, who ran a candy-vending business. Jack made a living by selling magazine subscriptions and stationery supplies on the phone. But he made a life by talking to any visitors who showed up on his doorstep, and there were lots of us. He doled out philosophy and politics and positivity to all comers.

I learned quickly during that first visit and many others that followed that while so much of Jack was broken, what really mattered—his mind, mouth, ears, and heart—were intact and very much alive. He was a voracious reader, and could talk knowledgeably on any subject you might bring up.

Jack’s brother Sam (whom my cousin Richard once described as deserving of sainthood) met us at the door and led us to the bedroom where Jack held court in a large hospital bed. A bar was suspended from the ceiling above Jack’s chest. He would often link his elbows onto the bar to lift himself up and shift his position in the bed in order to get in a more comfortable spot to carry on our conversation. He never stopped talking or listening. A headset lay on his chest to be used for occasional sales calls and a burning cigarette in a holder stuck out from between his teeth. Sam spent almost too much time filling and emptying the cigarette holder, lighting up the cigarettes, or tapping ashes into an ashtray before they fell off by themselves onto the bedsheets. Watching those ashes and wondering if Sam would catch them in time could be hypnotic.

Jack's cigarette ash could have an hypnotic effect.

I can’t recall just what we talked about during our visits, but I know that I always felt better when I left the Berliner house than when I arrived. Jack had opinions, but he didn’t make judgments. Long before Bill O’Reilly came along, Jack Berliner established the original “no-spin zone.” You could share truths with him in confidence. What is so rare as that! I wish that all of us could have had a Jack Berliner in our lives.

I would visit Jack when I came back to Savannah from college into the early 1970s. Then I moved up North and seldom saw him again. In 1979, my mother gave me the sad news that Jack had died while going through another surgery. He was 49 years old, and had spent 30 of those years living outside of his broken body and embracing all of us who entered his sphere.

I had not thought of Jack for many years until I read last week about the impending and eventual death of Charles Krauthammer, who doled out wisdom for more than 40 years while confined to a wheelchair after a freak accident while diving into a pool at college. I have heard Krauthammer’s political pronouncements over the years and have not always (or even usually) agreed with him. But I honor his courage and his spirit, as well as his brilliance. They are so reminiscent of Jack’s. Neither man would let you feel sorry for their impediments. They both strove to make the world a better place, and we were better for having spoken with or listened to them.

Charles Krauthammer was a master of words and chess moves.

Regrettably, I never wrote that unforgettable character essay for Reader’s Digest. This blogpost  and my lasting memory will have to do. 

Tired Out
I have gotten to the age where I can begin a story with the phrase “I can remember when. . .” So, here goes:

I can remember when the way you dealt with a flat tire while driving was to pull off the road, walk around the car to survey the problem, curse a little bit, and then open the trunk, remove enough junk to take out your spare and the jack and lug wrench, and then attack the problem. Your biggest concerns were determining whether your spare had air in it or whether the lugs were too tightly tightened to budge them. How 60s, 70s, or 80s was that?

I am also modern enough to remember when you dealt with a flat tire by following the earlier steps (including the cursing) and then removed a half-sized “donut” from your trunk and used that to replace the flat on a temporary basis.

Don't forget the donut!

I have also reached the age when I can remember when you could call on AAA or another service to handle most of the necessary steps without a lot of strain. You just had to wait long enough for a mechanic to arrive to fix or replace the tire.

But none of these worked for me when we had a blow-out while on a visit in the Berkshires last week. As it turns out, in 2018, many cars, mine included, are no longer equipped with a spare, either donut or full sized. What you have are a repair kit to patch and re-inflate the tire and a phone number to call for assistance if that doesn’t work.

No one—not AAA, not the service department of the nearest car dealership, not the insurance company that touts its 24-hour roadside assistance—is willing to bring a replacement tire to your car if you lack a working spare or donut. The best you can hope for is a tow to the nearest garage or car dealership. And then a long wait. Which is what happened to us.

It seems that most garages and even car dealerships do not stock even those tires that are standard on many of their models. Everyone gets their tires from the same suppliers. And no one can promise delivery from that supplier in less than 24 hours. In our case, the wait was nearly 48 hours. Luckily, we had a place to stay and no place to get to fast.

But I am not whining—much. What I am doing is reminiscing about a father-son moment that involved replacing a flat tire.

I can remember when my parents came north to New York for Audrey’s and my wedding 45 years ago. It was mid-February, snow was in the air and on the ground, and I was driving my parents and my Charleston-based friends Charles and Robyne from the airport to the motel in which they would be staying in Yonkers, of all places. And we had a blow-out. Miraculously, I maneuvered the car safely across three lanes to the shoulder and stopped. My father, Charles, and I got out of the car and surveyed the damage. I think I cursed. My father didn’t. He never did.

Then we got to work. We unloaded suitcases from the trunk and unearthed a full-size spare and jack. (This was 1973, after all.) Then my father gave me a true teaching moment. He searched on the side of the road for large stones to put behind the tires to keep the car from slipping back when we jacked up the car and removed the flat. Is that advice in any manual, or do you just have to have a father with worldly wisdom? Then we completed the tire change and got back on the road. No long wait, and no big deal!

This guy must have learned about the stone from my father. 

I called Charles today to find out if he remembered the incident. He did and added something I had conveniently forgotten. He says that my father demanded that we go the next day to the nearest Sears (can you remember that store brand?) to buy four new tires for the car. “You didn’t have the money for the tires then," Charles said, "so we put them on my credit card, and you paid me back after your next pay day.” He added he is still waiting to receive an interest payment he has been owed for 45 years. Somehow, that part of the story doesn't come to my mind at all.

A late, lamented Sears tire store, Most have shut down in our area.

Becoming Our Parents

In a new television commercial, a series of adult men and women lament that they are turning into their parents.

The examples they cite relate to frugality (“Why is the door open? Are we trying to air condition the whole neighborhood?”) and to being behind the times (“I find myself texting in whole sentences”).

I don’t relate directly to most of the examples in the commercial, but I still find myself becoming more like my parents each year. I look so much like my dad did in his 50s and 60s (though he was a lot thinner and not quite as bald), I use some of his Deep South expressions (“I’m waiting on you,” rather than “waiting for you”) and I sometimes adopt the sarcastic undertone my mother might convey when you didn’t agree with her. Audrey has developed the same tendency that her mother had to worry about things large or small. Our kids know the importance of texting as soon as they arrive some place whenever they travel either a short or long distance. She is on “pins and needles” until the text arrives.

It seems inevitable that we just can’t escape the hold our parents have on us even after they are no longer physically in our lives. For Audrey and me, cooking, especially for holidays, is one definite way that we imitate our parents. And I don’t think we’re unique.

How do I know? For Exhibit 1, just look at the meal Audrey and I put together last Sunday when our kids joined us for Mother’s Day.

Here was the "historically-correct" menu:

1) Barbecued short ribs marinated in the special sauce my mother used to concoct (a mixture of sautéed onions, ketchup, chili sauce, Heinz 57 sauce, spicy mustard, and just a touch of sugar—with none of the ingredients actually measured, just added “to taste”); parboiled to remove most of the fat and assure quicker cooking on the grill; and then grilled as my father would do them so they were moist but still properly charred. Since I gave up eating red meat or chicken more than 10 years ago, these ribs were recreated from memory, not from taste. But they were well received by the rest of the family—and admired longingly but forlornly for by our dog.

Barbecued short ribs were a staple of the meal my parents would often cook for my entire family in Savannah on Father’s Day each year. They are also the meal that Brett would usually request to be served when he returned from sleepaway camp each summer.

 

2) A salad of marinated cucumbers and string beans, made the way Audrey’s grandmother used to do it. Slice the cucumbers and rings of red onion thinly; combine them with white vinegar, vegetable oil, mustard, and a little sugar; then let them sit for as many hours as possible to build the flavor. Once again, this recipe has no set measurements. That would defy tradition.

3) A special dessert—a German shortcake called muerbeteig, that is part of our family lore and humor. Following my mother-in-law’s rules, the dough was made with Crisco rather than butter for flakiness and included a touch of vinegar (“That’s what creates the muerb,” or fragility, my mother-in-law would say.) After the dough was baked, Audrey spooned on top a compote made of frozen rhubarb cooked with a half-cup of sugar. Then she covered the cake and rhubarb with a layer of melted semi-sweet chocolate bits that was allowed to harden in the refrigerator before serving.

Brett and Amanda and the famous muerbeteig.

For most of our married life, Audrey refused to take on making a muerbeteig herself despite her mother’s cajoling. “It’s so simple,” my mother-in-law would say. “Why won’t you make it?” In later years, our children picked up on the cajoling, in part to tease Audrey and in part to get a rise out of their grandmother. Brett even took on the task of baking a muerbeteig for a family holiday meal several years before Audrey did. The cake we served this Mother’s Day helped bring my mother-in-law back into all of our memories again and made us all smile

So, this Mother’s Day, we became our parents and grandparents, if only for a little while and mostly at the stove and dinner table. I am wondering just how our children will become us in the future.

What’s So Special about 73?

My Aunt Lillian and Uncle Walter are celebrating their 73rd anniversary next week. That’s a pretty amazing number! I cannot imagine a couple more connected than my aunt and uncle. They have held each other together well into their nineties, spreading joy and optimism both within and beyond our family.

Uncle Walter and Aunt Lillian together as always

Here is an example of what I mean. My aunt’s hearing has been failing for many years, a fact which she hasn’t always admitted to or let dim her outlook on life. My uncle, on the other hand, is one of the great snorers of our time. “Windows rattle in the house when my dad sleeps,” my cousin David once remarked. Somehow those two infirmities haven’t gotten in their way. A few years ago, my aunt noted that as they have gotten older, my uncle’s snoring problem seems to be getting much better. No problem!

As I thought about the upcoming 73rd anniversary, I began doing a little thinking about the significance of the number 73. It seems to be everywhere in my family’s life these days. My brother is 73. So are my cousins Joel and Harold. Audrey and I recently celebrated our 45th anniversary, having been married in the year 1973.

Cheering for the number 73!

Is there anything else special about the number 73, I wondered, numerology-wise? It turns out that it is pretty special. (Here is a little esoterica.) 73 is the 21st prime number. Its mirror (37) is the 12th and its mirror (21) is the product of multiplying 7 and 3. In binary, 73 is a palindrome, 1001001 which backwards is 1001001. How special is that!

There is even a Biblical significance. If you count up the number values of the letters in the first seven words from Genesis 1:1 (In the beginning, G-d created the heaven and the earth), the sum is 2701, which is 73 x 37.  Biblical scholars seem to revel in this kind of number play. And my Uncle Walter would be happy to know that the number values of the letters in the word Chokma, which means “wisdom,” also add up to 73. He has always been one of the wisest—and funniest—men I have known.

I’m not sure what all of this has to do with my aunt and uncle and what it reflects on their amazing long run together, but I wanted to celebrate them, both in anecdote and in numbers. Together, they add up to quite a pair.!

My Mom, the Bathing Beauty

This coming Tuesday, my mother would be 98 years old. Sadly, we won’t be celebrating her birthday with her (she died nearly four years ago), but I will be thinking of her. And I’m writing about her now and about a big surprise she left behind.

My parents were not big on photo albums. Sure, there were a few pictures taken of my brother and me at birthday parties, high school graduations, and family gatherings. There is an adorable shot of my brother and me sitting uncomfortably atop a horse when I was about four and he was about nine, and even an embarrassing shot of me being sworn in as captain of the school safety patrol in sixth grade. But those pictures were mostly isolated shots, pinned onto bulletin boards around our house or set into inexpensive frames and hung onto walls.

So it was a big shock when my sister-in-law Sandy found a small, aging photo album tucked into a storage chest in the attic in my mother’s house, which she was clearing out after my mother moved from the house into an assisted-living facility late in her life.

And what an album it is! The album is labeled "Miami Beach, Florida, August 1939" and features a very happy gathering of young people enjoying the sun, beach, and each other’s company. Young women AND men, and one of them is my 19-year-old mom! She’s hugging young men I don’t know (and never met) and wearing some skimpy summer outfits. And she is smiling big time!



My Mom is at the top right surrounded by young men.



Hugging and smiling big time!

I’m not sure how most people would respond to finding a “bathing beauty” photo album of their mother as a teenager. On a scale from shocked to surprised, I’d like to think that I was closer to surprised. But my surprise quickly morphed into smiles as I looked through the album. There is a freedom and joy that I don’t think I saw often in my mother. After all, I first met her long after she was married and already the mother of a five-year-old. And I doubled her family responsibilities. Once I arrived, she had three lives to run besides her own—and that was just in our immediate family.



The Miami photos also surprise me because the mother I knew almost never went to the beach even though Tybee was just 18 miles from our Savannah home. She said she hated the beach “because it was dirty.” I’m sure she was joking when she said that, but only partially. She really didn’t like mess. Luckily, she still put up with me and my messy ways for the 18 years I lived full-time in the Savannah house that was her home for nearly 60 years.  



My Mom on a sandy beach-- now, that's a surprise!

I have lots of memories of my mom, but none of her as a bathing beauty until this album emerged from its hiding place. It’s nice that your mom can still surprise you and make you smile after all these years.

Coming Close

The sad (from my Georgian’s point of view) ending to last night’s college football championship game has left me thinking about winning, losing, and coming close to winning, and whether “coming close” is a synonym for “failure” … or not.

When our kids were younger, my good friend Bob and I spent many seasons coaching our respective kids’ sports teams. We had different approaches, especially when it came to the integral importance of winning. Bob explained that he wanted the kids to recognize the difference between winning and losing, to strive primarily to win, and to be disappointed if they lost. I think he wanted them to be more than just disappointed at losing, but I may be exaggerating a little. I followed more of the “every kid gets a trophy” approach.

My idea was to play everyone an almost equal amount during a game while teaching the fundamentals, without overemphasizing the victory aspect. This worked pretty well when my players were 8 or 9 years old; when they grew older, I probably should have pushed to build in a more competitive attitude. Looking back, I think I may have underdone things a little bit.



Amanda's and my softball team. She's at the bottom left; 
I'm on the top right. Perhaps it was 
symbolic that we were the Glen Rock Chiropractic Center.

I can remember one of Amanda’s softball games that ended when our team scored in the bottom of the last inning to pull out a victory. I called to one of our players who remained standing on second base after the winning run had scored to come in from the field.

“What happened?” she asked.
“The game is over,” I shouted back.
“Did we win?”
“Yes.”
“Great!”

Perhaps I could have done more to light a competitive fire in her.

We want our kids to be good winners. But what about being good losers? My friend Bob would have challenged whether being a good loser was anything to aspire to. He may have been right.



Brett (far left) in his brief football days. His coach that year (not I) 
was determined to turn all of the nine-year-olds into "men."

Since most of us spend many moments of our lives being judged, it is important that we know how to perform well in judging situations and to recognize when we have done our best work. The being judged part can be difficult on our hearts and minds, however. Especially because for every one winner there are usually multiple competitors who “come close” without winning.

On Saturday night, Audrey and I went to a concert that featured two young folk singers, one male and one female. Both were excellent musicians and talented songwriters, though we did prefer one over the other. The performers had very different styles and very different levels of confidence that showed through as they played and sang. One of them just seemed happier than the other, and we responded more happily to her. 

They also presented very different autobiographical snippets as they introduced their songs to the audience. The male singer told about achieving a life-long ambition when he was chosen to participate in a folk music competition in Texas. Thirty-two singer/songwriters performed before a large audience and a panel of judges over a two-day period. From that group, six were named finalists. They were the big winners.

Our singer, who had not made the final cut, told how he called home to let his wife know the “sad” results. His wife then relayed the news to their young daughter. “My daughter asked my wife if I had won. When my wife said ‘No,’ my little girl asked if Daddy had cried. ‘Yes,’ my wife said.”

This story was a little depressing, but here’s the best part. The incident led the singer to write a special song for his special little girl. And that turned out to be the best song of his set. It was touching, and more sweet than bittersweet. I like to think that “coming close” was just as important as winning for this particular performer, though I’m sure he would have preferred being able to market his status as a festival finalist.

Looking back, I can still remember one judging experience from my youth. When I was around 14 and a Hebrew school student in Savannah, my hometown, I was pushed to compete in a National Bible Contest sponsored by a national synagogue council. The contest involved reading different parts of the Old Testament (which fittingly included the Book of Judges that year) and answering multiple-choice and short-answer questions about the text. Reading and answering questions—that was right in my wheelhouse. I made the top score of all participants from the Southeast and earned the right to go to New York for the national competition. My mother went along, and I am pretty sure that we went by train and not airplane at that time.

This was my first trip ever to New York, and I was pretty stoked. My mother and I spent a lot of time during our first two days staring up at the big buildings. We also saw the Rockettes at Radio City and a huge-screen presentation of “Bye, Bye Birdie.”

Then it was time for the competition. There were 22 of us pedantic teens, mumbling biblical stories to ourselves to psych-up. Then we were handed a written test. I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. I blanked out on a few questions and guessed at some others. Twenty minutes after the written test was over, the 10 finalists were announced. I wasn’t one of them.

Then the top 10 were asked to respond orally to questions, somewhat like the National Spelling Bee until a winner emerged. I was really annoyed when I noted that I could answer almost all of the oral questions. “So close,” I told myself. “So close.”

When I got home, people in Savannah asked how I had done. “I came in number 11,” I said without blinking, and happily accepted everyone’s congratulations.