More Ida, Less Sam

I didn't fall asleep last night until about 1:00, since the Hubs had been out teaching and got home close to midnight. I wasn't worried about him, but I would doze off and a little noise would wake me up (thinking it was the door opening or something) and then once he did get home I was too awake. Bummer. So I'm working on about four and half hours of sleep today, which is hardly my optimum. The SCM is out, but my favorite sub of all time (other than K, who is in for someone else) is here.

So while I was trying to fall asleep, I was thinking about the story I posted yesterday, and that I wanted to show you this picture of Grandma and Grandpa:


This was taken on their 50th anniversary, so that would have been New Year's Day, 1966. So I thought you might like to hear another story or two, although not in the same vein as yesterday's. (Thanks for the lovely comments, btw.)

This was during the time they lived in Florida, which was Grandpa's dream, but not Grandma's. She did make the move with him, although they moved back a couple of years later. My mother flew down there to celebrate their anniversary with them; they had a big party, as they had many, many friends (but no family) who had either moved to Florida too, or who became their friends there. They were incredibly social people, btw, which is interesting, considering that my sister and I could live happily as hermits. But I digress. My mother took this picture; her brother did not make the trip from California. The rest of us didn't go because it was too expensive to fly.

Anyway, the following spring, so I was 13, Grandma flew up alone for a visit. I actually still have a letter from Grandpa to my mother in which he says he wishes he could come too, but a $98 plane ticket is just too expensive. (He had some sort of job down there too, folding newspapers or something, for pocket money. Other than that, they lived on Social Security.) I went to the airport with my parents to pick her up.

Oh, the hugga-mugga. Grandma without Grandpa was generally a high-drama sort of person. And of course she arrived with a number of bags, suitcases and parcels, as well as the obligatory black patent leather purse over her arm. I was wearing a new dress that I loved; it was sleeveless, which was unusual for me because I rarely wore, or wear, sleeveless, but this was real Carnaby Street and I adored it. I thought I looked very grown up. I sat in the back seat of the car with Grandma, who chattered away in a combination of English and Yiddish, and then suddenly looked at me and saw what I was wearing, and grabbed my arm and pulled it up, and looked.

Shocked, she said to me in a loud whisper "Did you shave under your arm?" I wish I could reproduce her accent for you; arm was a two-syllable word. I grinned and nodded. This was part of the excitement of the sleeveless dress for me; I had finally been allowed to shave under my arms when I got it. Grandma made a face, and then followed perhaps the most memorable thing she ever said to me:

"I shaved under my arms once and it never grew back." Clearly, this had been some kind of disapointment for her.

Now the story on this, I may have written before, was that only a few years earlier, she was going to a family wedding or Bar Mitzvah or something, and had gotten a dressy sleeveless dress, and my mother refused to allow her to go unless she shaved under her arms. In which case she was probably the only one of her sisters, or of any of the women her generation, at the event whose armpits were naked ("like a little girl") and trust me, they were all wearing sleeveless. Whether or not they shaved their legs, I don't know, but I doubt it. Grandma and her sisters were all very fair and blonde, and by the time they were old, there probably wasn't much there anyway. Which is why it never grew back, I guess. Anyway, she shrugged, as if to tell me that shaving under my arms was a choice I was going to have to live with, and we rode home in chatty fun.

Once she was settled into my room, she called me in and asked me, again in a loud whisper, "So, are you a lady now?" A tough question here, because as I grinned and said yes, I also backed out of her reach. These old ladies from "the other side," as we said, had some funny ideas.

They did not tell their children about sex, certainly, and not about puberty and what went with it either. I guess this was supposed to be something you learned by observation, I don't know, since Grandma herself was one of twelve children or so. So my mother knew nothing except what her older brother, the Authority on Everything, had told her about getting her period. (He had probably read about it in the encyclopedia, which he read cover to cover, as well as the dictionary.) So when her time came, she knew what it was, and then her mother came home and she told her she was bleeding. At which point, Grandma took a swing and gave Shirl a zets -- a smack -- that knocked her onto the floor. Because getting your period was a sign of womanhood, a good thing, which meant that the Evil Eye might notice you and try to steal your happiness, so you had to look as if you were being punished. So naturally, when she asked me, I didn't want to be within arm's reach.

But she hadn't knocked any of her other granddaughters to the floor, and I was the youngest, so I guess somewhere along the line my mother must have said to her "DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE!!" She didn't, but she was delighted that I was now "a lady" too.



WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1959
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Who's Your Patronus?

It's not a meme, but I'll get to that in a minute.

This is how strange it was here today:



I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's snowing and the sky is blue. For most of the day today, we had snow squalls and bright sunshine. It was very weird.

Okay, so here's the thing. If you know Harry Potter (or if you don't, I'm going to explain it), but I figure that if I had a Patronus, it would probably be a little old man in an overcoat and a fedora.

This isn't exactly a meme, just a question I asked myself, and answered. Feel free to give it a shot.

In Peter Pan, the children must "think lovely thoughts" to make themselves fly. Harry Potter must think of his best possible memory in order to create his Patronus, a powerful protective charm that takes the form of an animal or creature of some kind.

So here's the question: which memory of yours would make you fly, or let you summon a Patronus?


I am anywhere between eight and fifteen years old. It's a Friday afternoon, after school but before dark. It's a scene that takes place once a month or so. Grandma and Grandpa are coming for the weekend.

They're coming from the city, by bus. If I'm younger, they're coming from the Bronx, a 45 minute trip. If I'm older, it's a two hour ordeal from Brooklyn.

I know they're coming, and I can't sit still; ultimately I can't stay in the house at all.

I wiggle my way onto the sidewalk in front of my house, waiting and watching. Our street is three blocks long and we live near the end of the second block. At the far end of the first block, where the street starts, is the highway, and the bus stop. That's where they'll be coming from. There's a slight rise in the street, so the first thing I will see will be the top of Grandpa's hat as they come over the crest towards me.

I am too little to cross the street, too little to run up to the end of the block so I can wait for them to cross from the first block to the second. But I edge my way, first past the house to our left, then to the house to the left of that. I will usually stop before I get to the Krugs' house, because they have a mean, scary, barking dog. I dance my way back and forth, not too far for Mom to yell at me, far enough to see. At last!

I see Grandpa's hat, and then Grandma's, and I can see them coming! He is carrying two suitcases and anything else she could hang on him; she has her purse and a couple of shopping bags. I race past the barking dog and stand on the corner, hopping from one foot to another. (If I am older, I have already been waiting on the corner, and race carefully across the street to meet them as they make their way down the first block.)

We are walking towards the house now, I am hopping all around them, and perhaps have been allowed to take a shopping bag to carry. No hugs yet, just smiles. When we get to our house, the front door open and waiting, I have only to open the storm door and hold it for them and then they are inside!

Before we can blink, Grandma has put down her bags (but not her purse) and with her coat and hat still on, she will grab either my sister or me, whoever is closer to her, and begin to dance. She sings the same tune each time: ta YA TA! ta ya ta! ta yatatatataTA! as she dances us around the living room, one at a time. When she's finished, Grandpa has put down the suitcases and hung up his overcoat and hat in the closet and we get to hug him, one at a time, always standing in the little entry area of the living room in front of the mirror. When I am older, we are on eye level; I have been five foot two since I was twelve, and he has been five foot three since about 1910. It is the best hug ever.

By the time we have hugged Grandpa and danced with Grandma, her coat is hung up too, and we are helping them carry their things upstairs. They sleep in my room when they are here, and I happily take the extra bed in my sister's room. I would share a room with my sister forever if only they would come and live with us, the most wonderful thing I can imagine.

Once they are settled in my room, Grandpa comes out into the hallway for a low-voice conversation with both of us, with my sister and me. He reaches into his deep pants pockets and starts to apologize, because they are not wealthy people and he cannot give us more. We are already saying "No, Grandpa, don't give us anything! We're happy that you're here!" because we are and because we know that they are poor. He forces us each to take a dollar from him, and then we ask if he has gum, because he always has a flat yellow box of Chiclets in his left front pants pocket. He does, and gives us each a piece, and we chew, happy and contented. Grandma and Grandpa are here for the weekend.



WATCHING WIFE SWAP :: ENTRY #1958
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Taking a Walk

So. I took my car for the new radio this morning, and while it was being done, I took a walk.

I am fairly certain that I did not recently write about one of my happiest childhood memories, although I was thinking about it recently. If I Peter Pan were to sprinkle fairy dust on me, this is the thought that would make me fly. If I were at Hogwarts, this is what would conjure me a Patronus.

I grew up on a street that was three blocks long; we lived near the end of the middle block. The first block rose up a little towards the highway that is one of the main roads through Bizarro Town. The bus from New York City uses this highway as its major route through town. When I was small, I was not permitted to go off of the second block, and certainly not up to the highway.

But if I knew that my grandparents were coming to visit, I roamed the limits of my block, looking hopefully up towards the highway. I knew that after they stepped down off the bus, they would appear at the crest of the street, at which point I would be free to run up to them, taking a package from one, perhaps, as I danced excitedly beside them while they walked wearily towards my house. They were always burdened with bags and packages and suitcases; it was Grandma Ida's way of life. My happy moment would be the instant I saw their recognizable figures come into view.

So the car audio place I went to was on the highway, where it intersects with the street of my childhood home. I put on my headphones, turned on my iPod, and turned right out of their parking lot, which put me at the crest of the hill, suddenly a player on the other side in my childhood memory.

I walked down the street, all the way down to the third block. Once I hit the second, though, I could look at each house and remember the people who lived there long ago. The names did not always come to me, but the faces did. My parents' best friends lived near the end of the third block; they had helped my parents find the house to buy. I spent a lot of time here.

At the end of the third block, I looked across the street and saw an empty lot -- still empty; there's a huge drainage ditch here -- where we played all the freaking time as we got older. I took a left, and came up the last two blocks of the street next to mine. I passed the house where my third grade teacher lived. I passed the house where I babysat when I was a teenager.

Before I came up the third block, though, I turned right, passed one house, and saw this before me:



So, they finally put a cut-through in the fence. I always just climbed over it.



Trees? Why would you put trees right in the middle of the playground? Hey, when I was a kid, this school was jammed; we would have run headlong into trees in the middle of the playground for sure. I guess the population's a little thinner now.



This is just a piss-poor imitation of the backstop I used to climb. For one thing, there's no actual ball field anymore; it's mostly overgrown, so I guess they're not expecting much ball playing here. The town leagues don't use this field to play on. And is it just me, or is the backstop a lot shorter than it used to be?



The building to the right is the new addition. It used to be one big open field, but now, this building breaks it up. There's still a little playground on the other side of it.



The two story building on the left is the original school, built in 1923. Not only did I go to elementary school here, the MIL is a graduate as well.



You're wondering what this is. It's the faint outline of a white dodgeball circle that's been painted over. I don't know that dodgeball has been banned here in Bizarro Town as it has in many other places, but I guess it's not encouraged. They used to paint these circles on the ground so that a class could come outside for recess or phys. ed. and have a specific place to play.

What makes this dodgeball circle special? In fact, it's the specific spot in the circle I was standing on to take the picture that rang the bell of my memory. This is the spot I was standing on when our fifth grade teacher told us that President Kennedy had been shot.

I moved on. I hit the Dunkin Donuts, and then went back to the car shop, where the guy had finished early (!) and my car was ready. Nice little radio, not too expensive. Too many buttons, though.

And I finally got the new car inspected this afternoon, the bastards. There was NO LINE, but it still took a half hour for a five minute inspection, because the line my car was on just stopped dead with no one working it for about twenty minutes. On the other lines, five people who came in after me left before I did.

It was an interesting day.

WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1580

Erev Yontef

On the eve of the holiday (which is what today's title means, "the eve of the holiday"), the proper greeting, I believe, is Le shana tova tikatevu, which means, "May only good be written for you this year." Of course, I'm telling you all this as if I have ever actually observed this holiday in my life, which I have not. Rosh Hashonah, along with Yom Kippur, on its way a week from Saturday, are the big-time religious observances, and therefore, got little notice in the house where I grew up. Jack and Shirl did not do religion, and even Grandpa Sam (Shirl's orthodox father) knew this, and so spent this holiday elsewhere, where he could go to services at the shul (synagogue.) The only holidays we covered chez Jack and Shirl were Chanukah, the present-giving event that's around Christmas, and Passover, the wonderful family/tradition event that was always held at our house but presided over by Grandpa Sam.

So what am I doing tomorrow? Waking up without an alarm, getting K's car re-inspected, taking a nice walk or two, and either getting my new car radio put in or making an appointment to get it done on Friday.

I got home from the dreaded Back to School Night around 9.30, at which point I was wired. I hadn't eaten dinner because I was too keyed up, and I went back to school at 5.30 anyway. Why keyed up? A variety of reasons, none of which were school-related, but I knew I had a lot of work to do, so I skipped dinner and went back early. The evening was not unpleasant, although by 9.00 I could have eaten the furniture. I came home, had a frozen pizza, and finally fell asleep around 11.30, only to wake up at 1.30, and then ... you know. I finally fell back to sleep around 5.00. My alarm rings at 5.40.

In the last three days, I have printed approximately 300 school I.D. cards for various people, and done nothing else whatsoever, since I didn't have a minute to spare. So remember, kids, get your education! See what fascinating work you can do when you have multiple graduate degrees?

One of the parents who stopped into the library last night looked around at the books in awe and asked if it cost anything for the kids to be able to take them home. I was not rude to her, and actually did not feel the need to be, because she was clearly from some country where the concept of a free lending library does not exist. She was delighted to hear that no, her child can borrow our books just by being a student at our school. All the parents who dropped by were lovely. I was particularly touched by a couple who were clearly from India, and who looked around admiringly at the new furnishings, posters on the wall, and so on, and who stopped dead when they saw the big poster I put up of Gandhi. They were actually moved, and expressed their gratitude and delight. To me, it was no big deal; you may recall the fun I had last winter picking out posters. But I think to them, it meant that their child had a place in this American school, too.

I'm going to investigate dinner -- I think I'll have it tonight -- and then ... no idea.

WATCHING REBA :: ENTRY #1578

Meet the Presidents

[copied from dland]

The U.S. Mint started issuing these coins this week. There's going to be a dollar coin for every president, except any still living, because there's a law against putting living presidents on currency. (Who knew?) I have been collecting those state quarters because, apparently, I am a huge dork. (Really, what are my grandchildren going to do with my stupid set of state quarters? And the Hubs'?) But the quarters, at least, are in circulation; you get them in normal change. Nobody uses dollar coins, so I'm not really sure how I'm getting my hands on these. I guess I'll have to go to the bank when each one comes out and trade in a dollar bill for the one I want. But I must have them.

When I was a kid, my most favorite all-time game was

Mine was a few years older than this one, and had a different picture on the box. I can't believe that of all the things I've saved from my childhood, I don't still have it. (The box actually fell apart ages ago, but I saved the parts for years.) The game board was a big map of the United States, with circles all over where you could insert your game pieces when you got a question right, just like in one of those booklets where you keep coins. Because the game pieces were little silver-colored coins, each one with the image of one of the presidents on it. There was also a big, complicated wheel thing that you would turn -- I forget the actual rules -- and it would ask questions about the presidents, and if you got it right -- the wheel showed the answer someplace -- you could put one of your tokens into the map. There were levels of difficulty for the questions; I always played the easiest level because I was, like, nine years old. My grandfather played the harder levels.

I never played this game with anyone but Grandpa Sam. It was the highlight of any visit he and Grandma made to us. (They lived in the Bronx at this time, which was maybe a half-hour bus ride to us, tops, so we saw them once a month, or maybe every six weeks.) Grandpa and I would sit in the little den downstairs and play Meet the Presidents. It was our thing, man.

I've certainly written about Grandpa Sam before, but I can't get the entry to come up, so I can't link to it. My grandpa was a very magical being. His appearance was entirely ordinary, maybe even less than ordinary. He was about 5'2", which made him the tallest male his family had produced up to that point. (His son, my Uncle Sol, was about 5'4".) Grandpa Sam looked like the most ordinary little man in the whole world.

But he had this amazing, quiet charisma. It did him no good in the world at large; he was never a success at any business he tried, and sometimes, employers would take advantage of his good nature. He was, by trade, a glovemaker, when the style in the world was that all ladies and gentlemen wore leather gloves. Whenever he lost one of his businesses -- he had a candy store, at one point -- he would go back to glovemaking. (He was a cutter; he used a giant hot press to cut the leather pieces and then they went to a stitcher.) During the Depression when gloves weren't selling so well, he took whatever job he could find to feed his children.

His magic was that everyone who knew him -- other than the above-mentioned occasional employers -- liked him immediately, wanted to befriend him, wanted to hang out with him. He and Grandma were unbelievable social butterflies. They had lots and lots of friends, and made new friends wherever they went in an instant, because of him. The magic he exerted over children cannot be described; every child gravitated towards him and he would play with them, talk to them as if they were real people. I was lucky because as the youngest grandchild, he spent more time with me, because he retired not long after I was born.

He had only gone to school long enough to learn to read and write in English; he came here as an immigrant when he was 13. But once he learned to read, he kept on going. He had three favorite topics to read about, learn about, and remember every detail about: opera, baseball, and American history. His most special thing was that he loved everything about the presidents. Our favorite trick was for him to recite the list of all the presidents, Washington to ... well, I first heard him do it with Kennedy, but could ultimately do it up through Nixon. No mnemonic devices here. He just knew them.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my presidential dollars, and they are gold-colored, not silver, but I may just stack them up on the edge of rolltop here at my desk in little piles, like Scrooge McDuck, and ask myself presidential trivia questions from time to time. Andrew Johnson never went to school, didja know that? Who was the only bachelor president? (It was James Buchanan.) These were questions on the wheel, my friends, and Grandpa Sam knew the answers. And so do I.


WATCHING THE HISTORY CHANNEL :: ENTRY #1379

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Sam

[copied from dland]

**In 27 days I will be 50 years old**

Okay, I know it's time for me to stop doing this, but today would have been Grandpa's birthday. Let's see, it's 2002, so if he were still alive, he would be ... 110.

Perhaps I'm being a little unrealistic here. When he died 31 years ago, I was 18, and his presence in my life was so strong that I couldn't imagine going on without him. So every year I would imagine what it would be like if he hadn't died. For a while it seemed realistic enough. When I was 21 he would have been 81, celebrating my birthday; that was possible. He would only have been 85 at my wedding; people live to be 85 all the time. He would have been 92 when my first daughter was born. Hey, didn't his own brother live to 92, and their mother to 96? It could have happened!

I'm not sure when it got to be weird, I guess ten years ago when he would have been 100. Not so many people make it to 100. And now I've got to make peace with it: he's not coming back. I mean, I knew of course that he wasn't coming back.

But he never would have seen me reach 50, not under any circumstances, not under the best possible health, and here's 50 coming up fast. What would it have been like for him, to see his grandchildren all grown now, and one of them a grandmother herself? It would have been some ride.

But no transfer at the end of the line, not even for a guy who spent half his life riding the New York City subways.

What the hell. Happy Birthday, Grandpa. Love you.


ENTRY #29

Heaven, What I Plan to Do There, and EBay

[copied from dland]

Have you ever watched Inside the Actor's Studio, and at the end, James Lipton asks those questions invented by someone or other in France? Here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite word or sound?

2. What sound or noise do you hate?

3. What is your favorite curse word?

4. What profession other than your own would like to have attempted?

5. What profession other than your own would you never like to have attempted?

6. When you die and go to the pearly gates (that's what Lipton says), what would you like to hear St. Peter (the gatekeeper) say to you when you arrive?

So the first three questions -- maybe the first four -- no big deal. Number 5 is easy: soldier. I would never want to be a soldier.

Number 6 is the good one. Here is what I'd like to hear someone say to me when I arrive at the gates of heaven:

"Come right on in; Grandpa's waiting for you."

What I expect to do in heaven is that I expect to be between 6 and maybe 11 years old -- it could change from moment to moment -- and I expect to be with Grandpa pretty much all the time. The best would be that I'm sitting in the den at the house on 33rd Street, the knotty-pine semi-basement room in the split-level house. I'm sitting on the old gold-colored vinyl couch that was so uncomfortable, like every other couch or chair in the house, but it looked right for the room. I'm setting up the game board for "Meet the Presidents", getting ready all the little silver coins, one for each president, and the big dial that you spin to get your presidential trivia question. I've got it all ready. I'm just waiting for Grandpa to come downstairs and play. He's coming, but first he has to use the bathroom.

And then he's there, coming down the steps. He's never changed, not at all, not since I was born. He's always the same. He wears gray trousers about two sizes too big for him, and a button-up shirt, probably plaid, buttoned all the way up to his neck. Unless it's really hot outside, the shirt has long sleeves. He wears glasses -- I never saw him in wire-rims, only plastic frames -- and he comes downstairs with a light step. He's about 70 now, and probably tops the scales at about 125 pounds. He has a round nose and a deep tan, unless it's December and he hasn't been to Florida yet, in which case he only has a light tan. A swarthy kind of guy.

He sits down and we play. There are four levels of difficulty in the questions; I always answer the easiest level and he takes the hardest, or second-hardest. He never went to school after he learned to speak English, but he loves American history, and especially he loves anything about the presidents. This is our game.

I would make him play for hours. Sometimes he could convince me that he had to stop for a minute or two to go to the bathroom, but usually I would take a lot of convincing. I was the baby grandchild, and I was indulged, at least by him. He would do anything I wanted him to do. I would have done anything to play games with him forever.

The heavenly scene shifts, and now it's Passover, and nobody in the house cares or gives a damn about tradition or religion except Grandpa. What we all love about Passover is watching him do the whole shtick, the whole seder routine. He says the prayers, sings the songs, eats the matzo, while we all eat dinner, watch him, and occasionally murmur "homain" when he gives us the high-sign. If this is an especially good seder, Grandpa will have too much wine and then will giggle all through the songs he sings afterwards. One year he giggled so much that he couldn't stop, and laughed for hours, even after the dishes were all done and we sat around the living room, watching him laugh and being delighted throughout.

James Lipton does not ask other questions, such as what quirks do you have? Not enough time for that one. One of my quirks is that I have begun using eBay to recapture my childhood. I started by looking for and buying some of the books I remember reading. More on that another time, perhaps. Now I'm looking for "Meet the Presidents", in good condition.


ENTRY #6