C.A. Haddad's Blog, page 10

Why I Miss the South

In my walk around my North Shore neighborhood today, I marveled that in this time of pandemic, when people claim to be suffering from isolation, I noted—once again—that the ability to say hello or even nod when one person passes another, even on the opposite side of the street, seems to be an anathema.

I observed this lack of common civility when I moved here over thirty years ago and it still bewilders me.

Even after all these years, I still regret moving to Highland Park from Atlanta, Georgia, where civility is a prime motivator in roughly ninety percent of all interactions.  Being polite is taught young and often.  As an instructor at Georgia Tech, I recall speaking to a student who was sitting while I was standing, examining his paper.  He would not have that, considering it rude, so he quickly got up and stood alongside of me.  And who doesn’t love to be called “ma’am” as a matter of course.

One is never alone in the South.  At football games, at the grocery store, around the neighborhood, no one is a stranger.  Standing in line means engaging in conversation, and certainly you’d never pass anyone on a neighborhood jaunt without saying hello and sometimes stopping to pass the time of day.  I even used to greet the guards and the prisoner in work details, and they would all very politely return my greetings.

How I relished driving in Atlanta. No, not the awful traffic. I’m talking about around the neighborhood.  There was a light at Johnson’s Ferry—no ferry by the way—and sometimes people just weren’t paying attention.  It would turn green.  The first car wouldn’t move.  Did anyone beep?  No.  We waited.  And sometimes we waited through a whole other light cycle.  Would that happen here?  No, and you might get rear-ended if you don’t move fast enough.

What is it about the Chicago area that makes people think rudeness is a virtue?  So many here are under the impression that New Yorkers are unfriendly.  I’m from New York.  I’m trying to remember any rudeness I encountered.  Oh, yes, one time an old woman poked me with her umbrella because I wasn’t leaving the elevator at Saks fast enough.  There you have it.

(Note:  I am omitting the cat calls we all got from construction workers.  I think they spent more time watching women than working.)

I will admit my children didn’t like the South.  It could be that I ripped two of them away from their high school friends in Maryland.  If I had to do it again, which I obviously can’t, I wouldn’t have moved them. My older son and daughter went to school their first day in shorts.  Atlanta is hot.  They were allowed to stay for the day but informed that shorts were against the dress code.  There were also no windows in the high school so students wouldn’t get distracted.

My daughter especially found it hard to deal with the fashion statements the other girls were making, the clothes, the make up, the “Southern charm.”  As far as my younger son, a public school teacher advised me to get him into a private school as soon as possible because he was too bright for them to handle.

I sigh.  Yes, I suppose it was selfish of me to enjoy myself while my children were suffering with these adjustments.  But I had two wonderful sets of friends, one work, the other social. And there was the ACC to celebrate.  Georgia Tech football, basketball, what could be more fun?

When my husband got a job offer from Northwestern, I was horrified.  How could he remove me from paradise?  I told him, I’ll go if they double your salary.  Well, damn it, they did!

So here I am, stuck in the confines of the unfriendly North Shore.

Any benefits.  Well, okay, one.  At Georgia Tech, when they had a faculty gathering, they served cheese and crackers.  The first faculty affair at Northwestern, there were jumbo shrimp and liquor.

Amazingly enough, two of my children returned to the South, one to teach at Tech’s arch enemy University of Georgia, the other to work in Greenville, South Carolina.

Will I ever return?  I hope so. Some day.  In the meantime, I shall smile and say hello to keep in practice, no matter what the response or lack there of might be.

WHY I MISS THE SOUTH

In my walk around my North Shore neighborhood today, I marveled that in this time of pandemic, when people claim to be suffering from isolation, I noted—once again—that the ability to say hello or even nod when one person passes another, even on the opposite side of the street, seems to be an anathema.

I observed this lack of common civility when I moved here over thirty years ago and it still bewilders me.

Even after all these years, I still regret moving to Highland Park from Atlanta, Georgia, where civility is a prime motivator in roughly ninety percent of all interactions.  Being polite is taught young and often.  As an instructor at Georgia Tech, I recall speaking to a student who was sitting while I was standing, examining his paper.  He would not have that, considering it rude, so he quickly got up and stood alongside of me.  And who doesn’t love to be called “ma’am” as a matter of course.

One is never alone in the South.  At football games, at the grocery store, around the neighborhood, no one is a stranger.  Standing in line means engaging in conversation, and certainly you’d never pass anyone on a neighborhood jaunt without saying hello and sometimes stopping to pass the time of day.  I even used to greet the guards and the prisoner in work details, and they would all very politely return my greetings.

How I relished driving in Atlanta. No, not the awful traffic. I’m talking about around the neighborhood.  There was a light at Johnson’s Ferry—no ferry by the way—and sometimes people just weren’t paying attention.  It would turn green.  The first car wouldn’t move.  Did anyone beep?  No.  We waited.  And sometimes we waited through a whole other light cycle.  Would that happen here?  No, and you might get rear-ended if you don’t move fast enough.

What is it about the Chicago area that makes people think rudeness is a virtue?  So many here are under the impression that New Yorkers are unfriendly.  I’m from New York.  I’m trying to remember any rudeness I encountered.  Oh, yes, one time an old woman poked me with her umbrella because I wasn’t leaving the elevator at Saks fast enough.  There you have it.

(Note:  I am omitting the cat calls we all got from construction workers.  I think they spent more time watching women than working.)

I will admit my children didn’t like the South.  It could be that I ripped two of them away from their high school friends in Maryland.  If I had to do it again, which I obviously can’t, I wouldn’t have moved them. My older son and daughter went to school their first day in shorts.  Atlanta is hot.  They were allowed to stay for the day but informed that shorts were against the dress code.  There were also no windows in the high school so students wouldn’t get distracted.

My daughter especially found it hard to deal with the fashion statements the other girls were making, the clothes, the make up, the “Southern charm.”  As far as my younger son, a public school teacher advised me to get him into a private school as soon as possible because he was too bright for them to handle.

I sigh.  Yes, I suppose it was selfish of me to enjoy myself while my children were suffering with these adjustments.  But I had two wonderful sets of friends, one work, the other social. And there was the ACC to celebrate.  Georgia Tech football, basketball, what could be more fun?

When my husband got a job offer from Northwestern, I was horrified.  How could he remove me from paradise?  I told him, I’ll go if they double your salary.  Well, damn it, they did!

So here I am, stuck in the confines of the unfriendly North Shore.

Any benefits.  Well, okay, one.  At Georgia Tech, when they had a faculty gathering, they served cheese and crackers.  The first faculty affair at Northwestern, there were jumbo shrimp and liquor.

Amazingly enough, two of my children returned to the South, one to teach at Tech’s arch enemy University of Georgia, the other to work in Greenville, South Carolina.

Will I ever return?  I hope so. Some day.  In the meantime, I shall smile and say hello to keep in practice, no matter what the response or lack there of might be.

Please Stop Watering Your Lawn

I have a neighbor who obsessively waters his lawn during the summer months.  So obsessively does he manipulate his sprinkler—imagery here?—that his lawn is brown in spots because the grass has turned into a muddy field.

Let us evaluate the value of green grass:  Does it look pretty?  Yes.  Is keeping grass green wasteful in the heat of the summer?  Yes.  Offtimes—dare I say ofttimes?—when I walk early in the morning, even after a heavy rain, I see the automatic sprinkler systems whizzing away, wasting water, keeping that grass green.

Wasting-water-people listen:  The miracle of a suburban lawn is that, once it’s established, it tends to do very well for itself on its own without any help from us.

By now you’ve probably guessed that my grass is—hmm, green in spots and sort of a dusty, hazy yellowish brown in others.  When the rains come, the grass celebrates.  When there’s an absence, the grass mourns. 

What I admire most about several “lawns” in my neighborhood is that they’ve been allowed to revert to nature.  They re a paradise of wildflowers.  Could I do that with my lawn?  Unfortunately, it’s too well established.  But part of my “green” is clover.

I’m not against all gardeners, if that’s what one can call lawn-waterers.  (One wonders why they don’t install heat lamps so they can keep the grass green during the winter months.)  I do admire avid gardeners who display a feast of colors for the passersby.  I applaud them for their efforts.  And sometimes I notice that they have the same wild yarrow growing in their gardens as I do.  I could pull mine out, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?

My own yard, aside from the green/brown grass, is wild and wandering along its perimeter, like my mind.  I’m always delighted when something new springs up, and I don’t decide whether I want it or not until it flowers.

I have shade; I have sun; and I have birds aplenty.  Although I live alone, I’m never alone because my fine, feathered friends keep me company. They hide in the bushes before they scoot over to the bird feeder.  An occasionally hawk will scare them off, but not for long.

I have a rundown deck with a tree growing through one of its loose planks.  I will admit to making said tree a semi-bonsai.  Otherwise, it would cast its shade over my pots of annuals I keep for bees and hummingbirds.

My deck also serves as a rotating home for various animals I could do without:  chipmunks, raccoons, skunks, an occasional woodchuck, who didn’t chuck wood but destroyed my sunflowers by climbing their once sturdy stalks.

Has anyone called the city on me yet?  Don’t be silly.  The lawn is mowed, the bushes are trimmed.  I’m quite respectable—outwardly.  But I look at people who tend their lawns, dare I say, religiously and think:  They need a life.

Trees

What do people have against shade?  Meaning, what do people have against shade provided by trees?  Meaning, people living on suburban plots of a quarter acre.

I love my trees, especially my oak, sheltering the west side of my house.  That oak also has a dead branch at just the right height to hold my bird feeder.

You know who else loves that oak?  My birds.  Okay, not actually mine, but they keep me company throughout the day.  When I see them fly into the neighbor’s yard, I become resentful.  Am I crazy?  If you knew the neighbor, you’d understand.

On the other side of me, my neighbor of over thirty years has decamped for less green but more expensive quarters.  When the people on the other side of her moved in, they took down all the trees that shaded her backyard and put up a fence instead, turning her backyard into a field of vast nothingness.  She lived in a one-story, they had a two-story.  Poor woman loved the out-of-doors, but all of a sudden had no place to go for privacy.  True, a fence is made of wood.  But it’s not a tree with overhanging branches and leaves that offer not only shade, but as I’ve pointed out before, a home for our feathered friends.  And privacy!

The person who has taken her place has done a Lizzy Borden on the trees separating our properties.  Not the entire tree, mind you, just the branches on his side of the tree.  I wonder how the tree felt?

There goes my eastern shade. Now my dining room is very bright in the summer sun.  His giant SUV makes a picturesque sight, as it sits in his driveway, where I can see it all day, if I’m so inclined.  Am I grateful?  You’re kidding, right?

Our little suburban oasis of entitlement calls itself “Tree City USA.”  One needs a permit to cut down trees of a certain size.  But butchering trees?  That’s allowed.

Philosophically, this question has been asked before—and answered by some smarty pants who probably doesn’t like trees:  If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear it, has it really fallen?.  I think you can guess my answer to that.  If we listen carefully, we can all hear trees being felled, whether for timber in old growth forests, for cultivation in the Amazon, or in our own neighborhoods.  Let’s not stop up our ears while our trees are screaming for our help!

TREES

What do people have against shade?  Meaning, what do people have against shade provided by trees?  Meaning, people living on suburban plots of a quarter acre.

I love my trees, especially my oak, sheltering the west side of my house.  That oak also has a dead branch at just the right height to hold my bird feeder.

You know who else loves that oak?  My birds.  Okay, not actually mine, but they keep me company throughout the day.  When I see them fly into the neighbor’s yard, I become resentful.  Am I crazy?  If you knew the neighbor, you’d understand.

On the other side of me, my neighbor of over thirty years has decamped for less green but more expensive quarters.  When the people on the other side of her moved in, they took down all the trees that shaded her backyard and put up a fence instead, turning her backyard into a field of vast nothingness.  She lived in a one-story, they had a two-story.  Poor woman loved the out-of-doors, but all of a sudden had no place to go for privacy.  True, a fence is made of wood.  But it’s not a tree with overhanging branches and leaves that offer not only shade, but as I’ve pointed out before, a home for our feathered friends.  And privacy!

The person who has taken her place has done a Lizzy Borden on the trees separating our properties.  Not the entire tree, mind you, just the branches on his side of the tree.  I wonder how the tree felt?

There goes my eastern shade. Now my dining room is very bright in the summer sun.  His giant SUV makes a picturesque sight, as it sits in his driveway, where I can see it all day, if I’m so inclined.  Am I grateful?  You’re kidding, right?

Our little suburban oasis of entitlement calls itself “Tree City USA.”  One needs a permit to cut down trees of a certain size.  But butchering trees?  That’s allowed.

Philosophically, this question has been asked before—and answered by some smarty pants who probably doesn’t like trees:  If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear it, has it really fallen?.  I think you can guess my answer to that.  If we listen carefully, we can all hear trees being felled, whether for timber in old growth forests, for cultivation in the Amazon, or in our own neighborhoods.  Let’s not stop up our ears while our trees are screaming for our help!

Romance—Count Me Out

I don’t have a romantic nature.  I suppose the three best words to describe me would be cynic, pessimist, satirical.  I do not swoon.

How then did I get married, you might wonder.  Was it an arranged marriage?  Well, yeah.  We arranged it.

I met my husband on the Princeton graduate commons.  I had moved to Princeton Junction for a job; he was finishing up his Ph.D. in electrical engineering.  I was living in a house with five other women.  The year being 1966, women’s liberation was in the future, I definitely hadn’t liberated myself from the idea that at some point I should be married.  After all, all my friends from college were already married, while I had lingered on the shelf two long years.  So I asked my roommates where one met men in Princeton.  They suggested folk dancing on the graduate commons.

Off I went.  I was standing by the stone wall, in truth someone had started talking to me, when I spotted this strange looking creature in white shirt and blue Bermuda shorts on the dance ground studying me.  I sent up a silent prayer that he would not come over and ask me to dance.

Yes, he came over and asked me to dance.

We spent the rest of the evening talking.  I thought at first he was from India, but it turned out he was from Israel.  I was excited because my life had been changed forever not by a book but by a motion picture, “Lawrence of Arabia.”  Was it just Peter O’Toole, he of the blue eyes, or was it the romance of the desert?  From then on I was hooked on the Middle East and determined to get there.

A spattering of rain caused my dancer and me to move into an alcove.  After a while, he asked if I wanted to go back to his room to see his stamps.  What a line, eh?  I sneered and said no thanks.  (Dear Reader, this man came to the United States with two suitcases, one was indeed filled with stamps.  My introduction to the mind of an engineer.)

The spattering of rain turned into a torrent.  It wasn’t going to stop.  Neither of us had umbrellas.  At some point I knew I’d have to brave it and make a run for my car in the parking lot, not close by.  We dashed into the downpour.  I got into my car, safe from the rain.  As I pulled away, I saw him drenched, waiting for me, waving goodbye.  I knew at that moment I was going to marry him.

And that is the epic story of how I fell in love.  We were married two months later and have been together ever since.  I became a camp follower to his career, but at a certain point, I struck out for a career of my own.  My passion was never for love.  My passion was for adventure, something my marriage provided me.  And my passion in books follows my passion in life—adventure.

I can remember bringing along a paperback copy of “Shogun” on one of our many trips to Israel.  I should have been absorbed by what was happening in the country.  Instead I was absorbed by “Shogun.”  It was another “Exodus” for me.

Romance novels?  When we were in Israel for my husband’s sabbatical, I found an old copy of “Gone With the Wind” in the university library.  I had never read it and thought maybe it was about time.  I found the book incredibly annoying.  Scarlett O’Hara was a stupid, self-destructive woman.  A romantic heroine she was not!

On the other hand, does anyone read “Forever Amber” anymore?  Now there was a story of romance, combined with history and adventure, just the type of book I can become involved in.  Plus, a real tearjerker and who doesn’t need a good cry occasionally.  Poor Amber, and yet, she triumphed—in her own way.

Do I read romance novels, the ones with the trashy covers?  No.  The trouble is the plot is always the same.  (A side note here about plots always being the same.  Many popular authors write the same book over and over again.  The publishing industry applauds this and probably so do most readers.  I have read books by authors I like and then I have read the next book and the book after that and then I—stop!  Because really nothing different is going to happen.  This is sad but commercially successful.)

Back to romance novels, I made an exception with a certain Regency author whose books were quite clever.  No, not Georgette Heyer.  I just couldn’t get into her.  I’m speaking about the late Marion Chesney.  She wrote light, frothy novels, usually in a series.  But then she stopped.  Readers might now know her as M. C. Beaton who wrote the Hamish MacBeth series and Agatha Raisin.  Sad, but it was a smart decision on her part, and she will be missed.

For me romance in a book is only a side issue.  As Emily Dickinson put it, “There is no frigate like a book.”  I want a book to take me away, to let me explore new countries, new customs, new everything.  When I browse at the library, I check the setting of a book.  (I will admit in my later years I also check the ending because I am sick of unhappiness, so the ending must be pleasingly upbeat.). To me adventure is the real romance, in a book and in life.  As long as I can read, or even listen to a book, I know I’ll have my kind of romance, as I visit the far flung corners of our universe.

ROMANCE—COUNT ME OUT

I don’t have a romantic nature.  I suppose the three best words to describe me would be cynic, pessimist, satirical.  I do not swoon.

How then did I get married, you might wonder.  Was it an arranged marriage?  Well, yeah.  We arranged it.

I met my husband on the Princeton graduate commons.  I had moved to Princeton Junction for a job; he was finishing up his Ph.D. in electrical engineering.  I was living in a house with five other women.  The year being 1966, women’s liberation was in the future, I definitely hadn’t liberated myself from the idea that at some point I should be married.  After all, all my friends from college were already married, while I had lingered on the shelf two long years.  So I asked my roommates where one met men in Princeton.  They suggested folk dancing on the graduate commons.

Off I went.  I was standing by the stone wall, in truth someone had started talking to me, when I spotted this strange looking creature in white shirt and blue Bermuda shorts on the dance ground studying me.  I sent up a silent prayer that he would not come over and ask me to dance.

Yes, he came over and asked me to dance.

We spent the rest of the evening talking.  I thought at first he was from India, but it turned out he was from Israel.  I was excited because my life had been changed forever not by a book but by a motion picture, “Lawrence of Arabia.”  Was it just Peter O’Toole, he of the blue eyes, or was it the romance of the desert?  From then on I was hooked on the Middle East and determined to get there.

A spattering of rain caused my dancer and me to move into an alcove.  After a while, he asked if I wanted to go back to his room to see his stamps.  What a line, eh?  I sneered and said no thanks.  (Dear Reader, this man came to the United States with two suitcases, one was indeed filled with stamps.  My introduction to the mind of an engineer.)

The spattering of rain turned into a torrent.  It wasn’t going to stop.  Neither of us had umbrellas.  At some point I knew I’d have to brave it and make a run for my car in the parking lot, not close by.  We dashed into the downpour.  I got into my car, safe from the rain.  As I pulled away, I saw him drenched, waiting for me, waving goodbye.  I knew at that moment I was going to marry him.

And that is the epic story of how I fell in love.  We were married two months later and have been together ever since.  I became a camp follower to his career, but at a certain point, I struck out for a career of my own.  My passion was never for love.  My passion was for adventure, something my marriage provided me.  And my passion in books follows my passion in life—adventure.

I can remember bringing along a paperback copy of “Shogun” on one of our many trips to Israel.  I should have been absorbed by what was happening in the country.  Instead I was absorbed by “Shogun.”  It was another “Exodus” for me.

Romance novels?  When we were in Israel for my husband’s sabbatical, I found an old copy of “Gone With the Wind” in the university library.  I had never read it and thought maybe it was about time.  I found the book incredibly annoying.  Scarlett O’Hara was a stupid, self-destructive woman.  A romantic heroine she was not!

On the other hand, does anyone read “Forever Amber” anymore?  Now there was a story of romance, combined with history and adventure, just the type of book I can become involved in.  Plus, a real tearjerker and who doesn’t need a good cry occasionally.  Poor Amber, and yet, she triumphed—in her own way.

Do I read romance novels, the ones with the trashy covers?  No.  The trouble is the plot is always the same.  (A side note here about plots always being the same.  Many popular authors write the same book over and over again.  The publishing industry applauds this and probably so do most readers.  I have read books by authors I like and then I have read the next book and the book after that and then I—stop!  Because really nothing different is going to happen.  This is sad but commercially successful.)

Back to romance novels, I made an exception with a certain Regency author whose books were quite clever.  No, not Georgette Heyer.  I just couldn’t get into her.  I’m speaking about the late Marion Chesney.  She wrote light, frothy novels, usually in a series.  But then she stopped.  Readers might now know her as M. C. Beaton who wrote the Hamish MacBeth series and Agatha Raisin.  Sad, but it was a smart decision on her part, and she will be missed.

For me romance in a book is only a side issue.  As Emily Dickinson put it, “There is no frigate like a book.”  I want a book to take me away, to let me explore new countries, new customs, new everything.  When I browse at the library, I check the setting of a book.  (I will admit in my later years I also check the ending because I am sick of unhappiness, so the ending must be pleasingly upbeat.). To me adventure is the real romance, in a book and in life.  As long as I can read, or even listen to a book, I know I’ll have my kind of romance, as I visit the far flung corners of our universe.

Reading From the Midst of Time

Reading:  I can’t remember when I wasn’t reading.  The written word surrounded me, not spoken because I can’t remember my parent’s ever reading to me.  They were busy with other things, like procreating.

Fortunately, my abilities to form letters into words started young.  Yes, I admit it.  I was always a robin, never a sparrow or a finch.  (For those too young to understand this reference, we were always divided into three reading groups.  However, we were all give the same Dick and Jane reader.   Is anyone still reading about Dick and Jane?  The first days of school out would come these bouncy white kids pulling a red wagon or something.  Yes, I read ahead to see if anything really happens to Dick and Jane.  It took one day to read through it and, no, nothing ever did happen.  No wonder kids don’t like to read.)

The best reading is books you select for yourself.  I remember being in second grade and reading through a series of biographies with what-had-once-been bright orange covers, now rather dulled by age.  As I grew older, I felt betrayed by these books because they only told part of the life story, the noble and brave part.  But these people weren’t noble and brave all the time. Where was the rest of their story?  Where was the real person?  Aren’t flaws as interesting as perfection?  Was George Washington the only one to chop down a cherry tree?

At home we had the Herald Tribune delivered, with wonderful comics like Brenda Star.  Did we ever find out who that guy with the eye patch was? During the week, stories about Old Mother Westwind by Thorton Burgess appeared.  Jimmy Skunk, I couldn’t get enough of your shenanigans.

For the most part, my mother didn’t believe in buying books, not when there was a library—a library in the next town over, where she would get her books and rush us through.  Fairy tales absorbed me, except for the Japanese ones that scared me.  Then there were the biographies, where I fastened on Lincoln, read all the books about him available.  “Ben Hur.”  Loved that book.  “Quo Vadis,” anyone?  I still remember losing a copy of Vachey Lindsay’s poetry, to my mortification. 

I got an allowance, not much, which I spent on buying comic books and the Hardy Boys series before I switched to movie magazines.  I loved the Hardy Boys.  I ate up their adventures.  I tried a Nancy Drew book.  It was so lame.  And Cherry Ames, girl nurse?  Let’s not go there.  Suffice it to say that we of the female persuasion were all supposed to grow up to be teachers, nurses, secretaries.  So Cherry Ames has a lot to answer for.

The comics introduced me to the classics of literature, telling the storyline in pictures, of which I would make copies using Silly Putty.  From these I knew I would never enjoy Charles Dickens, and so it came to pass. 

In seventh or eighth grade, I well remember reading “Tom Brown’s School Days” and “Jane Eyre.”  I think I identified because I also felt put upon.  When Jane left school, I found her romance with Mr. Rochester rather ho hum.  Maybe I just lacked a romantic nature.

A series that my mother did own was a four-volume set by Thomas Mann of “Joseph and His Brothers.”  I was enthralled and read through the books rapidly.  I mentioned them to a “friend,” who asked to borrow the first one.  I knew my mother was fond of the set so I was reluctant, but I gave in.

A side note about school dynamics.  This girl’s name was Carol Y—in case I get sued.  She entered our school when we were both in second grade.  There were at that time three other Carols and one Carolyn.  For some reason Carol Y saw me as a perfect victim.  She spent our elementary school years perfecting her mean girl routine.

Our small town went to a larger one for high school, and the only association I had with her was on the bus ride there, though obviously I never sat with her.  Did Carol Y ever return the book she borrow to read?  No, of course not.  Another mortification for me.  But the ending of the story is rather a happy one from my perspective.  She had to drop out of teacher’s college in her first year because she got pregnant and had a baby.  Do I qualify as the mean girl now?

My mother was a great theater goer; she always had copies of the plays of the year, so I took to reading plays.  There was also Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”  At some point, as I migrated into high school, I read Jane Austen.  I’m sure I enjoyed her, but I can’t remember any particular emotion associated with reading her, and shouldn’t reading evoke emotion?  Well, okay, maybe pleasure is enough.

“Moby Dick.”  This is a book I have read three times, once for pleasure, twice in college.  I don’t know what people have against it. The writing is inspiring, the story is masterful.  I think people go into reading it with their minds already made up.  Sad.

While high school is basically a blur, I do remember the school library and picking up a copy of “Nisei Daughter.”  I was shocked because no one had ever told me about the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II.  I went home and asked my mother did this really happen in the United States of America?  And she confessed that it did.  This was not the only lapse in world events I was subjected to.  My parents also never mentioned the Holocaust.

Another fraught book, get out the hankies, was my paperback edition of “Knock on Any Door.”  I was reading it, waiting for French class to start, when the teacher noticed.  She told me the book was banned.  (A good portion of the school was Catholic, teachers included.)  I must have looked up at her in a hostile way because she backed off.  What an eye opener that book was.

High school/“Peyton Place,” anyone?  Oh, my, how we ravished that book, or did the book ravish us?  We read it during lunchtime and passed it underneath the lunch table, when we got to certain passages obviously, and wow, we were both shocked and excited.

Bringing me to another book that had been banned but was now freely published, “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”  My mother forbad me to read it.  Really?  There was a lending library in a stationery store in Nyack, to which I trotted and rented “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”  Yes, I read it.  Did I find it shocking?  No.  Titillating?  Not even that.  “Peyton Place” was much more fun.

Take a wild guess who read “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” after I was through.  Yes, my mother.  I hope she learned something.

To end this blog with the ending of my high school years, let me drag you across the ocean to merry olde England.  Well, first to France and then to England, but we’ll leave the drunken night at Les Halles aside for the time being.  My father had to be in London for some sort of ceremony.  And then we were to explore the English countryside, with my father driving.

First, my father was a horrible driver; second, he was driving on the wrong side of the road; third, he couldn’t find his way out of London, which we circled for the whole day, ending up sleeping in our rental car because the rooms at the inns were full.

What did I do while in fear for my life?  I read. This is where my love of English mysteries comes from.  Agatha Christie.  Sneer not!  I have not only read Agatha Christie, but reread her.  She’s masterful.

I had a whole slew of mysteries I read through during that perilous adventure, all second hand, all bought at various bookstalls.  I devoured them.  Today, although I have ventured far afield novelistically, I’m still hooked on those British mysteries.

Surviving England, I returned to the States about to begin the next adventure of my life and my reading life—College.

More anon.

How I Came to Write "The Moroccan"

This is how I officially became a writer.  Before this I guess I was just messing around with words.

We were living in Israel and I had a “job” at Tel Aviv University in the economics department.  I put “job” in quotes because the work was minimal.  But it was perfect for me as it was from 8 to 1, the exact time my children would be in gan/school. (Israel has a lot of 8 to 1 jobs for women who work.  Yes, the work is usually low paid, but you do get a bonus.  Ours was a book about Ben Gurion that was misprinted so that half the pages were upside down.)

Working at the university was pleasant.  I had time to meet my husband for lunch at the misnon/cafeteria.  And I explored the library for English books I had never read, like “Gone With The Wind.”  What a stupid woman that Scarlett was.  But my laid-back job wasn’t going to last for long because some of us know English and appreciate the language, and some of us don’t.  To be specific: an instructor who was getting his thesis in order for Stanford’s approval.

His name was Cuckerman—in English.  His real name was Zuckerman.  (As an aside, another professor’s name was Pines—in Hebrew pronounced, yes, like “penis.”  But in English he preferred to be called Pines, as in those evergreens.  I can’t understand why?)

Cuckerman’s English was atrocious.  I shivered in disgust. Still, he wanted everything reproduced exactly the way he had written it.  I explained that his English was—lacking.  So he said to me, rather dismissively, “It’s good enough for Stanford.”  I replied, “Well, it might be good enough for Stanford, but it’s not good enough for me.”

For some reason, I was fired.  I can’t understand why.  I went back to our apartment in Ramat Aviv and thought, now is the time for me to write that book on the Urabi revolt in Egypt, for which I had notes.  It was at that moment Judah Biton, the hero of “The Moroccan,” made his appearance and decided my life should take a different course.

Like a flash of lightning, the plot came to me whole.  All I had to do was write it down.  My maid—the only time in my life I’ve had a maid because I didn’t know how to do the “sponga” on Israeli floors—was so impressed because she thought I was writing letters to my mother.  Poor Mima, her rotten son stole most of her wages.  But that’s another story.

When we left Israel after my husband’s sabbatical was over, I hugged my as-yet unedited novel to my breast—and of course my two children.  I felt really positive that Judah Biton would be a bright beginning.  And—so it came to be.

How I Became C.A. Haddad

I had finished writing “The Moroccan” while my husband was on sabbatical in Israel.  It was in longhand and, when coming home, I typed it up, struggling to read my handwriting.  I didn’t send it off right away to publishers, as was my intention, because first, there was the shock of the Yom Kippur war and the complete stress of that awful situation, the day after day of waiting for a miracle.  That was followed by my third pregnancy, my answer to the attack on Israel.

In 1974 I sent a query letter to Joan Kahn at Harper’s, as I knew of her reputation.  Almost by return mail, she said she’d take a look at it.  I realized the book was not something a woman might write, so I sent it to her under the name of Joseph Haddad.  It was quickly accepted for publication.  (I often wonder now, if she knew I was a woman, would she have been so quick to accept?)

So now I was stuck.  I was still posing as Joseph.  How could I let her know I was a woman?  Thankfully, I didn’t have to.  I told her I was visiting the New York area with my family, and I gave her the number of the house in Nanuet where my parents lived.  While I was out at the playground with my children, Joan Kahn called and asked to speak to Joseph.  My mother, bless her, broke the news to her that Joseph was actually her daughter.

I do not know Joan’s immediate reaction, but she did say that the book could no way be published under a woman’s name.  We decided on the initials C. A. Haddad.  Had I been a little bit brighter, I would have done this in the first place.  But I am what I am.  Thus began the split between the fierce and funny C. A. Haddad and the more civilized Carolyn of the family saga variety.

Which persona do I like more?  Well, I knew “A Mother’s Secret” was the best thing I had ever written.  But, let’s face it, C. A. Haddad is a lot more fun to be around.  Check out “The Wanker” and see if you agree.  Or try “A Mother’s Secret,” but keep the tissues close by.