C.A. Haddad's Blog, page 5

And We Weren't Even Arrested

I’ve had the great good fortune of marrying a university professor who likes to go to conferences.  Therefore, we have traveled all over the world, and I have enjoyed almost every minute of it, especially as my husband began taking executive positions in various organizations.  Oh, the cocktail parties. Oh, the free meals and the luxurious suites.  (A short aside here re: cocktail parties.  While other people went out to dinner afterwards, my husband insisted the nibbles available were enough, and we didn’t really need to pay for a meal.  Cheap?  I’ll let you be the judge.)

Now, my husband is a rather mild-mannered man. And yet, when he gets frustrated, I recede into the background and pretend I have no idea who he is.  Take, for example, our TGV ride from Paris to Nantes.

In our ignorance, we didn’t prebook.  We had no idea that traveling via TGV was the same as traveling on an airplane.  You need a reservation if you want a seat.

Lambs to the slaughter, we went to the ticket counter, bought our tickets, the clerk said the conductor would find seats for us.  Little did we know!

No conductor ever showed up.  We climbed aboard and took one seat and then another and another, having to move each time someone with a reservation showed up.  It was suggested we sit in the vestibule—with the luggage—all the way to Nantes. My husband is prowling the aisle, looking for the damned conductor to get us our damned seats.  (No conductor ever showed up until the train was well on its way.)  Finally, my husband had had it.  I shrank away, as he stood in the middle of the car and said in perfect English, “Well, what can you expect from a third world country!”

Quelle horreur!!!!!

I did find a seat and huddled in humiliation for the rest of the journey.  As soon as we got to the train station in Nantes, I said to my husband, “We’re getting tickets back to Paris, right this minuet.”  And so we did, with seat reservations.  I won’t bother mentioning the following trip to Heidelberg, where we were delayed by a fire on the track.  Fortunately, my husband didn’t opine on that occasion.

Then there was our flight from Greece to Istanbul.  While parts of Greece were interesting, I have no longing to return there.  Was it the motorcycle that ran into me as I was crossing the street with the light in Athens?  Or the crooked conference organizer.  True, it wasn’t our money, but did he have to be so blatantly dishonest?

Wildfires were spreading through Greece at the time; and we were nowhere near the airport, as we were in Rio for the conference.  A German participant and myself agreed that we would crawl through the smoke to make it out of Greece.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to.  The taxi rammed its way through.  We were on our way, making that short hop between eternal enemies.

We got to the Istanbul airport.  I had never seen “Midnight Express,” but I was fully cognizant that one had to be on one’s best behavior with authorities in an authoritarian country.  Did my husband not get the message?

We go down the ramp to the baggage claim area and are stopped by an official at a table, who asked to see our passports.  No problem.  Then he informed us we would each need a visa to visit Turkey, fifty dollars each. My husband was astounded and said in what I had to admit was a very snarky tone, “Why should we pay to visit your country?”  The look he got—

I quickly took out my wallet and paid the hundred dollars in cash, smiled politely at the official, and dragged my husband away.  Words were spoken but not until we were well out of sight of the long arm of Turkish law.

I must say I had a wonderful time in Turkey, daily diarrhea aside, and I think Istanbul is the most beautiful city in the world—that I’ve seen—especially at night. Always trying to end my reminisces on a positive note, I won’t mention the taxi drivers, none of whom can be trusted, even after you negotiate the fare.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

This is in no means a reference to that folk song, but still I must ask, where have all the flowers gone?  I don’t mean the kind one finds in a greenhouse or grows from a packet of seeds, something I haven’t attempted in ages.  I mean wildflowers on the side of the road or along hiking paths or languid trails.

I miss them.

When I was a young girl, okay, before most people can remember, I used to enter the flower-arranging contest our elementary school held each spring.  I wasn’t good at much, but I seemed to have a knack for arranging flowers.  Fortunately, I had plenty of opportunity to find the ones I needed.

Back then, there were no school buses, no lunchroom cafeteria.  We were expected to walk to school in all sorts of weather.  Our house was about three-fourths of a mile from the school.  So I’d walk in the morning, come home for lunch, walk back for the afternoon and then come home again.  Sometimes I rode my bike, but Billy Schmitt’s collie used to run into the road and attack anything that came by.  There was no way my fat, little legs could pump hard enough to escape that dog.  Finally, someone poisoned it, not me, and there was peace in the valley.

Winters were hard with all that walking.  Rarely did we have a snow day.  Where we lived, high snow totals were expected.  Girls were supposed to wear dresses at school, no matter the weather.  So to even get ready for school was exhausting, putting on snow suits over the dress, then boots and gloves, scarves and hats, over and over and over again.

But spring ascended, and along with spring came the wildflowers.  Buttercups.  Where are the buttercups now?  How does any child know whether he or she likes butter if they can’t see a reflection on their chin?

Daisies.  How can you tell with whom you’ll fall in love if you can’t pick the petals off a daisy?

They were all there on my walk to school, buttercups, daisies, tiger lilies, brown-eyed susans, violets, queen ann’s lace, along with sprigs of green to fill out the—

My vase was an empty frozen orange juice can that I decorated.  I honestly can’t remember if anyone had a real vase.  Perhaps I was too focused on my own efforts.

The afternoon of the contest, I would walk back to school from a lunch of toasted cheese, accompanied by cigarette smoke from my mother, and gather my rosebuds where I may.  Sorry, Andrew Marvell.  Gather my wildflowers fresh for the picking.  I’d arrange them while walking. When I got to school, I’d put water in the orange juice can and then put my arrangement on the bookcase.  I didn’t always win.  Sometimes I came in second.  But I think it was the enjoyment of the flowers and the arranging that brought me the most joy.

Now on the same street, where I shall never trod again, since both parents are dead, there is nothing to collect.  Houses have been built all the way down to the school, wilderness defeated in the face of mown lawns.  Mother Nature has been vanquished, and there’s no more delight in the walk.  There are school buses and a school cafeteria.  And, in even the best of weather, parents will drive their children straight up to the school doors because, well, it’s a new world.  With no wildflowers.

What Was Noah Thinking?

Squirrels:  Are they my least favorite mammal?  Maybe, maybe not.  It depends on who’s living under my deck at the moment.  Raccoons or skunks?  One time I had a woodchuck, another an opossum.  But are any of them as unrelenting as squirrels?  Well, okay, yeah, they are.  But let’s get back to my “pet” peeve of the moment: Squirrels.

I’m lucky enough to have a deck.  And on that deck I have a table.  Most people would use that table to eat outside when the weather is just right, maybe after a barbecue, have friends over, enjoy a lemonade or two.  I use it for my pots.  Not my pot pots.  My flower pots.

Every year I go to the greenhouse and get a flat of annuals to plant in the six flower pots on my table.  I select them carefully because I delight in the hummingbirds that swoop down for the nectar.

Overlooking my deck is a huge oak tree, which last year provided an abundance of acorns.  Now, I didn’t mind when the squirrels stored their acorns in my flower pots after the diminution of my annuals.  But I do mind, when in the late spring, after I’ve carefully planted my pots with a variety of flowering annuals, that the squirrels dive into the pots, uprooting my plants so that I have to plant and replant and replant again.

Will the snapdragons survive?  It doesn’t look like it.

Is this all that upsets me about squirrels?  Hardly.  I’m not a prude, but when I sit at my desk, working on the computer, and look out the window to see squirrels copulating, I feel a deep disgust rising in my gorge.  Have those ugly, little, gray creatures no sense of modesty?  The only way I know the raccoons have mated is when I see the mother and four or five babies traipsing out from under my deck.

I have a bird feeder, that now lies empty due to avian flu and the warnings from the county about not filling the feeder quite yet.  I love the birds that come to my feeder.  Well, let me qualify that to say some birds that come to my feeder.  These house wrens are voracious.  I have the sort of feeder that closes if anything heavy tries to eat from it.  Take that, you grackles.  This doesn’t stop the squirrels.

My feeder hangs from a dead branch on my oak tree, the only branch I can reach.  While squirrels cannot eat directly from the feeder, that doesn’t stop them from climbing the oak tree, venturing onto the dead branch and jumping to shake seeds from the feeder.  When they are dissatisfied with this effort, they slither down the pole and rock on the feeder to disperse the seeds.  Haven’t they stored enough acorns?  In my pots!  I sigh in frustration.

I realize that squirrels are extremely popular in children’s literature.  One can only attribute that to the fact that there are so many of them that parents can easily point them out to their children. The zoo comes to them.  But my yard is not a zoo.  Well, okay, it is.  (I failed to mention the deer and the coyotes in the paragraph above.). However I don’t want the squirrels in my yard, on my bird feeder, in my flower pots. Is this an unreasonable request?  I think not!

Since You Didn’t Ask

Does anyone else read the New York Times book review section and wonder about the “authors” in the “By the Book” section?  I use “authors” in quotes because a lot of the authors the Times chooses are celebrities and not those slogging away, day after day, to create a cacophony of words for your delight.

Many times I’m puzzled by the answers the authors give.  I ponder how much truth-telling is going on and how many of the answers exist to burnish the author’s image.  Dare I use the word “pretentious?”

Take, for example, the first question in “By the Book.”  “What books are on your nightstand?”  Most authors list books so esoteric that no one but Ph.D. candidates, slogging in the stacks, has read them.  Are all these books really on their nightstands?  I deal with only one book at a time.  It’s tossed on my bed, along with my iPad, so that I can play games when the need arises. I do have a nightstand.  On it is a clock, a noise-maker to help me sleep, a lamp, various hair clips and a lip balm.  I would gladly send a photo of my nightstand to the Times and would like to present a challenge to the authors in question. Send us a photo of your nightstand.  To see is to believe.  Unless of course the nightstand is metaphorical and really represents the brilliance and the breadth of your existence.

Another question:  “Has a book ever brought you closer to another person or come between you?”  Well, when I pick up a book and discover the person who read it before me smoked, it has definitely brought me closer to him/her and come between us, as I put the book down immediately.  I’m willing to pollute my mind, but not my body.

The greatest book I’ve read recently?  I’ve read many great books.  As soon as I read them, they slip right out of my mind. Has anyone else had this problem?

“Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?”  Good god.  Do I have to read more classic novels?  Wasn’t getting a degree in English enough?

“What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?”  Too many books lay undiscovered and unloved—for the moment.  A short list of my favorites.  “Tom Brown’s School Days.”  A must for the persecuted, bullied elementary school student.  “The Ginger Man,” by J. P. Donleavy.  If this book doesn’t make you laugh out loud, nothing will.  “Pale Fire,” by Nabokov, another laugh out loud book, must have been written especially for the English department at any university.  A+, Mr. Nabokov!

“Which genres do you especially enjoy reading.  And which do you avoid?”  Give me a good mystery any day and I’ll be happy.  Agatha Christie truly is the queen.  Spy novels: so totally over them.  Why read a novel about international intrigue when you can just pick up the newspapers. A good dose of historical fiction always pleases the soul.  What I can’t stand, well, let me just say it, Russian literature.  I mean, is anybody happy?  In the States parents rejoice in their baby’s first smile, even if it’s only gas.  In Russia:  “Come quickly, Misha.  Our baby’s first look of despair!”

“What character in literature would you most like to play?”  Oh, boy.  Is Becky Sharp too outre?

“What books might people be surprised to find on your shelves?”  First, they’d have to find my shelves.  I had the whole house renovated, and all the shelves are missing.  My books are in the basement, wondering where the hell I am.

“What do you plan to read next?”  I have a book bag full of books.  Note Bene:  Not on my nightstand.  I have two books waiting for me at the library.  What will I read next?  I have absolutely no idea.

“Who is your favorite hero or heroine?”  Sorry, but I have to admit it. Elizabeth Bennet.  Who wouldn’t want to be her?  May there be a Mr. Darcy in everyone’s life.

And finally—-  “You’re throwing a dinner party. What three writers, living or dead, do you invite?”  First, the dinner party would have to be either catered or pot luck, as this woman does not cook any longer.  That’s what they have delis for.  Yes, I’d invite William Shakespeare.  And I think Ben Jonson, as bringing them together again would be fascinating.  Let’s add to that mixture Fanny Burney.  If she was good enough for Samuel Johnson, she’s good enough for me.

As Tina Turner Might Say

What’s love got to do with it?

One day, as all four of her children were sitting around the kitchen table, my mother, smoking her cigarette, announced out of nowhere that she would always love our father more than she would love any of us.

Now there wasn’t much love going around in the household to begin with, but I remember being hurt because I thought, if she loves our father so much, there was very little love left for the rest of us.  And besides, who in her right mind would say something like that to her children?

I’m sure my mother, in her way, did love some of us.  After her marriage she waited four years to have Joe, the first born.  I can remember how she told us she had him in a Catholic hospital in Ann Arbor because my father wanted her to have the best care, when actually she said the care was rotten and she would have been treated better at the university hospital.  By then my father was just about to receive his Ph.D. and had landed a job at Lederle’s in Pearl River, New York.  They could finally afford a child.

Unfortunately, my mother accidentally got pregnant with me.  This put a crimp in their budget and their planning, as I was born fourteen months after my brother.  So from the beginning, unwanted. It didn’t help that I looked like my father’s side of the family, especially, as I grew older, the despised mother-in-law.

My sister came along three years later and she was “fragile.”  Not really, but this was the role assigned to her.  She turned out to be tall and slender and blond, all those things I wasn’t, and also pretty, while my mother couldn’t figure out why I looked so—  Well let’s leave it there.

My younger brother was born after my mother had four miscarriages.  Needless to say, he was the prince of the family and always treated as such—we thought.  He was named Michael James.  Someone had told my mother that Michael was an Irish name.  She was puzzled and put off, so she asked me if that were true.  I was nine at the time, already the font of all knowledge, as long as it was trivia.  I told her no, Michael was an archangel; the meaning of his name was “one who is like God.”  Appropriate for the prince, and she was satisfied.

Three of us, but not Joe, always wondered where our parents learned their parenting skills.  I would say Nazi Germany, but that might prove offensive.  Let’s just say that they assumed giving us food and shelter was more than enough.

As for me, I would never tell my children that my love for my husband came before all else because it wouldn’t be true. While I love my husband, my job and my joy in life has been to nourish my children.  For both my husband and myself, our children came before all else, although I’m sure, if you asked them, they would disagree.  But, let’s face it, children are disagreeable; and parents are never perfect in their eyes.

Was I a perfect parent?  Not at all.  But I shall leave it to my children to elucidate you.  In my defense, I always wanted to be a mother, and I was so thrilled to have a child.  But it turned out that my first child had colic.  Those who have a colicky baby will understand my pain.  There was nothing either my husband or I could do to comfort him.  He never slept, we never slept.  And I have to say he’s been a difficult child all his life.  At one point he was even a Republican.  Perhaps the angst of those early days is somehow remembered?

How blessed I was to have a daughter eighteen months later. She took to the breast right away and was so pretty and sweet, until she reached third grade.  Then it was a mean girls scenario wherever we traveled.  Such a tornado of emotions throughout her life, when she left for college, she said, “I’m never going to speak to you again.” You can’t imagine how grateful I was.  Relief was short lived.  She called that night.

Now here’s the rub.  I had a third child five years after my daughter.  If I could give advice to anyone planning parenthood, I would say space your children five years apart instead of eighteen months, as I did the first two. The timing of five years gives you a chance to devote yourself to each child in ways you can’t when you have two in diapers and are tired all the time.

My two older children constantly accuse me of loving the youngest best.  What they don’t realize is that the youngest never gave me any trouble.  I cannot say the same for those two!

I guess what I’m trying to point out is there are different dimensions to love, but no hierarchy, no way to quantify who you love more or less.  If you are capable of love, spread it like manure and watch what your garden gives back to you.

The Name Game

My cousin just wrote to me to tell me how he was named.  Not by his father, not by his mother, but by our grandfather, who went to the hospital to fill out his birth certificate before either parent could.  That’s how my cousin ended up as a III.

I had to laugh at the story because it was so typical of my grandfather.  His father had come over from Germany, and that’s just how things were done.  The patriarch ruled.  To honor his father, my grandfather named his first born son Robert.  But his second son, who became Augustus John II, he named after himself, so why not name the son’s son Augustus John III.  What could be better than that?  Why should anyone object?  And if they did, what would it matter?  His three sons worked for him.  He ruled.

Let’s have a few moments of sympathy for the distaff side of the family, those poor daughters-in-law.  My grandfather built two houses side by side on what was then the outskirts of Oneida.  The houses were laid out exactly the same, and his two younger sons had to live in them, whether they wanted to or not.  Were the wives happy?  Well, let’s just say one family moved away as soon as possible after my grandfather died.

The oldest son made his escape to Hamilton, but he still carried on the tradition of naming his son Robert.  And he still ran a gas station, as did my grandfather.

My mother made the great escape from Oneida, when she went to the University of Michigan, where she eloped with my father.  Incredibly, they both came from upstate New York, as my father was from Utica.  It was not a marriage given the seal of approval from either side.  My father’s mother Minnie offered my mother a set of sheets if she would let my father go.  My mother’s father tolerated my father, but I can’t ever say it was a close relationship.  However, I have letters to my father from my mother’s mother that were pleasant and loving.  But isn’t that a woman’s job, to heal any riff?

When my parents had their first born, they named him Joseph Werner.  Joseph was after my grandfather Kushner; Werner was after my father’s Ph.D. advisor Werner Bachmann.  I assume my parents did this to appease my father’s family.  Well, what a kerfuffle this caused because, according to Jewish tradition, you’re not supposed to name a child after someone still alive.  My grandfather Joseph was still alive.  So after he died, my Uncle Morris named his son Joseph.  Two Joseph Kushners, believe me, were one too many for my mother, who was incensed.

I, the second born, was named Carolyn Ann, the Carolyn after my grandmother Caroline, called Carrie.  The year I was born was a big year for everything Carol.  In my elementary school class there were four Carols and there was I.  I have gone through life being called everything except Carolyn.  It’s Carol, or Carol Ann, or Caroline.  But I happen to like Carolyn.  One time a friend asked me what my Hebrew name was.  I told her, “It’s Carolyn.”

My sister’s name is Ellen, which is my mother’s middle name.  My brother totally escaped the hereditary naming with Michael, middle name James after a very good friend of the family.

My own children:  I went Biblical.  It was Benjamin Joseph for the first born because I loved the story of Jacob and Rachel.  Also, I wanted to call Benjamin Benjy.  That ended quickly when he decided Ben was enough. Though in Israel he’s still called Benny.

I named my daughter Judith Joy. Joy was after my husband’s mother, whose name was Masuda, which meant Joy.  Judith?  I love the name and I have so many friends from childhood on called Judy.  Judith does not love her name and it is used only legally.  She goes by Judy.

My youngest?  Well, when we lived in Israel, I put a note in the wall, saying, if I had a son I’d name him Jonathan Amichai.  But when the time came I named him Jonathan David.  Does he resent the name?  The Jonathan he can deal with but he resents the David.  Why?  Because he’s traveled and worked in the Middle East, and he can pass for an Arab until they see the two names together.  So sorry!

Names.  Well, you can’t please everybody.  Or anybody in too many cases.  Still, they don’t define us.  Or do they?

Despair and Puzzlement

As my younger brother Mike told my children when we were all gathered together, “Your grandfather really hated your mother.  Really hated her.”

How true.  And yet, why?

I never knew why my father had such an intense dislike of me, but it certainly cast a pall over my childhood and adulthood.  He was nasty to me; he was nasty to my sons.  I will give him this much.  He was nice to my daughter.

My father’s career stalled at a certain point, when he moved from the lab to administration.  I’m not going to say it was because he was Jewish, but I’m sure it probably was.  I know he and my mother discussed moving on, but they had lived where they were forever, so he stuck it out and retired at exactly sixty-five.  From then on he could live life as he wanted.

I mention this only because not only did he dislike me but he came to dislike my husband, since my husband’s career advanced.  And didn’t stall.

My husband also had his “lab,” which was research, for which he needed grant after grant after grant.  Those who have to chase after government money know how tiresome that can be.  My husband was only too happy to move into administration, at which he succeeded quite well.  No matter his thoughts about the people he dealt with, he was kind and never vindictive.  He had the ability to handle people, something of which I would never be accused.

Where does this lead?  To my father’s death at the age of seventy-nine.  After the small ceremony, where all my children made an appearance, we went to the family home; and I can remember crying crying crying, wailing, asking, “Why didn’t he love me?”

I came home, my home.  A few days later, this raggedy raccoon, looking all beaten up and with a gimpy leg appeared on my deck.  In the daylight.  Raccoons being nocturnal, this was unusual.  Was I annoyed, yes, because I have to deal with raccoons all the time.  I chased it away.

The next day my daughter Judy was with me when the raccoon reappeared.  I took a closer look at it, at all its ailments, especially the leg, as my father had gout.  Then I said to Judy, “That’s your grandfather.”

Once I recognized him, he never came back again.  I thought he was asking for my forgiveness, which I gave.

Until I read the will.  In which he insulted me.  And my husband.

So here’s a lesson.  When you’re writing a will, don’t use it to get even.  Distribute things equally.  And if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Haunted House

I think every house is haunted by the memories of those who lived within them.  The house I grew up in certainly was.

When I was four, we moved to Highview Avenue in Nanuet, New York.  My mother always assured us it was the best street in Nanuet, possibly because it was on a hill and some of the houses were quite old.

My mother designed our house.  Someone should have stopped her.  It was a two-story with the top story overhanging the bottom by about a foot.   What was the point?

I’m sure there was a lot of trauma getting that house built.  Later in her life, my mother told me that, during construction, they were running out of money; and a neighbor down the street was just waiting for the bank to repossess so he could buy it.  But she had her father to depend on, and he came through with the necessary funds.  So she had her house.

What I liked best about the house was being out of it.  There was a sassafras tree in the back and one of the branches served as a surrogate pony ride.  Beyond the house, before the developers arrived in my teens, there was a thick woods, leading downhill to a stream.  This is where I spent most of my time after school, being absorbed by nature.  Every season brought new joy from sleighing in the winter to watching the leaves return in the spring, tadpoles and crayfish making a reappearance, and in the summer wading in the water to cool off.

If I followed the stream, it led to a stone wall and an old cottage, in ruins but still containing a broomstick made of branches.  The story was that the Ramapo Mountain people once lived there, as they had throughout many parts of Rockland County.  But I never saw anyone there except other kids.

(When the housing development was built, the stream was “eliminated” somehow, and the new buyers from the city wondered why their houses always flooded.  It was the stream getting its revenge.)

By dinner time I had to return to the house and sadness descended.  I hated being being in that house.

Over the years, the kitchen had many different dining tables and a variety of dishes, but the basics of it never changed.  Oh, the refrigerators had to be replaced, but the linoleum remained, along with the cabinets, the drawers and the stove.

Dinner was always a fraught affair.  My mother—the food—the canned peas—  Maybe she wasn’t a horrible cook.  Maybe it was just my imagination that most of her food was gag-worthy.  After all, I couldn’t have starved, since I was called “Fatty” by the kids, as I walked or biked to school.

There were six of us at the dinner table.  My mother was at one end, my father at the other.  I was sitting at my father’s left hand, my brother Joe was on his right.  Both of us were within striking distance of my father, when he lost his temper.  My sister and my younger brother were at a safer distance away.

I found myself many times not being able to finish the meal that was dished out to me.  This entailed isolation in the half bath, where I was shut in until I finished the meal.  I was too dumb to flush it down the toilet.

My mother had a drawer in the kitchen where she kept all the little things  no one knows where to put, like slips of paper she might need, her keys, the hairbrush she used alternatively to comb our hair before school and to take us over her knee and spank us, sparing her hand.  The poor woman had a laugh once when, in the midst of striking someone’s behind, the hairbrush broke.  Since she was very frugal with money, this was a setback.

My father at one time bodily picked me up and threw me against the kitchen wall.  The dent remained.  He showed it to my husband when my husband first came to the house.  Was it a preemptive move?

The kitchen was at the back of the house, the dining room in the front. Before my mother bought the hutch she so enjoyed, in which she placed her silverware and fine glassware, there used to be an upright piano.  Both my sister and I took piano lessons.  Neither of us was any good.  The practice was tedious. The recitals a nightmare.  But since our parents never came, they never heard how much of their money was being wasted.

Soon enough the piano was thankfully gone.  My mother—did she love to entertain or was it part of her wifely duties?  I know there was a whole crowd of people from Lederle’s that were very close, and I came to know them well.  When my mother entertained, she would always make a standing rib roast.  I don’t know how she did it.  I’ve never made one in my life.

As soon as those dinner parties were over, we kids were in the kitchen, cleaning up.  So many dishes and glasses, and my mother never had a dishwasher.  She washed her dishes morning noon and night.

The living room extended across the length of the entire house.  It had a fireplace with a mantel and a large picture window in the back, overlooking the “lawn” and my father’s garden.  To the side were lilac bushes, and in the spring, when the windows were open, they were delicious.

My mother never had shades but transparent white curtains, which always had to be washed, a chore she didn’t relish.  There was never any comfortable furniture in the living room, and I couldn’t understand why until I got older.  My father and my brother managed to create canyons where they sat.  Not that my father was fat, he was just huge, but my brother was obese.

Christmas Eve in that living room we used to listen to “A Christmas Carol” on the radio.  It was so scary with the chains clinking and the door creaking.  Then television arrived.  For some that was the end of radio, but I loved to go into my bedroom and listen to all the radio shows that were still on, like the Lone Ranger and Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen.

My father bought the television for the Army-McCarthy hearings.  Every afternoon, when it wasn’t being sent to the repair shop, men from the lab would come to our house and watch the hearings, which even I found quite dramatic.

Television brought a new dynamic into the household.  Those who could physically overpower the others ruled the channel choices.  Needless to say, my brother with his heft dominated.  Although somehow my sister and I got to watch the Mickey Mouse Club, which I loved, especially the story of Spin and Marty.  At night of course it was my father’s choice. “Gunsmoke?”  Never really got it.  I found it quite boring.  Jackie Gleason and the “Honeymooners.”  Where was the humor with those sad sack people?  “I Love Lucy?”  I didn’t.

The stairs to the upper floor were quite steep.  They led straight to the hall bathroom and two bedrooms on either side. Then down a dark, narrow hall were two other bedrooms.

Before my younger brother was born, I had the bedroom overlooking the patio and the garage, right near the bathroom.  My older brother was on the other side.  My sister, the “fragile” one, was in the bedroom across from my parents, who had as yet to put in their en suite.

As soon as my younger brother was born, I was removed from my haven of safety and thrust into the company of my sister, with whom I never got along.  So there was never any sanctuary for me in that house at all.  Plus, at night I would have to make the long, dark trek to the bathroom, with my fear of monsters lurking.  Shadows take so many ferocious shapes.

When I had the chance, I would retreat to that bedroom and listen to the radio.  After the radio shows faded, I liked to hear full cast albums of new Broadway shows. And of course there was Alan Freed and all the other radio stations where one could hear real music after “That Doggy in the Window” made his escape. How I loved rhythm and blues and rock and roll.

It was dangerous to be sick in that room, especially if you had a cough that would keep your father awake.  How to stifle a cough?  Bury your face in a pillow, lest he come into the bedroom in a rage.

But sickness comes to children.  I can remember being in that room when I had the Asian flu.  I was so ill, but we never had a family doctor, so none was called.  I struggled through the fever and the drenching alone.  Then one night I awoke and such a feeling of calm enveloped me.  I felt an overwhelming sense of peace, a feeling of being surrounded by love.  Ever since that night, I’ve never been afraid of death.

Somewhere in the house there was a treadle sewing machine.  I know later it was in Joe’s room, but was it always thus?  In any case, I learned to sew on a treadle machine, tipping my little feet back and forth.  My sister was always trying to organize joint Christmas gifts for our parents.  One year she decided to get my mother a new sewing machine.  I didn’t go in on any of Ellen’s gift ideas because—well, I just didn’t want to.  So Christmas comes and Ellen stages her big reveal.  My mother’s response:  “What did you buy that for?” This response followed in the long tradition of no one ever appreciating anyone else’s gifts.

We had a basement that held the water heater and the washer dryer.  My father tried to turn half the basement into a “rec center.”  It was too bad about the water damage.  But there was at one point a ping pong table down there, and later in life he used it for his fly tying and his stained glass, at which he became quite accomplished.

Last of all was the garage, two car.  I remember my father trying to teach me how to drive the way he tried to teach me how to ride a bicycle.  (After my father threw one of his fits and stormed off because I couldn’t ride the bike instantly, our neighbor Harry Hansen came over; and within five minutes of his gentle instructions I was riding a bike.)  But back to the car.  After a rather fraught session on the road, I pulled into the driveway and my father told me to put the car into the garage.  “Pull straight in,” he ordered.  At that point I told him, if I pulled straight in, I’d hit the side of the open garage door.  “Do as I say!”  I pulled in.  The wood splintered.  A driving instructor was hired.

My mother never left the house she loved so much.  Ever after my father died, she hung on there for another twenty-five years.  At the end she didn’t know where she was or who we were, but she had that house, haunted by our memories.

Peter O’Toole, You Changed My Life

You always hear stories about a book that changes someone’s life, or a chance meeting, a la “Strangers on the Train.”  Well, no, let’s leave that murderous meeting aside.  But sometimes something so dramatic happens to you that it changes your life forever.

This happened to me my senior year in college when I saw David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia,” with, yes, the blue-eyed beauty Peter O’Toole.

Was it the story?  Was it the man?  Was it the history of it all?  No.  It was the vast expanses of desert.  And, okay, O’Toole played his part, but it was really the desert the called to me.

Before “Lawrence of Arabia” there was Sigmund Romburg’s “The Desert Song,” but let’s face it, all sound stage, though I loved the music.

Why do I find the desert so appealing?  I have no idea.  It’s a siren song, calling to my soul. Not to mention its pallete of colors that changes as the light changes.  I longed for the desert.  But how to get there?

Fortuitously, I met this strange little man in Princeton, who turned out to be a husband-in-waiting.  When I first saw him, I thought he was from India.  But it turned out he was from Israel.  Let’s go, Negev!

Of course, there were other considerations when we joined our fates together, but the Negev was high on my list of to-do’s.  Mission accomplished after the Six Day War, when we flew to Israel, I for the first time to meet his family.  Desert?  In Givatayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, there was sand everywhere, but that didn’t quite qualify.  So off we went with a friend of my husband’s into Gaza City itself, Jerusalem, and finally to the Dead Sea, much larger then than it is now.

That was only my first taste and a very limited one of the desert.  I had to come back several times to experience the real thing, the Negev with the wandering ibis, then the Arava, driving down to Eilat, being caught in a sand storm, seeing the black Bedouin tents, having camels block the road.  Even now in reflection my heart rejoices.

But why stop at Eilat when the Sinai called?  While we hugged the coast,  enjoying the pristine beaches (at a time before it was totally developed for too many tourists), the desert was always waiting, well spied from the top of Mount Sinai.  How I made that climb, I’ll never know.

Then should we limit ourselves to only Beduin camels?  There were other deserts to explore.  Ah, the romance of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.  Tajines all the way, we drove first through the snow and then down into the desert, where we had to mount camels to take us on an overnight excursion among the Amazigh, previously known as the Berbers.  The evening fire was lovely, as was the meal. The tents?  Someone should have told us we’d be sleeping in sand.  Most threw their clothes away after that night and the camels, but I’m much too thrifty for that extravagance.

Australia and the great outback, I greeted you with enthusiasm. We started in Adelaide, boarded the Ghan and traveled through vast expanses of nothingness until we reached Alice Springs.  My heart rejoiced.  Especially when we hopped on camels that took us to a “chateau” for dinner.

Deserts in the United States?  Culturally?  No, of course, Death Valley, but for some reason it didn’t seem like a desert.  Maybe because no Bedu and no camels?

Now I live along Lake Michigan, where the water is endless, as far as the eye can see. I rejoice at the modern conveniences, like a flush toilet.  No longer is it necessary to go behind a sand dune and squat.  And yet— and yet—

Beach Bitches

Ahoy, Maties, and anchors away!  The bitches are back!  The beach bitches that is. Follow us as we troop de trop from one Caribbean island to another.  Get the answers to these burning questions:  How many times will Carolyn stumble and land on her daughter, causing bruised body and feelings?  How often will Judy find her spot at the slot machines taken?  Will Carolyn be arrested for exposure by simply wearing her bathing suit at the beach? Or will she be harpooned for a whale?   What color eye shadow will Judy be wearing each day and which of Judy’s high heels will cause her to break an ankle?  Burning questions that can only be answered by following Beach Bitches on all your social media apps. We act like idiots so you don’t have to!

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