Notes from A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals Part 2

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Session 2, November 8, 2016, Election Night

Exercise: First, we'll think about the election and then we'll get away from it. Think of the first election you can remember and write about it in present tense:

Sealing envelopes for McGovern mailings in a dark room in his Stamford headquarters. It might have been the first volunteer work I ever did.

How do you begin to fictionalize a true story, asked Jonathan, and how do you create an entryway for the audience?

Exercise: Look at young Alison from "Fun Home". Describe her.

We called out: playful, precocious, inquisitive, tomboy, verbal, aware, observant, older sister, wants her dad's attention.

Now, describe images you remember from the play that are associated with her.

We called out: ring of keys, lace-up boots/short hair, coffin, airplane, barrette, dress, piano with Mom, sketch book, objects of living room, Tall Ships.

These images are more compelling than attributes of the character.

Exercise: Now, choose an age and do the same with yourself; write it down:

Age 11 - flat-chested, tomboy, enthusiastic, vulnerable, observant, aroused, active, loyal, tall, anxious, secretive, suntanned from playing outside.

Images associated with that age: white bikini, sunrise from Jennifer's bedroom, Coppertone lotion, Yes concert T-shirt filled out by Jennifer, beach chairs, terracotta roofed home on the water, the Sound, city bus, white-toweled brother with teeth effervescing from 7-UP.

What was hard about doing that exercise, asked Jonathan? The yearning and the pain from the pleasure that, practically immediately, became a feeling of shame in my case; I recognized, viscerally, that I was attracted to my early-developing, curvy friend and not to her gorgeous older brother.

In groups of three, share what you wrote with one another. And then in plenary, everyone, just share one image from your group of images: bicycle ... seeded jam in a sandwich ... locker room ... white bikini ....

The archival work of your own life maybe requires memoir-ing an image, suggested Jonathan to all of us.

Video clip #1: We watched an interview of the "Fun Home" composer and playwright on how they arrived at an opening number for the play. When the lights went down in the downstairs chapel, where the class was held, the ner tamid (eternal light) and current yahrzeit (death anniversary) memorial lights remained on. Last week, I didn't notice the yahrzeit lights. This year, my dad's (z"l) Hebrew yahrzeit is on November 11th. I hope the light comes on and stays on through our next session next Tuesday.

Video clip #2: We watched the lyrics for the opening number, "It All Comes Back"and I thought about how my older sisters, not my dad (z"l), used to give me our version of "Airplane", which we called g'yupapah. When I was little, I loved for my dad (z"l) to carry me from the back of the station wagon in the garage up to my room; I'd pretend to be asleep, so that he'd carry me.

Written in front of the TV while watching election results:

From the opening song's lyrics:

"My dad [z"l] and I were exactly alike." [Our appetites, our stature ....]
"My dad [z"l] and I were nothing alike." [I eat healthy food. I've been employed by the same company for more than two decades so far.]

The play, "Fun Home", reminded me of my own life, since the main character lost her dad too early and since she was also a tomboy as a kid and an active lesbian by college. At least three of my classmates, one man and two women, are parents themselves, so perhaps they can relate both to the parents and the kid. We have two more sessions on "Fun Home" before we switch to studying "Falsettos".

My Israel Autobiography in Photos

A Retrospective

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

1950-'52: Pre-history - My Parents' Experiences of Israel, Before They Met 

  1960s-'70s - Shohar Posters Designed and Manufactured by Moshav Beit Herut
 

1973: a letter from my second cousin Nitza, who lived in Beit Herut, including pressed flowers

 1973: Coca-cola with Lemon and Soldiers on Rooftops; 2002; 2012

My mom (z"l) took this photo. Her dear friend Chaya Zuckerman-Bareli (right), and me at eight (left), are in Jerusalem.

 

1976: Mom (z"l) and Dad (z"l) and Me in Israel and UK; 2015: Bina and D'vori's Baby Noam

1980: Coming of Age; 2015: Middle Age

 

 

1985-'86: Ambivalently Flirting with My Future; 2014 Reunion

2002: Mom (z"l) and Me and Hebrew University

2012: Introducing My Wife to This History-laden Place

2015: Closure and New Beginnings

Finding Some Peace After a Rollerblading Jaunt

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

"Joy and pain are like sunshine and rain" -- Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock

I'm not sure which photo moves me more. Last night, I photographed the nearly in-bloom peonies in the rain and this afternoon, they were sunbathing in full bloom. I witnessed their sun bath when I returned from rollerblading. I lay down on the lawn and photographed them.

Music Joint-filled Jaunt

I have a semi-secret place I go to rollerblade, where I don't need to wear a helmet and where I can sing along to my iPod with no fear of cars. I'm not a fancy figure-skating type, but I'm highly-proficient, with 45 years of skating experience. After swimming, ice-skating was the first sport I learned -- both at four years old. Today's jaunt featured 30 minutes worth of the "B"'s of my iPod:

• Baghdad Cafe (Callin' U), A:Xus - At 22, the lyrics, "...a desert road from Vegas to nowhere, someplace better than where you've been" helped me end the first full-fledged relationship I had with another woman, as I figured that a road to nowhere would still be better than where I had been.
• Be Near Me, ABC - In high school, my friend and her family were new immigrants and lived in a condo, rather than a house, but they had MTV and we didn't. Roxy Music and ABC were featured on it at the time.
• Beautiful, Bombay Rockers - I cannot relate to the girl to whom they're referring in this song, as they say she's in 7th Grade and everyone's mean to her because they are jealous of her. In 7th Grade, I was just willing myself to develop and be noticed by anyone for something other than being tall.
• Beautiful, Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Her music is among my favorite for rollerblading; it transports me beyond where the rollerblades can because her voice is lush and she's usually telling a story I relate to, or imagine I could. I can't recall when I first heard Me'Shell Ndegeocello's music -- probably when I lived in Chicago -- but I've loved it ever since.
• Beautiful Girl, Bombay Rockers - When Pat & I lived in Bangalore for six months in 2007, a helpful Planet M employee recommended the Bombay Rockers when I asked him to suggest an Indian pop group whose music was cheerful with a beat.
• Beautiful Stranger, Madonna - This album reminds me of being with a couple of IBM colleagues in Madrid, Kris and Miguel. They took me dancing at a lesbian club and Madonna's latest music played then. This song was older, but it still conjured that time for me as I was rollerblading today. "Hung Up", I think, was one of the current hits then, in 2006.
• Before I Let Go, Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly - The melody was so cheerful, but it belied the singer's reluctance to let go of his beloved, and so when it first came out in '81 and now, I ignored the lyrics and focused on the good mood its melody inspired in me.

As I pulled off my wrist-guards and 'blades, "The Best Is Yet to Come" was playing and I couldn't wait to get home to work on this blog-post. As it has turned out, I could detail only memories triggered by my iPod playlist and then needed to leave the rest of it overnight. It was too challenging to write this next part. But today, a day later, I'm moved to do so:

It's Facebook's Fault

The other night, in my Facebook stream, I saw a picture of my first and former best friend's mom from when she was probably in her early-20s. My former best friend's older brother and only sibling had posted it on Mother's Day as a memorial tribute. She was a beautiful woman whose features were so different from any of the women's in my family; she was blond with a bit of an upturned nose and seemed exotic to me. She died several years ago, but I found out only recently. Even after my friend and I were no longer friends, our mothers remained friends for 35 years, until my former friend's mom moved away. My mother wondered aloud with me recently, "I wonder if she is still alive. I'm afraid she isn't."

"I'll go on Facebook and see if I can find out." And I searched for the brother's name and found him. Yes, their beloved mother had died several years ago. And she was sort of another, early mother to me, too. What was an appropriate amount of grief for someone I had known for only four years, 40 years ago?

A Hot Dog with Every Visit

My former best friend and I met when we were four, in nursery school. I'd get off the bus with her from school nearly daily and then I was there on weekends, too. I took it for granted. It was automatic. My sisters were more than half a decade and nearly a decade older than I, and at my friend's house, the kids -- my former friend and her brother -- were my age or just a few years older. My former friend's brother became as close as I'd ever get to having a brother and their curly, sweet Airedale became a quasi-pet for me. Relatively, their dad wasn't around as often as their mom, and their mom became another mother to me. She fed us, asking what we'd like for lunch and I always asked for a hot dog. At home, my mother made salami and eggs sometimes, but hot dogs were only for dinner and not very commonly.

At school, we learned to ice-skate and my former friend was a better skater than I, learning to skate backwards sooner and she took figure-skating lessons. By contrast, I was steady and confident minus any tricks; that steadiness served me for rollerskating and rollerblading, starting in my early teens. During my jaunt yesterday, I thought of the little rink by our school, where we'd go throughout the winters from ages four to eight. Probably, she kept going there, but I don't know, as our friendship was over by the time her father died, when we were eight.

My former friend's dad was many years older than her mother and still, his death was premature, from a disease. He took us kite-flying once, at the Stamford branch of UCONN. I was impatient and then it was fun when he helped me, so that my kite finally became airborne. Our dads liked each other, too, and at one point, I think they were working on a pie-slicing invention together, but it didn't happen. They hatched a number of ideas that they didn't commercialize. I think they just liked using their imaginations together -- like my former friend and I did, for four years.

My former friend was better at everything than I and I loved going over to her house and doing whatever she initiated. Make Spin Art? Sure. Help put a pair of her flowered, cotton underpants on the dog? Yes. Play with her Barbie camper, and always agree to be Skipper while she was Barbie? Indeed. Sit in their guest cottage at a small table, where she held a glass paperweight and told my fortune? Definitely. Look for arrowheads under an overhanging boulder on their property that my former friend said was an Indian shelter? Yes! Help collect eggs from the chicken-coop? Of course. Hang upside-down off the back of the couch, singing along to the lyrics of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree"? Why not?

Were Differing Degrees of Literacy a Harbinger for the Inevitable End of the Friendship?

My former friend was reading The Wind in the Willows when we were five and I would not learn to read for another year. That same winter, she sent me a postcard from her family's vacation in Barbados. It was in her block-print handwriting and not only couldn't I write yet myself, I had to ask my mother to read it to me.

Maybe my former friend was tired of our differing aptitudes. Maybe she was sick of initiating what we'd do when we played together. Maybe she related to what she read in *The Wind in the Willows*, "Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!" I never did read the book. I simply cheated just now and found a quote and imagined her latching onto that sentiment. I didn't need new horizons. I never needed to be anywhere but shuttled back and forth between my family's house and hers. I could have done that for years longer. I wondered why it ended. She stopped calling and I never asked.

Nine Years Later, a Shivah Call

When my father died of cancer at 56, my friendship with my former best friend had been finished for nearly a decade. I was a senior in high school, 17. My former friend's mother paid a shivah call, since she was friends with my mother, but when I saw her, I felt as though she had come to see me even though she had probably come to comfort my mother as much or more than she had come to be kind to me. Her visit was a relief. She offered to take a walk with me and I don't recall our conversation during the walk. I had written her a note, in case she came, and gave it to her at the end of our walk. In the note, I told my former friend's mom that I was less grief-stricken than I might have been, since I felt like I still had two parents, since she had been so motherly to me in my early years.

No One is Perfect

Nearly 20 years ago, I saw my former friend's mother one more time. My eventual wife Pat & I were visiting my mom -- from St. Charles, Illinois, where we lived at the time. I don't recall the context, but my mom suggested we drop by my former friend's mother's home. My memory is that Pat was with me, but she doesn't recall the visit, so perhaps not. My former friend's mother was as beautiful as she had ever been, and seemed the same, just visibly older, and so did I...except that I had also publicly chosen a woman as my future spouse (whenever it would be legal to marry her), whereas when I was a kid and an adolescent, my former friend's mother did not need to acknowledge a romantic relationship I would have with anyone of my own gender.

Some years later, my mother told me that my former friend's mother told my mom that she couldn't accept my lesbianism. My hot-dog-providing-loving-beautiful-kind-other mother was telling my actual mother that she could not reconcile it. Fortunately, she never told me her feelings. She must have loved me too much to want to hurt me by telling me.

Finding Some Peace, and Again, It Was Facebook's Fault

While I had seen my former friend's mom once as an adult, I never saw my former friend again, after her brother's bar mitzvah, when we were nine or 10. And we were practically strangers by then, or at least that's how it felt. Over the years, I've thought, what would my former friend say if I asked her why she ended our friendship? She got bored? Or worse, what if she didn't even recall why? And why did this rejection still hurt me 40 years later? And what would we have had in common if we had remained friends anyhow? Once we no longer went to the same school, what was left? Is that what occurred to her then -- that we had too little in common to stay friends?

Historically, whenever I've thought of this former friend, I've time-traveled back to being eight and sitting across the aisle and behind her at her father's funeral and feeling sad not only about her dad's death, but also at the death of our friendship. The other night, though, something sort of soothing happened: After seeing the memorial photo on my former friend's brother's Facebook wall, I commented on it, describing how lovely their mother had been to me. Later the same night, my former friend's college-aged daughter clicked, "Like" on my comment.

What the heck, I thought: I'm curious if I'll be able to see any photos of the daughter and maybe of my former friend. Why not click on the daughter's profile? I did so. And I got to see both of my former friend's kids -- a teenage boy and college-aged young woman. And then my former friend! I clicked on photo after photo, finding the facial features I recalled from our childhood and was amazed to see them on this grown woman. Being able to at least see what she looked like as an adult was a bit of comfort.

Americans in Paris

Just as I was beginning to feel stalker-ish, a beautiful photo emerged: My former friend and her daughter were standing on a sidewalk in France apparently and my former friend was holding a poster that urged, in French, equality for her daughter, and the daughter was holding a rainbow flag and French poster that declared, I love my mother who accepts me. I don't know the sexual orientation of my former friend's daughter, except that currently, she does not identify as heterosexual.

Maybe my former friend and I had more in common after all, or maybe she had more in common with my mother, and I with her daughter. It reminded me that all of us are more connected than we realize, even as there are vast differences among people. And I thought of the 1995 Pride Parade in Paris; I was in France on business and Pat had to work, so my mom came with me and during the weekend, we marched with the Beth Haverim Juif Homo (Beth Haverim Jewish congregation's gay) delegation.

There we were, nearly two decades apart: two American mothers and two American daughters from three generations, demonstrating ultimate loyalty to each other on the streets of Paris. And if that's the peace I can take from our having been friends, it's enough. I think I feel closer to my former friend now that I've seen that photo than I did when we were friends. Here are some snapshots of my mom's and my experience at the 1995 Paris Pride Parade:

"Here Comes the Rain Again"

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Wishing My Memories Could Rest in Peace

November 3, 1982: My first cousin Yanai and I are sitting on the back porch of the home where I grew up and where my mom still lives. He's distracting me from the events of the day by talking about a favorite book of his, *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* and about his interest in Space, as in "the final frontier".

What do people talk about at a shivah call with a 17-year-old whose father's the reason for the shivah? What do they talk about if they are among Georgetown's undergrads and on the proudly nerdy end of the late-adolescent spectrum?

There's a famous -- famous, among our family -- photo of Yanai and me in a bathtub with Mr. Bubble when we were two and four years old. And that was practically the last time I saw Yanai, till the shivah call in memory of my dad (z"l) 15 years later.

We didn't grow up together like first cousins sometimes do. And I didn't get to know his younger sister Sarit (Sari) till she was 22 and I was 27, when she called me one summer out of the blue: I was living in Chicago and her college boyfriend had moved there to attend U. of C. for grad school, so why not meet for dinner, the three of us?

It turned out to be a fun, sweet evening and I felt wistful that we hadn't spent more time together growing up. And then we did stay in touch and she met Pat, and we were invited to her wedding, and Facebook has served as a continual bridge to many of my cousins, including Yanai, Gail, Sari and her husband Barry.

Regret that I Didn't Get to Know Gail, or My Dad, Better

October 26, 2013: Nearly 31 years since that shivah call, it's my turn to pay a shivah call to Yanai; Yanai's dear wife Gail is gone due to cancer, as of yesterday.

My dad was 56 and Gail was 49. I was 17 and her kids are probably 14 and 16. Happily, we were at the kids' Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah, where we loved seeing Gail dancing and looking vigorous. Unfortunately, I didn't get to know Gail other than at such simchot or at funerals. I'm melancholy, seeing her Facebook wall now, and that she loved some of the same cultural things that I loved, including the book *A Separate Peace*, the movie *Airplane*, and the musician Melissa Etheridge.

We never learned what we had in common, really, other than the Siegel family. We never had a conversation other than about family, or about a bit of her high-tech work -- and she sounded talented at it -- but I'd rather have found out why she loved *A Separate Peace*.

What would my dad have put on his Facebook wall if Facebook had been around in 1982? Perhaps that he loved P.G. Wodehouse (particularly as a kid, my mom told me), George Booth, the "New Yorker" cartoonist, Georg Jensen, the Danish designer, and Letraset.

I don't even recall the music he liked, other than chamber music and Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, and that he tolerated a couple of pop songs, "Moonlight Feels Right" because it mentioned Chesapeake Bay and my dad grew up in D.C., and "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder, which I adored; it was the only 45 he ever bought me.

On his Facebook wall, my dad might have Liked Max Schulman's books and "Popular Mechanics". And maybe the movie "Diner", which amused him; it was the last film my mom and I ever saw with him. And perhaps Breyers Rocky Road ice cream, though by now, he'd have discovered the many new brands and flavors. And if there were Facebook groups for paisley tie lovers or Carhartt overalls fans, he might have joined them. And he'd have specified that he was married to Edythe Siegel for 58 years, if he were still alive, rather than the 27 years they actually had due to cancer.... I'm pretty sure that Yanai and Gail had fewer than 20 years together.

How did we get from bubble-bath splashing to shivah chats too soon? From weddings and baby-births to Bat and Bar Mitzvot, to more shivah chats again too soon?

Parent Loss

While I'm confident that my mom can relate to Yanai's tragedy directly, I can't at this point, thank God, since Pat & I are both still alive and well k'ayn eyin harah. Instead, Yanai and Gail's kids keep coming to mind because like me, they've lost a parent in their teens.

Everyone grieves differently, but if they feel anything like I did, then it's practically more stress than anyone should have to bear: I was stricken at losing my dad while at the same time, experiencing the first ultimate assessment of my academic talent while yearning for love and romantic attention from my peers in parallel.

It was practically too much to handle. I'd work on my college applications in the hospital waiting room and then walk along the streets of Spanish Harlem, where the hospital was, wishing irrationally that I could get pregnant and have a baby to replace my dying father.

What do Yanai and Gail's kids feel along with their pure grief at losing their beloved mother? And how will they cope with their feelings? I spent nearly a decade coping mostly through junkfood and romantic fantasy accompanied by mostly disappointing reality. I want to say: "And then I got over it," but that's not at all true; I did give up the junkfood and the self-and-other-disrespecting romantic pursuits, but feel no less grief about my gone father than I did when he died.

Spouse Loss

This is territory I've not yet traveled, thank God, but my poor bubble-splashing cousin Yanai now has done so. How will he cope?

How would I cope? Would I go back to junkfood? Would I channel my grief through blogging? Would my remaining family comfort me? Would I find a great grief group or therapist? Would my synagogue community be a source of comfort? Would I swim more? How would I stay strong for my kids (in my case, two feline daughters)? What would I do to survive?

Please, God, help Yanai, Gail's and his kids, and the rest of their families to find life-affirming comfort. And help me not to be self-absorbed when I see them on Monday for the funeral and shivah; help me be usefully, compassionately present.... I guess this is what family is about -- the longevity to splash together in bubble baths, meet for dinner-fun, dance with one another at Bar/Bat Mitzvot celebrations and weddings, and comfort one another at shivot.

My Disco Autobiography

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Inspired by Alice Echols' Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture

I was born in July, 1965 and can't recall when I began watching "American Bandstand" and "Soul Train", rather than going to shul on Saturdays -- probably not till I was 14 (which I am in the photo above), after my Bat Mitzvah and toward the end of the peak of disco -- but I had practically always listened to WBLS - 107.5 FM, the closest R&B station, out of NYC. My two sisters, five and a half and nine years older than I, could not relate; they adored Judy Collins, Kenny Rankin and that whole folk-guitar genre.

Before reading Alice Echols' amazing disco analysis, I just thought I was irresistibly drawn to disco, since my criteria for top music are: cheerful with a beat, and maybe that's still most of it, but I like knowing that unwittingly, in parallel, I was participating in "the Remaking of American Culture". Alice Echols talks about the Middle-Americanization of disco, that is, how it started among African-American and gay communities and made its way to the suburbs, but I represented a class she didn't mention -- the then-isolated lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens, who roller skated to the tunes on suburban lanes, by ourselves, dreaming of belonging -- feeling cool and even a bit glamorous while skating, then returning to real-life and feelings of vast difference when we took off the headphones and skates.

Sister-Influence - 1975

My middle sister writes a prose-poem on the bottom of a cylindrical, cardboard Morton salt container, including the words, "Fly, Robin, Fly" and in our living room, imitates some girls she's seen singing and dancing to it in the halls at Stamford High.

Waking Up - 1976

Brick's "Dazz" comes out, and (starting at 2:37 into this video) I'm entranced by the flute and I dance to the song whenever it plays on the radio. It is the same year I realize I'm attracted to my best friend and pick a fight with her to ensure the end of our friendship.

"If I Can't Have You..." - 1977

My mother and Mrs. Kraut take Claudia and me to see "Saturday Night Fever", covering our eyes during all of the racy parts. Soon afterward, Claudia tells her mother she doesn't want to be friends with me because I am too much of a tomboy; my mother doesn't share this with me till I am an adult.

Dance Contest Victory - 1978

My friend Amy decides she will choreograph a line-dance to this Michael Jackson tune and we will enter a Long Ridge School contest. We win 1st place. Later the same year, I'm in dance lessons with a boy from my class, who is eye-level with the upper region of my torso and we're learning Bar Mitzvah party dance moves, including spelling "YMCA" with our arms.

Roller skating - I Can Be Cool (By) Myself! - 1979

Capitalizing on the roller-disco craze, the toy company my dad (z"l) worked for wants him to design a teen roller skate bag. We go to Caldor and he buys me this pair of sneaker-skates as part of his "research"; he might as well have bought me a car for the joy and freedom these skates bring me, and I love skate-dancing to tunes like this one:

They Disagree With My Taste, but Love Me Anyhow - 1965-Present

My love of disco remains mysterious to my two sisters, and I need to acknowledge their ultimate indulgence of me: To honor my first teenage birthday, they take me into New York City to a free concert in Central Park, The Pointer Sisters! It's a heat wave and the group sings as though the day is pumping cool breezes on-stage, though it isn't. Guess who opens for the group? Kenny Rankin!

(Skate) technology has changed, but I remain enchanted with skating to music that is cheerful with a beat; here's a 16-second sample of me from a couple years ago:

And after my adolescent struggles, I manage to find an indulgent wife, too: She lets me sing along loudly whenever we hear a disco tune on the radio -- which is as often as I can find one. And even at 47, I still feel coolest, most glamorous and most like I belong whenever I'm skating to disco.

Life or Death, and Purpose

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Driving Back from NYC with Pat Last Night

"I turn to stone, when you are gone, I turn to stone," the radio sang as Pat and I turned onto the Allwood exit on our way back from a movie and dinner in the city with our friend Gerard.

"That's ELO. Caryn Lesnoy (z"l) loved that group," I said to Pat, "She was my friend who died of ovarian cancer when we were just 17, remember?"

"Ovarian cancer at 17! No one would even think to look for that at such a young age. Appendicitis, maybe, but...how unfair!"

"Yup, and she's buried right next to my dad (z"l). I thought it was awful to lose him when I was 17, but imagine if I'd lost my own life at that age! And how mad I was when one of our classmates came to my dad's funeral and just kept bawling while looking at Caryn's grave. She was stealing the show. Meanwhile, I had turned to stone. There was just shock, no tears."

Riding a Bus in Bangalore with a (Normally) Beijing-based Colleague a Few Weeks Ago

My Chinese colleague and I were discussing our parents' influence over our choice of universities by way of getting acquainted. My colleague said that she had no choice; she had gotten into a premier school and that is where her parents determined she would go through graduate school.

"My dad, who was dying of cancer at the time -- and our immediate family knew it -- wanted me to go to the University of Michigan for undergrad. 'Look, Sarah, they have a great newspaper that you could write for,' he said, holding up a copy of 'The Michigan Daily' and hoping to appeal to the part of me that wrote for my high school newspaper. I thought he was crazy. I was not interested in Michigan at all. I wanted to go to a different school, and to stay on the East Coast. I visited the college I wanted to attend and within two days, hated it; I recognized everyone on campus. It was too small. He was right."

My colleague looked at me and was smiling attentively. I wondered how culturally shocking it was for her to listen to me say that I was ignoring a dying wish of my dad, or any wish of a parent, given her culture's respect for parents in general. I continued:

"I also had a favorite teacher, Mr. McWilliams, who insisted, 'You must go to Michigan. You need to expand your vista.' I knew better, though, I told him, just as I had told my dad. The campus visit to the other school had not yet happened and then I did not let Mr. McWilliams know that I had changed my mind and opted to choose Michigan. Instead, I let it be a surprise; it was announced during the Senior Awards Banquet, along with a list of other honored Seniors. 'Sarah Siegel, University of Michigan.' And my dad was right. I did write a bit for the Arts section of 'The Michigan Daily' and it was the perfect school for me." And then I couldn't speak with her further, as inconvenient tears interrupted me.

Embarrassing! My Chinese colleague and I had just met and I was crying in front of her. She didn't say anything, but her expression changed and the compassion on her face urged me on:

"Both of them -- my dad and Mr. McWilliams -- were right and initially, I didn't want to listen." I held up a string of pearls that were lying on my neck and said, "No one else here will know this, but I wore these pearls today on purpose, so that my parents could be with me during the session I'm leading. On the day I graduated from high school, my father had already been dead for seven months. Before the ceremony, my mother handed me these pearls and a card that she had signed from both of my parents and said, "These pearls are from your father and me."

"Thank you for telling me that," said my colleague, with the reverence used for a secret that was revealed only to her. And then I swallowed and pulled myself together and returned to the present, feeling vulnerable, but grateful to my colleague. The session later that morning was lively and I felt that it was purposeful -- that I had been of service.

Calling Mr. McWilliams, Who Was Still Alive

Upon my return from India, moved by how moved I still was, recalling my father's and Mr. McWilliams' influence on my growth as a learner and person, I decided to be bold and phone Mr. McWilliams, to invite him to meet with me and catch up. We had not spoken since my graduation 30 years ago this year and his final message to me had been in my yearbook: "Just stay young long enough to grow old."

He had come to my father's funeral and shivah and told us that it was his first-ever funeral, let alone first shivah. I think my father-loss struck him as having adult-ized me overnight, and again, I did and did not heed his advice. After all, how could I not grow up instantly, losing my father at such a young age? In parallel, how could I ignore my well-established love of roller-disco, junk-food and the romantic yearning that practically any adolescent feels, including one who is experiencing a particularly complex version, struggling to accept her (secret, she hopes) lesbian sexual orientation?

Three songs from that time -- or their choruses, anyhow -- seemed to reflect perfectly what I was feeling then: "I Don't Need This Pressure On...", "Don't Drink, Don't Smoke. What Do You Do? Subtle Innuendoes Follow...", and "It's Like a Jungle Sometimes. It Makes Me Wonder How I Keep from Going Under...."

My feelings then: I don't need this pressure of having to complete college applications in the waiting room down the hall from my dad's hospital bed, of a dying and then dead father, of juggling a boyfriend and a secret girlfriend, of being the only one of my parents' children left in the house with my widowed, wild-with-grief mother, of having to continue getting good grades and taking AP courses, to ensure my place at a decent school....

My feelings then: If I keep busy, cultivating a prudish image and being a compulsive punster among my peers, I'll never have to be found out as the radical romance experimenter that I am...except, hearing this song, I worry that there's likely some crack in my veneer that I can't see, or that the song will give people ideas about me and dispel some/all? of the mystery.

My feelings then: This song reflects my fury at being trapped as a the too-young daughter of a dead father that I did not have enough time to get to know sufficiently. Life is a jungle that is thwarting me and urging me over the edge in parallel. Either I will either be trapped, or I'll lose my head.

Providing a 30-year Update Without Overwhelming Each Other

When I reached Mr. McWilliams the other day, his voice sounded older and the same, and I considered that I was likely older now than he had been when he was my teacher. Mr. McWilliams agreed to meet and then called back to postpone our meeting due to some doctors' appointments to which he needed to drive a friend.

In the meantime, between the first and second calls, I started trying to imagine what I would discuss with him.

To understand my investment in this conversation, you need to know that Mrs. Honan, Rabbi Kosowsky and Mr. McWilliams -- in that chronological order -- were the three most profound teachers I had from nursery school through my Master's program in Education. Mrs. Honan and Rabbi Kosowsky both were dead at a young age, by the time I was in high school. All three teachers were even better educators than all of my university and grad. school professors, and what they had in common was a belief in me and my creativity, and they encouraged both.

Mr. McWilliams was the person who exposed me to the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Herman Melville, to that of William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson, among others. This was the person who taught me Creative Writing, and who took our class to Broadway on field trips, including to see "The Fantasticks" and "A Chorus Line". I think I learned to be empathetic through the stories he had us read and see, and I know I confided in him in the journal he had us keep for Creative Writing. Only in that journal -- that only he saw -- did I refer to my father's imminent death. I told none of my friends or peers. Just Mr. McWilliams. And just in writing.

My mother and Mr. McWilliams, and my cousin Gila in Israel who I nearly never get to see, are the only older people still alive from my childhood who remember watching a chunk of my development, from their adult perspective. Why haven't I contacted him prior to now? Because that was then? Because he was larger than life and not someone I ever imagined sitting down and having a human-to-human conversation with that didn't involve major literary themes? Because I might crack open from all of the memories he triggered for me? Of my early, awkward relationship with my sexual orientation? Of my early hopes of being a writer, which haven't materialized professionally? Of my father-loss and overnight childhood-loss? Isn't it easier to keep the sleeping dogs tranquilized?

Maybe, not to flatter myself, but maybe at a minimum, I'd also remind Mr. McWilliams of an era of his own life that he'd prefer not to revisit for whatever reasons. Maybe we won't end up having a reunion after all. We've rescheduled tentatively for June 8th.

Mr. McWilliams was so happy I was going to a Midwestern university and seeing a bit of the world; he was from Canton, Ohio originally. I recall that because during the first days of my freshman year in Ann Arbor, I went to a then-popular soda fountain/lunch place/candy store called Drakes and found that some of the candy-by-the-pound was from Canton, Ohio. That's all I [will ever?] know about Mr. McWilliams' early life. So far, he and I have stayed alive for many purposes, and only this week have they begun overlapping again. Even if we do not cross paths further, both of us have served our purpose to each other, I think. We did so back in 1979-83.

What I'd Want Mr. McWilliams to Know If and When We Met

1. In 1983, I was the anonymous sender of the Valentine's carnation that read, "You are loved. -- Rex Humbard" [the name of a Televangelist that was popular then], though I think he already knew
2. Somehow, the literature he chose for us to read and study and how we discussed it with him in class made me a more sensitive, better person, permanently
3. Learning from him made me feel confident that I had creativity to share as a gift with the world and I am grateful for the confidence he helped me build
4. Flannery O'Connor became among my favorite writers and was included among the authors in my undergraduate thesis, and he first introduced me to her
5. I loved his sense of humor and ended up with a funny spouse, who is Irish like him
6. I struggled mightily with accepting my sexual orientation, but the works he chose for us to read and see helped me, since a number of them dealt with gay, if not lesbian, themes
7. I'm fundamentally using my creativity in my work
8. Although I'm not a professional writer, I do blog and write routinely, as I feel compelled to
9. His gruffness never fooled me. I knew he loved me and nearly all of his students
10. I hope he lives for many more years, with good health.

Day 2 of My Vacation

A Prose Poem

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

I've got everything on my mind from the
mystery of mental illness to pop tunes on
YouTube to needing to do some straightening
up/mining piles to how sunny it is, yet how cold
and how ill I feel with a sinus infection.

Once when I was ill as a young child, my dad (z"l)
bought me a toy doctor's kit and then also a roll of
Neco wafers to distract me from my illness. I wish he were
still around to distract me.

If my dad (z"l) were with me now, I would ask:
Who on your side was mentally ill, so I could
better understand some contemporary relatives who
are. And I would thank him for introducing me to
rollerskating and for buying me a pair, as they
augment my enjoyment of pop music.

And I would wonder aloud if there is a clutter-gene,
and if so, would be annoyed that having that insight still
wouldn't help me clean up the piles in my home-office any faster.

Earliest Smells

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

The First Smells I Recall:

Last weekend, our friend David asked us about our earliest smell memories. I said, "Aiplane glue", and then thought about it some more to post this list:

1. Playdough(TM)-- It didn't smell like food, but I had to taste it
2. Airplane glue that my dad (z"l) used to build models -- smelled like oranges
3. Cinammon and butter -- my dad (z"l) used to make us butterfly toast topped with these
4. Skunk cabbage -- gross, skunky and irresistible to pluck the smelly part from the plants and toss it at our friends when we were playing in the woods
5. Skippy(TM) Peanut Butter -- smelled salty-sugary
6. Chlorine -- Burnt my eyes and stung my nose
7. Jean Nate(TM) -- my mom's
8. Old Spice -- my dad's

Emotion Parade During Our Trip to Israel

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Ultimately, Relief Is the Grand Marshal

This dusty dirt road belies the rows and rows of spry, young avocado trees behind the hoary trees on the left, but doesn't surprise me with the village's cemetery just around the bend. My father's parents, his sister and her husband are buried there (z"l). In reliving the trip here, I'm not sure how orderly I can make the emotion parade, or how much I should try to do so. Here, I'm posting photos and writing about a place of which I have been conscious for more than 40 years, first through Sabta (my grandmother) and Aunt Tovah -- the generations of our family that moved there in 1948 and '47 respectively.

Until reading the name beneath my grandfather's on his side of the gravestone, I do not know or recall that my grandfather was the son of Chaim Mordechai haLevi, and had chosen to name his eldest son (my dad of blessed memory) after his deceased dad (z"l). One grave sits in a moshav in Israel and the other on the outskirts of Stamford, Connecticut. If my dad had stayed in Israel after serving in WWII in the U.S. Navy, rather than leaving and moving to the Village in New York City, I wouldn't be here to blog about standing in awe at the continuity.

This visit with my family, both dead and alive, doesn't happen till our last day in Israel and I am anticipating it the entire time. Instead of being anticlimactic or even somehow disappointing -- which a number of highly-anticipated events are in my experience -- it is marvelous. Relatively, my first cousins Edna and Meishe are two of seven first cousins with whom I'm the closest; siblings Sarit -- aka Sari -- and Yanai are the others with whom I'm closest. Meishe and Edna have worse luck than the rest of us in that their parents Tovah and Lulu both were buried already, and Uncle Lulu died when they were young, in 1967, just weeks after our grandfather died; Saba died of Leukemia and Uncle Lulu of a freakish bathtub fall if I remember correctly -- 50 years, so far, of Edna and Meishe, leaving stones on Uncle Lulu's grave, and Uncle Lulu never got to see his gorgeous, talented grandchildren, Dvori, Lilach, Anat, Eli and Omri. And Meishe's now a grandfather himself, twice already, of Ori and Hilla. What if Aunt Tovah were still living? She would have gotten to know two delightful great-grandchildren so far. What if my father were still alive? He would have gotten to know four beautiful, stellar grandchildren. What if Uncle Vevy (Zev), the father of Yanai and Sari, were still living? He would have gotten to know all four of his precious, brilliant grandchildren, rather than only Yanai's kids.

So much envy to trudge through: I envy Sari and Yanai for getting to have both of their parents for much longer than I did, and perhaps Edna and Meishe envy Sari and Yanai, too, as well as how my dad lasted a few more years than theirs, till 56, and how my mom, so far, has lasted 20 years longer than theirs. Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way. And how does it serve me? In this case, I think, envy is just another type of mourning. This family in Israel is a thick link to my father, who I miss practically continuously, no matter that this November, he'll already have been gone corporeally for 30 years. The ache doesn't lessen. The couple of random memories that Edna and I share about him in the car from Tel Aviv to Beit Herut are incalculably dear to me, including how he used to read her stories in Hebrew and then when he was done, asked her what they were about. "The difference was that your father could read, but couldn't speak, and Uncle Vevy could speak, but couldn't read as well." We leave the cemetery, which had been Meishe's and Edna's profound idea to visit. The white slabs of my lost relatives serve as a peaceful, sad contrast to all of the hopeful colors to come during the rest of my visit.

My one priority other than seeing all of my available relatives is first to stop at the community pool, where I had spent significant times at 15, during the Summer of '80, when I lived with my second cousins, Gila, Shmuel (z"l), Moti, Ron and Nitza. It is a bit out of the way and it is definitely a youngest-child-syndrome moment, where just like my older sisters Deb and Kayla had done for me my whole early life, and perhaps they think they do still, Meishe and Edna are proxies and indulge me. This is the only time Pat intervenes and says, "Sarah, the rest of your relatives are waiting to see you." In response, I feel less guilty than determined to peek at the pool.

Probably, I could pause here to wonder what else Pat was thinking of all of this -- a dimension of my history to which she hasn't had direct access prior -- but the reality is that I am fully self-absorbed and unconsciously taking for granted that Pat can be self-sufficient during the visit, beyond my making initial introductions, where I consciously refer to her as my wife; I follow our dear friends David & Gerard's advice to use the term "wife" as often as possible to make up for all of the years that we couldn't. My cousins prove to be completely, naturally, genuinely welcoming to us. Their warmth makes me feel proudly beloved.

My dad of blessed memory always talked about the *Pirkei Avot*/*Ethics of the Fathers* statement, "K'neh l'chah chaver," which was the concept that friendship is so precious, we should be willing to pay for it. With that in mind -- not knowing how warmly we'd be received -- I bring gifts for family of all ages. Though I am not satisfied that they are amazing enough -- bunches of IBM logo'ed items...a cup, toddler T-shirts, mini golf umbrellas and rebus notebooks, plus a couple of Mickey Mouse paint-sets from my mother, a child's puzzle from the Jewish Museum in New York, and a Beijing Olympics key-ring for Dvori, since I remember that she is a champion swimmer and instructor -- I hand them out quickly upon our arrival, which helps me channel my nervous excitement at being met by known and new faces.

Of course, I need to bring gifts because they always give us gifts, even when we are visiting them in their home-country. Maybe they are similarly familiar with the *Pirkei Avot* saying, or maybe they're just generous. They give Pat & me each some special Dead Sea revitalizing products as well as a fantastic 2012-2013 Israeli art calendar. The thing is, in choosing gifts for them, I can't think of anything American that they don't already have access to, and the IBM-logo'ed products, at least, are not generally, publicly available, and they really are a reflection of how I've spent nearly the past two decades in the States and and India. In fact, my IBM service counts for 22 years this month. We also wish we could have brought them bottles of the New Jersey State Fair-winning Iris honey from the Presby Memorial Iris Gardens, where Pat serves as Treasurer of the Board, here in Montclair, but we figure that it could be a Security challenge, or else disastrous if the bottles break in our luggage.

Also, I'm hoping that some of my memories are bonus gifts for them; theirs are to me, certainly. I've got an aerogramme from Aunt Tovah, dated November, 1980, that refers to Anat's precociousness as a toddler. And as I'm sitting here, reflecting now, I'm recalling how when Dvori was an infant and I was 11, I blew at her eyes to watch her long eyelashes wave at the wind and no one stopped me. Probably, no one other than Dvori saw me do it. She was smiling, or at least, not crying during my experiment, so I don't think I did any lasting harm.

And I've got a nice photo of my oldest cousin Gila with her husband, Shmuel and her parents, if I remember correctly, and me at 15, which I show to Gila and which she asks Meishe to photocopy. Of course, this being 2012, he has a photocopier in his home. And Gila's daughter Nitza recalls two memories that I had forgotten: She took me to school with her during my first or second visit, when I was eight or 11, and she remembers that I ran the 60 meter dash really fast. (It was not a trend.) Nitza also remembers how exciting it was to receive a package from me, from the United States: "You sent those [molded rubber] Sesame Street finger-puppets, and to this day, I can't throw them away. I still have them." (My dad (z"l), who was a game and toy designer, had brought them home -- enough to share some, so I did.)

When Nitza and her mom Gila, along with Nitza's darling young son, enter Meishe and Bina's living room, I spring up and hug them. I also introduce Pat, but want to sit closer to them to be able to talk and leave Pat on the couch. By now, everyone is talking with her and she is enjoying the conversation and a sort of melon that she says later tasted like a more delicious version of cantaloupe, but which isn't the same color.

Pat looks perfectly comfortable, and I take the golden opportunity to sit down especially next to Gila, who is just a few years younger than my mom and she kindly lets me speak halting Hebrew with her, rather than English, even though she understands English perfectly. It is so cool! Gila, Nitza, Edna and Bina all are sitting near me at the same time and we have a history! At this moment, I don't need the Dead Sea serum; I am 30 years younger, just reminiscing with them. And being around typically remote people who still remembered my dear father (z"l) brings him back to life for me for a bit, even if just for the length of our visit.

The time with my Israeli family is too brief, as we are meeting my mom's 90ish-year-old friend for lunch Chaya back in Tel Aviv, but it leaves Pat and me wanting more, and I hope our Beit Herut-based family feels the same way. Gila (second from the left in this last photo) says to me emphatically, "I'm all alone in that big house, so next time you and Pat come to Israel, you must stay with me." We'd love to and hope to. What a rich visit, with 22 of my emotions on parade, some internally and some externally: awe, anticipation, surprise, nostalgia, envy, mourning, ache, appreciation, amusement, peace, sadness, hope, courage, warmth, pride, love, vulnerability, nervousness, excitement, wonderment, and renewal -- with relief leading the way...relief that I could pick up with my family where we left off, that the family, including Pat, warmly received one another, relief that I could communicate in Hebrew, even if at a pre-Kindergarten level, and relief at the ease we felt, being with all of them.