June 26, 2019--Aunt Tanna

I've been thinking this week about my Aunt Tanna, my mother's second oldest sister who became our extended family's matriarch after my grandmother died.

This meant that all ritual occasions such as Passover and Rosh Hashanah dinners were under her auspices and occurred around her always-ladened dining room table. 

In my life I do not recall any warmer times.

Aunt Tanna was also the even-more-extended family's guardian angel. 

My earliest childhood memories were of distant cousins, who had survived Nazi concentration camps, who she somehow, at the end of the war, managed to bring to the safety of America. That "safety of America" was the security and love she provided to those who had literally been through Hell.

When they were liberated those emaciated skeletons were placed in DP camps, often tent camps, displaced persons camps, which were much less than ideal facilities, where they needed to wait, often for more than a year, before there was a place of refuge to which to send them. 

Much of Europe was in ruins and there were few places to locate freed prisoners. The United States, which sustained no direct damage, was only reluctantly welcoming. 

In America there was a long tradition of official antisemitism and our State Department, which was charged with managing the quotas that severely restricted the number of those who could be admitted to the country as refugees, was notoriously known to be unfriendly to anything Jewish. 

For example, before World War II erupted the Secretary of State ordered that ships packed with asylum seekers not be permitted to disembark them. The ships and their passengers were turned back and as a consequence many thousands were then sent to concentration camps where they were slaughtered by the Nazis. 

Aunt Tanna somehow found ways to locate scattered family members and one-by-one, occasionally in small family groups when more than one cousin miraculously survived, she managed to bring them to her apartment in Brooklyn where she arranged places for them to sleep, frequently for months, frequently three to a bed, while she searched for more permanent places for them to live and jobs so they could support themselves.

They spoke no English and I no Yiddish, the lingua franca, and so we communicated mainly though shrugs and gestures. As might be imagined I was especially drawn to the occasional young cousin survivors, who my father said, looked like "little old men." What they had been through, I came to understand, had literally left its mark on them.

And of course I could not take my eyes off the blue numbers they all had tattooed on their forearms.

I have been thinking about this recently because Portland Maine continues to be in the news as it struggles to welcome a few hundred Congolese refugees who have been granted asylum in America. There was another article in the New York Times Monday about how welcoming Portland is attempting to be. And how Portland and the State of Maine continue to be the only places in the U.S. where public money in combination with privately raised funds are being used to help defray the cost of their relocation and transition.

This, as I have written, has unleashed a storm of protest from some Mainers who feel that while citizens are struggling we should not be using taxpayer money to defray the costs associated with admitting refugees. That it is better to require that family members "sponsor" anyone seeking to live in America. The Aunt Tanna approach.

This seems to me to be worth considering.

October 29, 2018--The Bambino

During my childhood, on the streets in Manhattan where the UN is currently located, as unlikely as it may seem, there were slaughterhouses and meat packing plants.

One plant, Paramount Meats, was owned by my Uncle Eli. He and Aunt Tanna and their son, my cousin Chuck, lived less than a half mile from us and so, on occasional weekend mornings, Uncle Eli would pick me up at about 6:00--he and I were very early risers--and take me with him to have breakfast at Garfield's Cafeteria, an glitzy dairy restaurant on the corner of Church and Flatbush.

We would get in line and slide our trays along until we got to the grill area where we would order eggs or pancakes or various kinds of pickled and smoked fish.

Being there with him, talking as we did about things I was reluctant to raise with my parents, we discussed everything from politics (he hated Eisenhower), the state of the world (not good), and family matters (complicated). We also spoke about the "birds and the bees"--he gave me a book about this, The Stork Didn't Bring You, But above all else, in this way, he was the first person to treat me like an adult and not a kid. And so I loved him and our time together.

One Saturday he got permission from my mother to take me, after breakfast, to his plant. He had a new Buick and it also felt good and adult to drive in it with him across the Brooklyn Bridge and then up the East River Drive to Paramount. 

There was a garage across the street from it and he had a reserved spot, another reminder that his life was different than most of my other more immigrant-cultured relatives, many of whom did not own cars or speak unaccented English.

"You know, Babe Ruth, from the Yankees also parks in this garage," Uncle Eli said as he left the car with a dollar tip to the garage attendant. He knew I was a passionate Yankee fan.

"Really? The Bambino?"

"Himself. In fact, you may get to meet him. In our smoke house today we're making pigs knuckles, and once that smell gets out into the street, if the Babe is coming to pick up his car, he may stop in. More than anything else he loves pigs knuckles right out of the oven. I always put a few aside for him."

"Really? For the Babe?" I was more excited about this than our talk earlier about storks.

"First let me show you the smoker. It's pretty big so we can walk into it and you can see the pork butts and cow's tongues we'll be smoking along with the rack of pigs knuckles. We have to be careful not to let the door swing closed. We could get trapped in here and get smoked ourselves!" I knew this wasn't true, that he was fooling with me, which also made me feel grown up. He talked with me as if I were one of his boys.

From the garage we walked to his office where I would spend the rest of the morning helping him add up his bills. He read out the numbers and I would enter them in the adding machine. I wan't sure if this needed dong or if he was creating something for me to do to make me feel important. Which it did.

Rather quickly the smoke oven heated up and fumes from it permeated the plant and poured out onto 45th Street. It did indeed smell delicious and I couldn't help but think about the pigs knuckles and The Babe.

With that, framed in the office door was the shape of an enormous man, and from what I could see--he blocked the light--he was wearing a double-breasted camelhair coat that almost reached the floor and a signature Babe Ruth cap, both of which, from pictures of him in the newspapers, confirmed that indeed it was the Sultan of Swat.

"Are you making what I hope you're making?" Ruth asked Uncle Eli with a gravelly voice. It was well known he had a serious case of cancer. 

"I am," Uncle Eli said, "I was hoping you were in the neighborhood. They should be ready in just another few minutes and I'll get you a couple. In the meantime, let me introduce my nephew. He's a big Yankee fan, which can be dangerous when living in Brooklyn. Everybody there roots for the Dodgers."

"Did I ever tell you I was their first base coach back in '38? Most people don't remember that, but I was. I wasn't very good at it, but I could use the money."

Uncle Eli left to check the status of the pigs knuckles.

Alone with the Babe, shyly I said, "That's the year I was born." 

"Let me take a look at you," he said, "So you must be about nine. You're pretty tall for nine." I walked toward him and he tousled my hair, smiling broadly. "I'll bet you play baseball."

"Not really," I said, "Sometimes on the street. You know, mainly punch ball and stick ball. Also, softball. The guys on my block aren't good enough to play hardball."

"Stick with it," he said, "If you keep growing you never know."

Uncle Eli was back with a couple of ham hocks. 

The Babe reached out for one and with great relish took a big bite out of it. "Hot," he said, "I like 'em hot like this. There's nothing better than right out of the oven. Thanks, Eli, I need to get going. And nice to meet you kid." He reached out to shake my hand, careful not to use the one with which he was holding the pigs knuckle. What's your name again? I'm not always good at remembering names."

I told him and with that he was gone.

Two weeks later, Uncle Eli came by to pick me up and again we went to Garfield's. "I have something for you," he said as we turned up Church Avenue. "It's in that bag on the back seat. Reach back there and get it. Which I did.

"Open it. It's for you, from a friend of yours."

A baseball fell out of the bag and landed on my lap. "Is it . . . ?"

"Take a close look at it." 

On it, the Bambino had written, "For Steve. From your pal, Babe Ruth."

It became my proudest possession. I kept it on a shelf next to my bed so I could see it last thing at night and right after waking up.

Of course I showed it to my neighborhood pals. Most didn't believe me, contending I was trying to pull a fast one on them. "I'm not," I said, not caring if they believed me. I knew the truth, I knew what I had experienced.

Later that summer, Heshy said, "Why don't we play a little hardball. I have a hardball bat and you have a baseball. You know, the one from your pal." The rest of the guys chuckled derisively. 

I went upstairs and came back with the baseball. We played with it for a couple of days and then lost it when it fell into an open sewer that we had been using as second base.

And then in the middle of August, The Babe died.

October 9, 2017--Cousin Elaine

Cousin Elaine, who died peacefully on Saturday, became part of the family more than 70 years ago.

That family was my mother's--the Mooneys. 

My father's side, the Zwerlings, were not that family-minded but it included a wide range of characters from my chain-smoking, poker-playing grandmother who was the only elderly Jewish woman I knew who could not cook--actually, had no interest whatsoever in household matters--as well as a number of uncles and cousins who were mobbed-up. Uncle Herman, for example, owner of gin mills in New Jersey and Brownsville, always packed a pistol. Family lore has it that he not only carried one but on occasion was known to use it. And there was his brother Louie, who every summer went to Saratoga Springs to follow the ponies, always accompanied by a bottle-blonde or two. Needless to say, none of them his wife. 

As a kid, I loved that transgressive excitement.

But it was the Mooneys who made me feel secure and loved. Very much including Murray Dinerstein--the oldest of our generation of cousins--who was and is 15 years older than I--and who was Cousin Elaine's husband.

More than 70 years ago, Elaine Goldfarb was the first person I knew who married into the family. Others, of course, had done so previously and were assimilated Mooneys by the time I was aware enough to notice, but up to then all who had joined the Mooney clan were around when I was born and so Elaine was the first person I knew who was about to marry in.

I remember vividly the first time I met her. It was after the end of the Second World War, about 1945, shortly after Cousin Murray, resplendent in his uniform, was on leave from the Air Force and during that time brought Elaine around to meet the family which was gathered at my parents' apartment in East Flatbush. Actually, where my mother and her four sisters were gathered. The men took no part in these rituals. 

Though I was not included in the family chatter about the purpose of this encounter, I was aware enough to figure out that Elaine was Murray's potential fiancee. I say "potential" because there was a sense that he was seeking his aunts' approval before proceeding with nuptial plans.

They were seated around the kitchen table with one chair reserved for Elaine. I snuggled up close to my mother. Murray ushered her in and my mother, with a welcoming smile, motioned for her to sit. She did and Murray retreated to the living room sofa, where he waited to be summoned.

I do not remember all that was asked or said, but I do have a vivid recollection that the sisters were encouraging and that they were most interested in learning about Elaine's family. 

As she spoke about them in their own way they seemed as interesting as the Zwerlings in that they too appeared to lead unconventional lives, but on the right side of the law. Among other things it seemed that her two Goldfarb uncles were very successful businessmen, one of whom, Sid, was building a major art collection and lived in Malibu and the other, Phil (Fishel), had an expansive apartment in the Sherry Netherland Hotel in Manhattan and in his early years was teamed up with Danny Kaye who, at that time was a popular Borscht Belt entertainer. 

And, Elaine reported, her father was a dentist. A professional. Up to that time there were none of these in either the Mooney or Zwerling family.

My mother and aunts also were visibly impressed by the fact that Doc Goldfarb, Elaine's father and her mother, Ida, owned a one-family, house on the best stretch of Brooklyn's spacious Kings Highway. No one in the family up to that time owned much less lived in a one-family house. A brick one, no less!

Of course, later in life I was excited to learn that Doc Goldfarb had among his patients a few members of the Murder Incorporated gang. I became aware of this from Cousin Murray who one night told the story about how when Elaine's father's office was broken into by thieves who stole his dental gold, it took just a few days for it to be returned through the assistance of some of his, shall we say. "well-connected" patients.

Not surprisingly, Murray's aunts unanimously welcomed Elaine into their close-knit family. And soon Elaine and Murray expanded the family with their two sons, Harvey and Matthew.

Over the years I got to know Elaine as a talented artist who had excellent, very classy taste. The renovations of the house in Lawrence and the apartment in the Imperial House in Manhattan were both directed by her and were among the most beautiful of Mooney family environments and housed her collection of Chinese porcelains. Both included spacious dining rooms, which Elaine used liberally to host memorable family occasions. Including the after-burial gathering when my father died.

She also, with Murray, made the family feel welcome at their summer home in Bantam Lake, CT, where over the decades, as an annual summer treat, we indulged in dozens of ears of fresh corn from a local farm.

Also, as time went by, as the 15-year gap that separated Murray and me became less important, as we grew older together, Rona and I, frequently with cousins Chuck and Esther, the six Mooney descendants who still lived in New York City, in Manhattan, would meet for long dinners at a wide range of ethnic restaurants where we spent hours together talking about everything from family history, to politics, movies, books, plans for upcoming trips (Elaine and Murray especially were frequent global travelers), and just to bask in the feelings that only intimacy and love can bring.

As I think back now over Cousin Elaine's decades in our family, these are among the happiest memories of my lifetime, and I take pleasure in recalling how she played a never-to-be-forgotten part in them. 

June 3, 2016--Always Talk To Strangers: Holly & Chris

Beginning in July, 2007, I wrote a series of pieces about encounters with strangers. By now they total nearly 50. Many appeared here. 

Over the next number of months, on Fridays, I will publish some of my favorites in the hope that you will enjoy them.

Here from that July is the first of them--"Holly & Chris"--

I was brought up in a family that did not believe in friends. Or even in the concept of friendship.

Thus, by the time I graduated from college, I had established no lasting friendships. And since from everyone I knew who had these kinds of relationships—those formed during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood—this meant that I would never have real friends because real friends, if not carried over from early in life, could not be made during middle age much less even later.

This was one of the axioms of that era, equivalent to the theory, actually assertion, that one’s personality, one’s very being was fully formed by no later than age eighteen. The rest of life was a matter of playing out that hand of intra-psychic cards.

So, like my parents, I focused almost all of my relating on my relatives, or what my Aunt Fay, a strong proponent of blood being thicker than water (as if water flowed in the veins of everyone with DNA different than ours), called “My wonderful family!” I can hear that exclamation point even now, lo these many decades after I first felt it.

At the time I didn’t question any of these assumptions, these forbidding a priori givens. I merely motored on, preparing myself in a variety of ways for responsible adulthood. Always keeping in mind my father’s admonition when I took the risk to ask, rather tell him, if it was permissible to want a life with connections beyond just my loving immediate and extended family, was it acceptable to want to seek happiness in various ways likely to be different from his and their definitions? When I found the passive, conditional-voice courage to ask this, he admonished me with something that has echoed through all of my life and against which I have attempted in recent years to struggle—“What does happiness have to do with anything?” Period. End of story. So get on with it. Which I attempted to do.

But later, feeling somewhat bereft and isolated from the kinds of warm relationships I saw among the people I knew, friendships that clearly meant so much to them, that obviously enriched their lives, and in many cases were stronger and more profound than what they took or got from their own families, I struggled, first, to try to understand why I was taught not to trust strangers and to seek all warmth, love, and security from just within my family; and, second, I tentatively began to reach out to others to see if there was any possibility of forming later-in-life versions of friendships—pushing against the more pessimistic developmental perspective and admonishments of my family and formative years.

In regard to the first struggle--My mother’s immediate family managed to get out of Eastern Europe a decade before the Nazi anschluss and the subsequent pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust. Those of her relatives who remained behind, thinking it would all pass them by, never made it beyond Auschwitz and Dachau. And so, when they arrived in America and later learned the full horror of what they had escaped, they huddled together even more, isolated in their foreignness, their Jewishness, and their perceived vulnerability. Even here. In America!

My father’s people were more secular, solidly middle-class bourgeois Austrian Jews who came to the United States in the 1880s, never agreed to be ghettoized on the Lower East Side, learned English quickly, made a good living, bought a house in a mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn, and considered themselves both superior to the Polish and Russian Ashkenazi Jews. Above all they felt assimilated and decidedly American. It seems that the first thing they did after buying the brick house on Bedford Avenue was figure out how to get to Ebbets Field so they could root for the Dodgers in person—it didn’t get any more American than that.

But then, just as they were settling in to be quite comfortable, they were battered by the Depression and discovered than not only were their savings worthless and their house dramatically diminished in value, but also in the eyes of others in even more desperate circumstances they were JEWS and were thus collectively responsible for what the country, their country, was suffering. They were seen to be a part of the universal “Zionist conspiracy” that had inflicted this nightmare on America and the rest of the world. And so when my father and his brothers and sisters went out looking desperately for work, willing to do anything, even things decidedly beneath them, they were met with signs that literally said--

“No Jews. No dogs.”

So indeed, what did happiness have to do with anything? And who could you trust? Basically no one. In truth, though from both of my families’ experiences it is no wonder they would turn inward, they also found that you could not, even when just fighting to pay the rent and feed your wife and children, you could not casually even trust everyone in your, to quote Fay, “wonderful family.” I could tell you some of these stories if that were the subject of the day. Suffice to say that I suspect my father and my Uncle Harry, who reside now in side-by-side graves in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, are still not talking to each other.

So is it any wonder that these two families, with my blood an equal mix of both, would orient me not to trust strangers and thereby not to believe in friendship. In a world red in tooth and claw, where dangers and worse lurk, though they are not perfect—Mt. Lebanon being a case in point--when it comes to friends versus family, no contest.

But, second struggle, when I looked around for counter examples in my own family I noticed that my cousins Nina and Murray, to cite two, had not allowed the family promulgations to define their lives—in both cases they carried dear childhood friends along with them well into and beyond their middle years. They were still family stalwarts but they had reserved equal emotional energy for lifelong friendships. So with their example before me, with considerable trepidation, I pushed myself to begin to reach out to others, seeking at least the possibility of relationships. I thought, if I can succeed at that, which would be a big step, who knows where it might lead. I might actually make a few friends!

Which brings me to Holly & Chris.

For some years now Rona and I have been “regulars” at Jenny Lake Lodge in the Tetons of Wyoming. This means that we return there each year on exactly the same dates as in all the previous years. And we are by no means the only guests who do so—we understand that fully fifty percent do and so that means we see many familiar faces each year when we return. And in this new mode of seeking relationships, since dinner is provided and the place is small, it is easy and natural, even for me, minimally to nod hello and ask how other regulars fared during the fall and winter. Of course we hear many stories about illnesses and operations and children graduating from college and plans for the future when we all will be working less or, better, not at all.

Chris & Holly have been regulars for about ten years. Their time at Jenny overlaps all our days but for one—they leave the day before we do. More about that in a moment.

Last July, after just nodding at each other in the lodge for at least two years, Chris asked if we might like to meet one evening for a drink before dinner. Sensing that my interest in wanting to do so was tempered by some ambivalence he must have sensed seeping up from all of my deep early-life conditioning (which in itself was impressive since he didn’t even appear to be Jewish), he suggested that we meet for only a half hour before our dinner reservation time. Just enough time to do a bit more than nod and ask how long we each had been coming to Jenny, which cabins we had, and if we hiked or rode or did both. About as much discussion I had had with anyone at Jenny in eight years of regular ensconcement.

We might actually have time to begin to get to know each other, exploring the usual--Where are you from? Where were you from? Are you still working? At what? Or when did you retire and what did you do now with all the time you have? Do you travel to places other than the Tetons? Are there any places you like as much? What are you reading? Anything good? And what makes you laugh and feel happy? These later questions are of course not posed, but we discover each other’s sense of humor, or lack thereof, experientially.

So we met at 7:30 the next evening for a drink; and there was so much immediate frolicking and laughing, almost too much to engage in in public at the rather staid Jenny, that Michael the manager came over to us, not to admonish us but to ask if rather than two tables for two for dinner, perhaps, if he could arrange it, might we prefer a table for four?

To cover my nervousness about this prospect, I told Holly & Chris about a former colleague who after a rough divorce eventually began to date. He found the experience so depressing, he experienced so many unhappy evenings where after fifteen minutes both he and his date realized that it was not working that he developed the concept of the progressive date. They would agree to meet for a drink. If that went well they would move on to a light dinner. If that was pleasant, they would go to a movie. But if at any stage either one was not feeling positive about their prospects, they would have social permission to say, “It was very nice to meet you”; and that would end the evening.

Part in jest and part to protect myself from the tremors of an potential impending acquaintanceship, I suggested that we proceed with a progressive dinner—If Mike could hold the second table, let’s maybe begin by having appetizers together, I suggested; see how we do; and if it goes well, proceed to the soup course; and then to the salad; perhaps possibly all the way to the entrée; and who knows, maybe even to dessert!

And so we proceeded, and things began to work, to “click” between and among the four of us. We progressed from course to course and by the time the salad was served signaled to Mike that he could release the second table. We had such a good time that evening and over the next few days that when it came time for Holly & Chris to depart—a day before our time was up—I felt an overwhelming and unfamiliar feeling of sadness: I realized that unless we figured out how to meet between then and the following July it would be a full year before we could in person resume our acquaintanceship and progress perhaps beyond that to . . . ?

Now here we are again this year, back in Wyoming, back at Jenny; and all I can think about after resuming my love affair with the mountains and meadows and lakes and air is—Where are Holly & Chris? Are they OK? Chris had had some “medical issues” during the fall and winter and so . . .  But right there in the lodge the first evening we saw them, and they looked healthy and radiant and we happily picked up right where we left off.

Mike had already reserved a table for four, a little apart from the others correctly suspecting that we would again be laughing as much as catching up with each other’s lives and he didn’t want the other guests to be disturbed.

Our "dates" this year turned out so well that, after one of them, Holly, who is by nature not that kind of gal said, “If this were a real progressive date, we’d now go off to bed together.”

So, Dad, I hope things are fine with you and that maybe even you and Uncle Harry are talking. If not, give it a try because, take it from me, happiness and friendship are indeed worth pursuing.

Jenny Lake Lodge: Dinner for Two

December 15, 2015--Ladies of Forest Trace: Mt. Lebanon

We visited my mother on Sunday at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery. It was a little more than five months since her death. It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day and she was at rest amid the graves of her parents, among her bother, sisters, and their spouses, and next to my father.

Being there reminded me of earlier times at Mt. Lebanon. In truth, often happy, secure times for me when I was a young child. I wanted nothing more than, in one way or another, to be with my family.

I thought to share again something I wrote a few years ago about her final resting place, the family plot in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery--

Shuttling between cemeteries is the way I spent much of my childhood.  One was Mount Hebron, my father’s family’s place of final rest; the other, my mother’s family plot at Mount Lebanon.  Just three miles apart, in the borough of Queens.  It felt like being pressed between the pincers of two grim parentheses.

My mother’s family, the Munyas, arrived in the America in about 1912 from a shtetl town in central Poland, Tulowice.  Her father, Laibusya Munya, was a paymaster in a forest.  This was a job for Jews—they were trusted with the money but not the physical labor of cutting down trees.  That was for the goyim.  Grandpa Laibusya went into Warsaw each week to pick up zloties and brought them back to the forest to pay the men who cut down the trees and schlepped the logs to the river.  With his wife, Frimet, my eventual grandmother, he lived in a log house with his six children, including my infant mother.  When the pogroms became more frequent and bloody, he began to make plans to leave.  As with so many before him, he went first on his own to the New World, established himself as a baker on the Lower Eastside, saved money by existing on rye bread, and then sent for the rest of the family.  They settled within a community of other Polish Jews, most of whom came from the same part of the Pale of Settlement.

They moved from apartment to apartment whenever the landlord raised the rent, but once they were all huddled safely in America, they found a more permanent place to live (a rent controlled third-floor walkup in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn), a store for groceries (Beckman’s, down the block), a butcher (Fleishman’s, next to Beckman’s), a fruit store (Willy’s, across the street), and of at least equal importance, they formed a burial society—a Landsmanshaftn, or a home town association.  There was no time to waste—as my grandfather would say in Yiddish, one never knew when having a plot would come in handy.  And through the years it turned out to be as he predicted--before I was of legal age more family members resided in Mt. Lebanon than Bensonhurst.

Even before finding suitable burial sites, the members of the Landsmanshaftn elected officers—a president, vice president, secretary, and especially a treasurer.  Especially, since the treasurer was responsible for what little money there was—money to pay the cemetery the annual maintenance fee and to write checks for the “perpetual care” for the ground around and on the graves.  Also, the treasurer, because of these fiduciary responsibilities, was the only one who was compensated.  At first five dollars a year.  And thus it was a coveted honor and contested fiercely, particularly as time went by and the annual stipend was raised to $25. Real money when a dollar was still a dollar.

The Tulowice Landsmanshaftn somehow managed to strike a good deal with Mt. Lebanon in spite of great demand-side pressure: Jews were arriving in New York in such numbers during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and dying at such a rate thanks in part to the unchecked influenza, that more and more dairy farms in Queens were being converted into cemeteries and plots were gobbled up as fast as pastures could be converted into graves. 

Mt. Lebanon was established in 1919.  Perfect timing for the Tulowicians who were able to get in on the ground floor during the year of the most virulent and deadly flu epidemic.  They were able to buy a reasonably contiguous cluster of thirty or so plots in a desirable, hilly, shady corner.  It came with a pine tree and a view of the new Interboro Parkway.  As evidence of how desirable a location, Richard Tucker, the famous cantor turned Metropolitan Opera star came to occupy a nearby plot of his own as did Nathan Handworker, founder of Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island.  So the family was in good company and assured of eternal upward mobility.

Exactly what they had come to America for. The streets may not have been paved with gold, but to forever be across from the “biggest” tenor and the hot dog king showed that they had “arrived.”

On the other hand, the Zwerlings, my father’s family, claimed they came to America from Austria, not from the downscale Pale in Poland (although there are in fact no extant papers to prove this assertion).  Full of pride they boasted they were from Vienna, spoke German, and arrived well before those Eastern European shtetal Jews showed up at Ellis Island with their cardboard suitcases.  In fact, unlike the Munyas, who had the good fortune to have had an Irish immigration officer convert Munya to Mooney, the Zwerling needed no such transmutation—the German-sounding “Zwerling” was fine just as it was.  Though hardly of the Our Crowd crowd, the Zwerlings prided themselves on the fact that they were born in America, owned their own house, and didn’t understand Yiddish, much less speak it.  So when it came preparation for dying, they had a different approach than the Malones. 

The cemetery they selected and in which they bought real estate (that is how they viewed it—as a real estate transaction), Mt. Hebron, was founded by assimilated German Jews in the late 1880s.  In contrast to the other Mount, there were no burial societies, none of the carving on the tombstones were in Hebrew--everything in Mt. Hebron was ostentatiously in English--the roads weaving among the graves were wider (Mt. Hebron families had cars), there was abundant parking, the above-ground mausoleums were more elaborate and spacious, and there were even well-tended restrooms.

However, though in all other ways the Zwerlings and Mooneys lived cultural worlds apart, they did share one thing in common—an absolute obsession with illness, dying, death, and above all their final arrangements.  And no one was more obsessed with final matters than my father. 

But first I need to say more about how my mother’s family devoted themselves to their sixteenth of an acre of American soil.  First, with a name like Mooney they had to convince the Mt. Lebanon authorities and that they were in fact Jews and thus eligible to be laid to rest in ground consecrated exclusively for people of the Old Testament.   With their Irish-sounding name they were suspected of being goyim and had to show not only their Ellis Island papers but also those they brought along with them from Poland that identified them as Munyas, and thus Jews.

After successfully making that case to the Mt. Lebanon council of rabbis and being allowed to erect a tombstone with the gentile name “Mooney” chiseled on it, they then needed to consider how to care for the plot itself.  There was the “Perpetual Care” option, but neither the family nor the Landsmanschaftn as yet had the hundred dollars necessary to arrange for it.  That would come later when Uncle Jac did well enough and could afford to underwrite the tending of all thirty plots.  Even then, because of their experiences with pogroms and subsequently the Holocaust, the Mooneys were suspicious of institutions, including cemeteries (after all they too were businesses) and thus were congenitally incapable of trusting them to provide care perpetually (enough of them by then knew English sufficiently to understand how long perpetual in truth was) much less trust the cemetery owners not to run off with the hundred dollars before the clock on perpetual ran out.

Thus, during the spring and summer growing season, we went to Mt. Lebanon every Sunday.  Not to visit Grandpa and Grandma Mooney, who at the time were the only ones in permanent residence, but to care for the gravesite itself.  As the youngest and most agile that meant I was designated to crawl around among the tombstones to pull weeds and cut grass with the pinking shears my Aunt Tanna always had in her pocketbook.

Sitting on the bench to supervise, her sister, my Aunt Fay, would watch with pride as I scampered from head- to foot-stone, kvelling, “Look at him, look at how little Steveala is clipping Papa’s grass and plucking Mama’s weeds.  He has such hands.  With those hands one day he could be a surgeon, be rich,  and make everyone proud.” 

At her older sister’s words praising my skills and predicting my promising future, my mother would swell with maternal satisfaction and say to me, “When I am buried here, Steven, with the family, I know you will come to take good care of me.  And you will tell me about your own wife and your own children and grandchildren.  And about your patients and their appendectomies. Just like I talk to Mamma and Poppa.” 

Though this was more than I wanted to contemplate, any aspect of it—I was already burdened at school with spelling and the six-times table--I nodded and continued to clip away. I moved among the grass and weeds as if born to the task, wielding the pinking shears, which I was told were the only scissors in the family with enough heft to cut through thistles.  So when I had completed my pulling, chopping and cutting with those slotted shears it looked as if the grass had been Marcelled.  As a result, the Malone wavy gravesite was reputed to be the envy of the two burial societies that owned adjacent plots.

In truth I loved this first adult responsibility.  And since none of us had the wherewithal to ever get to real mountains during the hot weather, going to Mt. Lebanon was our version of a trip to the country. 

While I scooted among the tombstones, my aunts would sit on the bench and talk to their Momma and Papa, telling them about what had happened during the week.  There was a lot to report since the family apartment was the site of a constant shuffle of relatives and friends from the Camps in Europe, distant New Jersey, and even the occasional refugee on the way to Palestine.  For the latter, Aunt Tanna would collect money for their passage or to help them buy a car or icebox.  All that news was duly recounted to my grandparents at rest nearby.  But since it was in Yiddish, I could gather little of what they reported.  My ears perked up, however, and my nearly non-existent Yiddish improved, when they whispered about “That Rifka. Not quite a relative but a distant cousin of a friend of my grandparents, Rifka was someone they referred to as a nafke, which even with my limited Yiddish I knew meant tramp.  I made a mental note that when I was old enough I would make an effort to meet that Rifka.

My father’s obsession with his family’s cemetery, however, was of quite a different sort. 

Among the Zwerling, he was the only one preoccupied with the family plot.  To the others it was just that place in Queens where they might eventually have to be taken after marrying off the children and retiring to Florida.  But to him it represented a different order of reality.  Again, in the tradition of the Zwerling, it was more about real estate than visiting the departed and reporting to them life’s quotidian events. To him it was a matter of being sure there was a physical place for everyone entitled to be there.  And that the arrangement of those places, the individual gravesites, were appropriately hierarchical. 

Proximity to the family patriarch, Louis, his father, my grandfather, and mother-grandmother, Anne, was, as it should be, where the hierarchy began, with the sons and their wives and the sisters and their husbands arranged in descending tiers by birth-order and gender.  As the oldest, the first-born male of a first-born father, this meant my father would reside right below his father and mother, and so on down the Zwerling family genealogy.

An awareness of the shape of the Zwerling Family Plot would immediately see that the task my father set for himself was not so easily accomplished.  If they had been able to purchase a plot with hierarchy and primogeniture in mind, they would have bought something more in the shape of a pyramid.  But in the gridded-out reality of Mt Hebron, obtaining a family plot in this anthropological configuration was impossible.  So my father, the arranger, had to work with the rectangle that was bequeathed to him by his father, Grandfather Louis.

He spent endless hours with an outline of the full plot inscribed on a large sheet of oak tag, and within it, using an architect’s triangle and ruler, drew a series of perfectly scaled grave-shaped rectangles, in various combinations and permutations until he had it laid out as appropriately as he could, considering the restraints imposed on his grand design by the unyielding boundaries of the plot.  And when he had his plan worked out as much as possible in primogeniture order, he made a final rendering, using draftsman’s indelible ink; and at a series of family meetings with his brothers and sisters and their spouses, he got each to initial the rectangle assigned to them until all were duly filled in and signed off on.

And thus the responsibility his father bequeathed to him was done. . . . 

That is until his sister, my Aunt Madeline began to upset the scheme by marrying a series of husbands who in turn died shortly after each wedding, and, most critically, were buried, one by one by one, side-by-side in the Zwerling plot.  

By the time Husband Number Three was interred, my father began to worry.  As you by now would expect, he worried not so much about his carefully crafted plan, but, in frankness, more about his own eventual fate.  If Madeline mainatined her current pace, by the actuarial time my father would need the full services of Mt. Hebron, there would no longer be room remaining for him.

Thus, he convened an urgent Zwerling family gathering and laid out the issue squarely and frankly.  Madeline was understandably distraught, having lost her third husband, Morty, just the previous month. He had jumped off the roof of their apartment building—it was well known that she was not easy to live with. 

But in spite of Madeline’s grief, with at least the appearance of sympathy, my father was able to forge ahead and succeeded in mobilizing a majority of sibling and spouse votes to let Madeline know there were no more places at Mt. Hebron for subsequent husbands.  That is unless she was willing to relinquish her own plot.  Or, perhaps she would prefer to have my father arrange to move one or two of her husbands to a different part of the cemetery. 

Considering her options, Madeline agreed that though there would likely be more husbands (that was not open to family discussion) there would be no more places for additional deceased husbands.

That should have been the end of the story.  But again there is more.

As it turned out, there would be room for two more husbands because my father, when his time arrived, did not after all require his place in Mt. Hebron. Nor would my mother.

When a Jewish person dies, it is considered desirable that the person be buried as quickly as possible.  The dust-to-dust imperative is very strong indeed and thus the sooner the better.  As might be expected, to expedite the process, my father had arranged for a prepaid funeral. For him it was also an opportunity to shop for his own casket and arrange for the limousines and memorial service, including that there be nothing that involved a rabbi or any prayers in any language—he was an outspoken lifelong atheist.

His place next to his father’s side at Mt. Hebron awaited, but my mother had a different plan in mind—something more indelible than the ink he had used to make the oak tag diagram.

During their 60-year marriage, she had participated in dozens of discussions about Mt. Hebron.  Or, to put it more appropriately, my father’s plans for them at the Zwerling plot.  She had only hinted to my father how much she did not look forward to spending eternity with The Zwerlings.  It was an era when wives hinted at things that concerned them. She, in truth, dreaded the thought that she would not be with her parents and her real family.  She also hated the idea that she would have to spend her afterlife listening to the Zwerlings arguing, talking simultaneously at the top of their voices, literally forever. 

And so she directed the funeral director--“Let’s put him in Mt. Lebanon.” 

Fortunately there was still room.  Again, in the informal shtetl ways of the Tulowice Landsmanscahftn, without the existence of a notarized plan, she was able to get her remaining siblings to agree to find a space for him and one beside him for her. 

She did feel some guilty that this new arrangement placed him right next to his family rival, brother-in-law Harry.  They had been in a series of failed businesses together and had not only fought about money but about such things as how many spare light bulbs to have on hand—my father thought six were enough; Harry always believed in buying by the gross. She knew, as a result, that there would be family tension right there at Mt. Lebanon. About light bulbs and also who was at fault for driving customers away from their last deli. (She personally blamed my father.)

But she also knew she would be in the warm vicinity of Mamma and Papa. And, when her time came, being separated by my father from Harry, would bring her more peace than she was accustomed to in life. In any case, she assertedly thought--Who cares. Let them fight.

July 29, 2015--Farewell to the Ladies of Forest Trace: Stuff

The receipt arrived yesterday from the charity to which we gave much of my mother's furniture, housewares, and clothing.

I believe all will be put to good use.

For tax purposes, I suppose, the receipt itemized the donation--

Under furniture they listed two upholstered chairs (one of which was the one my mother sat in for decades when we visited), a sofa, two end tables, six shelves, a desk and chair (where my mother sat to balance her checkbook), two patio tables (one of which held her orchid collection), three mirrors (who know what ghost images are contained therein), a large breakfront, a mobile bar (which held a dozen unopened liquor bottles--my mother didn't drink even sacramental wine), two twin beds (one my father's the other the one in which she spent her last days), a dresser (on which there were framed pictures of her immediate family--these were not donated), and a convertible sofa (where Rona and I slept restlessly when in years past we visited).

More reflecting the reality of my mother's final years, the receipt listed a shower stool, a "handicap bath set," two canes (which she began to use when she turned 95), two walkers (needed five years later), and a wheelchair (which during her last two years she eventually required).

The ladder of years indeed.

She was not a shopper but since she kept virtually everything she ever bought in meticulous, perfect condition, at the end, the itemized list stated, her clothing filled fully 17 bags. In addition, there were at least two dozen pairs of shoes. All in their original boxes. (Not enumerated in the receipt. The IRS will figure it out).

The receipt also noted--COW 1 Hour. I assume that's an acronym for about how long it took the men to remove Mom's things. One hour. A lifetime resolves itself, this aspect of a lifetime, in just one hour? Would two have made me feel any better, that she had had a richer life? And then of course I wondered, how many COWs will it take to cart away my remnants?

But it's hard to imagine she could have had a richer life. Accomplished, respected by all, generous, loving, loved.

It is a cliché to say a life well-lived is not about things. Stuff. Though perhaps in some cases, if there is little else, it is.

But with my mother, her life was about what she did, the people she embraced, her pride, her ambition, the mark she left on the world, and how she lives on--not in anything tangible or quantifiable like a list of things, but in the hearts of all who knew her well enough to feel the awesome power of her love.

July 13, 2105--Ockham's and Dad's Razors

We've been sorting though things at my mother's apartment, stopping frequently to savor a picture or letter from long ago and only vaguely remembered.

Thus far my favorite is a thick looseleaf notebook in which my mother kept the minutes of the Groucho Society. It was in effect a cousins club that included Zwerlings and Neubauers, the Neubauers being from my grandmother's side of the extended family.

The Newbauers were great characters and even included a gangster or two. As you might imagine, they were my favorite of all Zwerling and Neubauer relatives. Just think how my youthful imagination was fired by the fact that Uncle Herman knew Mayer Lansky and had a pistol, which he allegedly needed and even used in one of the bars and grills he owned in New Jersey.

The Grouchos met every month or two during the first ten years after my parents were married--the late 20s to late 30s. During their lifetimes, though pressed frequently by me wanting to know about secrets from their past, neither of my parents had a good explanation about the name of the group--was it derived from Groucho Marx or just because many of the members were, well, grouchy?  They never said, which incited me to want to know more. Perhaps now in the minutes . . .

I haven't had time yet to read through the minutes my mother meticulously kept, but even a glance at her literally perfect handwriting reveals not a blot or edit on any page through which I have thus far thumbed. But just to marvel at the perception, her perfection is full of meaning and challenge. The standard she set for herself and the rest of us. To be perfect in all regards is to hold us to the highest standard, which has it attraction, but is also one we can never reach. Maybe that too has value--it humbles us to experience the unobtainable.

My other favorite thing thus far is a Bic razor of my father's that my mother brought with her to Forest Trace when she relocated. Nearly 20 years ago. Quite a shelf-life for an otherwise disposable razor!

I remember using it on much earlier visits to my mother when I either forgot to bring one of my own or wanted, by using it, to have the feel of his hand on mine and on my face while shaving. It was very intimate.

I haven't used it in 15 years and was not surprised to find it still in the guest bathroom since my mother was very good at keeping things--of course in perfect arrangement and preservation.

I took it with me to our apartment in Delray and used it twice while here because I forgot to bring one of my own or, closer to the truth, wanted my father literally close at hand at this emotional time stroking my cheeks. It worked well in those regards.

It also made me think of another razor, a metaphorical one--Ockham's. I have that helpful or dysfunctional ability to switch from deep feelings to the abstract as one of my ways of dealing with sadness or memories that overwhelm. Thus, Ockham's Razor.

It, or the Law of Parsimony, is a problem solving principal devised by William of Ockham in the 14th century that says that the best solution to a complex problem is the simplest one that accounts for the largest number of facts, variables, and phenomena. For example, in contemporary particle physics, there is the Standard Model that connects in the simplest terms yet understood the electromagnetic, strong, and weak nuclear forces.

My father was very much an Ockham man.

He was a great problem solver and, I must say, problem maker. He was adept at putting things in contexts. Often simple ones that, as he would put it, held a "grain of truth." Like, his favorite--religion is at the root of most of the world's most intractable problems. That gets to a truth in a version of the simplest way.

I should add--his version of truth. Just like Ockham's, which could be, always was, ultimately superseded by other elegant solutions that explained even more, so were Dad's challenged by members of his striving family who were coming to insights and conclusions of their own devising.

His literal razor, however, which is still functioning, over time has lost some of its sharp edge and it now scrapes across one's flesh, plucking as well as cutting. Rough while also gentle--just like my father.

July 1, 2105--Lady of Forest Trace: Goodbyes

My mother is not very good at goodbyes. Actually, she is exceptional good with them. Long ones. Very long ones.

Here's one example from about five years ago--

Her niece Esther was again hosting a New Years party for family and friends. My mother was of course invited but told Rona and me not to come to pick her up to drive her there because as a 102-year-old she went to bed well before midnight.

When we told this to Esther, in her usual wonderful way, she said, "So let's have an early party. We'll do the countdown at 9:00 and after that you can take her home and she can get to bed at about her usual time."

My mother agreed to this but said, "Don't do this for me. If the young people want to have a party later in the evening I'm fine to stay home."

We assured her that we weren't any longer that young and would be happy not to have to stay up past midnight.

The party was joyous, so joyous that my mother, ignoring the clock and her normal bedtime, stayed on and on. So long, in fact, well past midnight, that Rona and I were wanting to leave so we could get to bed at close to our bedtime.

"Mom," I whispered to her, "It's getting late. Very late. I think you should say goodbye so we can drive you home."

She agreed, but clearly was not entirely happy. She was having that good a time and was full of amazing energy.

I sat down on the sofa, knowing she would not be done saying goodbye for at least a half-hour.

Well, that evening she outdid herself, saying goodbye to those still lingering until 2:00 in the morning!

She now is in the process of saying her final goodbye. It has taken her 107 years to get to it, but we know that she is down to her final days or even hours.

As I said, she is especially good at very, very long goodbyes.

January 30, 2015--Best of Behind: Osso Bucko

Here is another early Snowbirding story. This one from April 27, 2010. If these had subtitles, it might be called Dinner With Cousins--

If you’re looking for French food and happen upon Chez Provence, forget it.  Even a quick glance at the menu would reveal that, in spite of the place’s name, everything is Italian:  Veal Parmigiana, Chicken Parmigiana, Eggplant Parmigiana, Zitti Parmigiana, Penne Parmigiana, and Parmigiano Parmigiana.

With Parmigiano Parmigiana I am having a little fun.  But nothing else here is exaggerated. 

If you do not want something Parmigiana, there is Chicken Marsala, Chicken Picatta, Chicken Scarpiella, Chicken Marinara, and the same preparations in veal—Veal Marsala, Veal Picatta, etc.

And then there are the specials to give one hope.  Maybe there will be something lower-gluten, something Francophile, something almondine.  Trout peut-être?  But before you are able to get to the almondines section, the waitress appears to explain the pricing.

She tells you to ignore all the prices on the menu. 

“Come again?” I say.

“If you look closely you will see that everything is either $15.95 or $16.95.  And a few items say $2.00 extra.  But as I said, forget all of that.”

“You mean the listed prices?”  I was totally confused.

“Yes, those.  Except if tonight was Saturday.”

“Then the prices would be . . .?

“As they are listed.”  Our waitress was bright and beautiful and seemed to enjoy the give-and-take.  “But since today is Friday, I mean since tonight is Friday,” she broke into a broad smile, “everything is either $13.95 or $14.95.  Or if it was Monday through Thursday it would be the same.  $13.95 or $14.95.  What’s listed as $16.95 tonight is actually $15.95, and . . . ”

I interrupted her, “I get it.  And those dishes listed as $15.95 are $14.95.”

Glowing with delight she nodded, bouncing up and down.

“But what about the $2.00 extra? Is that different tonight as well? Say, $1.50?”

“Yes, it’s the same every night.”

“But what about the Mussels Marinara?  There’s no price listed next to them.  It just says ‘$2.00 extra.’”  I didn’t allow myself to point out that “Mussels” was misspelled.  On the menu it read
“Musscles.”  Sort of a hybrid mash-up spelling that combined the bivalves with the contractile tissue.

She said, “Oh, no one ever asked me about that before.  To tell you the truth, no one I waited on ever ordered them.  But I can find out for you if you want some.”

“No, thanks.  I was just asking.”  I didn’t mention that if no one had ordered them recently, in spite of them sounding French, I was not going to risk getting hepatitis by eating unfresh mussels.

Now that we had that settled, she added, “But also notice that it says right down there in the lower right-hand corner,” I slipped on my reading glasses, “It says that if you pay by credit card instead of cash, we apply a surcharge of a dollar a person.   So you can save a dollar more by paying in cash.  Then, with all the prices tonight $2.00 less than what it says on the menu and if you pay with cash, you will see that you can save $6.00 a couple.” 

Pleased with herself, she clapped her hands in triumph and her smile broadened even further so that she was now fully aglow.  “Any question?”

One of my cousins said we might have some.  Not about the pricing but maybe about some of the items on the menu.  And, turning back to the specials discussion, asked if there were any more not on the menu to tell us about.

“Oh, yes,” she said as perky as a human is capable of being, “We have some lovely ones.  But before I describe them to you I have to tell you we have to charge either $15.95 or $16.95 for them.”  Noticing our confusion she quickly added, “But that’s only because they are special.”

“How much would they be if we came back on Monday?”  Again, I was being bad.

“Like with the mussels that’s not something anyone ever asked me.  But I could find out for you if you’d like.”

“No, since we’re here and it’s Friday, that will be fine, thank you.  Just please tell us what’s special,” still hoping maybe something French.  But as it turned out the soup was Minestrone, the special pasta was with artichokes, and the fish was Livornese style.  With a tomato. onion, caper, and black olive sauce.  “The sea bass will be $16.95,” she chirped, “Fish always costs a little more.”

Then before anyone could raise another question, perhaps thinking we were concerned that the specials were $2.00 more than any of the regular items—with the exception of the mussels/musscles—she quickly added, “But everyone should know that, at no extra charge, everything comes with soup or salad, rolls and butter, of course the entrees, and coffee or tea, and dessert.  We have six very nice ones, which if you’d like I can tell you about right now.  Many of our customers like to know in advance about the desserts so they can think about what to order for their main dishes.”

Being drawn into thinking about dessert and coffee before ordering I noticed for the first time that in addition to the traditional table setting of cutlery, napkins, bread plates, salt and pepper, there were also coffee cups at each of our places.  Not a good sign I thought.  The only other places where they do this, I realized, were in the dining rooms of assisted-living facilities.  I was hoping that the food, Italian though it be, would not be of the institutional type.  A good sign was that the knives and forks were not made of plastic.

I quickly put that thought out of mind.  Though looking around Chez Provence I did notice canes and walkers stashed at most of the nearby tables. Taking note of this kept my gastronomic hopes further restrained.

But we were there for the camaraderie, not gourmet dining, and thus commenced to order.  Alice asked for the bass, which actually turned out to be fresh and well prepared; one cousin ordered the Eggplant Parmigiana, which was so massive that what he left over overflowed a large Styrofoam takeout box; Hal asked for the Veal Marsala, which arrived dry and chewy; Chicken Cacciatore was another order and when it arrived it looked indistinguishable from the Veal Marsala; and I ordered the Osso Bucco.

“The what?” the now confused and furrow-browed waitress asked.

“The Os-so Buc-co,” I said again, this time more slowly, articulating each syllable and being sure not to make things more confusing by using any of my limited restaurant Italian.  It was a busy place and quite noisy.  “You know, the veal shank.  I don’t order it often, but I do occasionally like a good Osso Bucco.”  To help her, I worked that third mention of the dish into the conversation.

“Oh,” she burst back into a radiant smile, “You mean Osso Bucko.”

Now it was my time to be puzzled.  Noticing this she took the menu from me, folded the pages back and pointed to where it was listed.  “See, Osso Bucko.”

Sure enough, in bold print there was another menu malaprop—just as she had pronounced it: Bucko, not Bucco.

It too turned out to be rather tasteless but who cared. We had a good laugh about it and everything else about the place, the food, and especially the pricing system.  And, when the bill came, we decided to pay cash and save a dollar more.