Having an election-season birthday has never felt so fraught. These are my birthday wishes for 2016:
I hope that we make it through these turbulent times with our common courtesy intact. I hope that enough of us still feel it’s safe to smile at a sad-looking stranger on the street, come November 9. I hope that the biggest loser in this election is not human decency.
I hope that we learn that this propensity we have for binary thinking and scapegoating, this “us versus them” thing we do, the pile-on as we dehumanize and demonize the other, is primeval; it’s born of a primitive survival instinct. I hope enough of us understand that if we continue to act on this primitive instinct in our technologically advanced world, we may not, in fact, survive.
I pray that before it’s too late, we finally realize that we truly are all One. Each and every thing and every body is inextricably interconnected with everything and everyone else. A butterfly flutters its wings, and halfway around the world a hurricane changes course. All actions and non-actions matter, everything and everyone counts. I hope to God this realization grabs us all in our most private and vulnerable places, forces itself on us and has its way with us, so that we are filled with and are forever after the guardians of the knowledge that we are one world, one family, one love.
I hope we remember that though the personal boundary lines we draw might be illusory in the metaphysical or scientific sense, they absolutely must be respected nonetheless.
I hope that across the political chasms that divide us we build not higher walls but bridges of curiosity and wonder; that at least some of these battle lines might some day become occasions for expanded horizons.
I hope that the algorithms of our increasingly tightly wound, social media-saturated world do not continue to have the paradoxical effect of separating us into isolated ghettos of opinion, echo chambers where we only hear more of what we want to hear or what we are comfortable arguing against.
I hope that we realize that the voices we most need to hear from are those that we never, ever do. The voices that we don’t know how to hear; the voices of people who cannot find the time, the platform, or enough faith in themselves or in the world to speak.
I hope that those individuals who find themselves in a position to influence the media and the message, both public and private, learn to separate the narrow needs of their ego from the deeper needs of their soul, inextricably entwined with all other souls.
I hope, after these turbulent times, that our politicians stop forgetting that they are public servants. That, no matter how laudable they believe their own intentions to be, they become eager to never find themselves on the wrong side of the truth.
I hope we can stop kidding ourselves that anything less than the truth will make us free.
I hope we all feel secure enough in our own truths that we are not threatened by anyone else’s.
I hope even the most brittle among us are able to stop judging, competing with, and excluding others in order to feel better about themselves.
I want us to stop mistaking bravado for real courage, and compensatory over-confidence for wholehearted self-acceptance.
I want us to stop confusing pity with compassion. May we all learn to recognize the difference between genuine empathy and savvy self-serving spiel.
Especially lately, I’ve been wanting people to know that frustrated despair is not the same as apathy.
I hope that we can clearly see how the fate of those who are starving and broken in this world is controlled by the ones who are obscenely wealthy, greedy, and toxically ambitious— and also starving and broken, though less aware of it. Yes, obscenely wealthy, toxically ambitious, and deeply human.
Old-school human, I hope they’ll someday say. I hope our children’s children’s children will survive to talk about these bad old days, when we still let the bully boys and the mean girls rule the playground. Back when we privileged shrewdness and charisma in our leaders over wisdom and integrity. Before we learned to stop placing so much more social value on the amount of money people make and spend, than on the quality of care they give.
I hope that some day soon we’ll all have the luxury of listening for and responding to that small still voice that calls to us, rather than feeling driven to forge our way forward in a hostile, competitive world, or compelled to turn our attentions only to the exigencies of daily life.
I hope that every one of us has our arms so full with the precious wildchild that is our own souls and that we are so set upon our own paths, that the poisonous delusions of envy and elitism are forever banished from human relations.
And while I’m at it— it’s my party, so there will be no blackballing, gaslighting, scene-stealing, triangulation or power-playing. No one-upmanship or self-righteous finger-pointing; no emotional blackmail or sneaky undermining. No identity theft of any kind, and you are absolutely forbidden to sell your soul to the highest bidder, the biggest audience or the nearest exit. It is mandatory that you find some way to sing and dance here, even and especially if it’s only in spirit. Zero-sum is just a bad dream at my party; there will always be enough cake to go around. Come on in and get the piece that has your name on it.
I hope that some day the lonely misanthrope in me has a chance to watch the sun rise with the disheartened dreamer in you.
I hope that all your best dreams come true.
Friday, November 4, 2016
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Charoset.
Why was this Passover different from all other Passovers?
On all other Passovers I make the traditional Ashkenazi charoset I grew up with: apples raisins cinnamon honey and Manishewitz, crumbled matzoh subbing for the walnuts. This Passover I made Italian charoset: apples pears raisins dates prunes and almonds, cinnamon and ginger, honey and the sweet red wine. I omitted the pine nuts and chestnuts for my allergic son. And then made another small batch without the almonds just so there’d be no worries about cross-contamination. Turned out, if I’d only made half of the first batch, Dayenu.
Not that it wasn’t any good. I always end up throwing away some charoset when the holiday’s over, because I always make more than we need. Even if it’s delicious, even with a dash of horseradish mixed with it on the matzoh, there’s only so much charoset we can eat. Throwing out the extra has become part of my Passover ritual. As I’m scooping it into the trash I think of all the time and energy I spent chopping the fruit by hand, my fingers getting sticky with the juices. I think if I had more time or energy now I’d go out and find a hungry person to give it to. I think “You have a right to your labor, but not to the fruits of your labor.” I remember this counsel from the Bhagavad Gita, about finding fulfillment in the process of one’s work and remaining unattached to the outcome, because if there is a Jewish teaching that says the same thing I don’t know it.
The reason you can only have so much charoset, for those unfamiliar with it, is because whatever kind of charoset it is— Italian, Ashkenazi, Persian or any of the myriad variations cobbled together from ingredients locally sourced wherever Jews find themselves celebrating Passover— charoset is always sweet. Very sweet.
I consider this conundrum as I stir the fruits heating on the stove, as they soften and release their fragrance. Charoset on the Seder plate represents the mortar the Hebrew slaves used to build pyramids for the Egyptians. This sugary condiment is a symbol of our bondage and forced hard labor. Why should it be sweet? But it always is, from century to century, from the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe to the Americas. I’m sure there’s been plenty written about the reasons for it, but my Jewish learning comes up short here too, so I’m free to entertain some ideas of my own.
I think of how a task, any task, can be sweet refuge from tense relations or a troubled mind. What a relief it can be to have work that needs doing, in the face of existential uncertainty or even ordinary nervousness. I think of how there is sweetness in familiarity and the status quo, even a status quo that keeps one oppressed. Of how even hardened, long-term jailbirds can develop “institutional syndrome”— comfort with and dependence upon their prison walls. Freedom can be terrifying and lonely. Conversely, even a labor of love or a responsibility gladly undertaken can feel as oppressive as is one’s commitment to it— a paradox experienced by anyone who has been a parent, anyone who has thrown themselves completely into any kind of creative project, or has cared for a pet, anyone who inhabits a body.
Why was this Passover different from all other Passovers? This was the first year my mother-in-law joined us at the little Seder I hold for our family of four; the first Seder she’d ever been to. I thought she might have the same question I had about the charoset, so I made sure to do some research before she arrived.
I learned that in fact no one really knows how charoset even made it on to the Seder plate in the first place. Unlike matzoh or bitter herbs, the Torah doesn’t command we eat charoset, and there is no blessing for it in a traditional Haggadah. Some speculate that it may have come to us by way of the ancient Greeks, who enjoyed it as an appetizer on festive occasions. Once it had become a ritual thing, Talmudic sages debated its significance. Rabbi Ami theorized it was there to counteract the potentially poisonous effects of a worm that often lived in the lettuce or leafy greens we eat. Rabbi Levi opined that it was there to honor the memory of the apple orchards of ancient Egypt, where Jewish women and men would go to make love and deliver healthy baby boys in secret, defying their own physical exhaustion and the restrictions against Jewish childbearing. The narrative that eventually prevailed— maybe because it was the easiest story to tell at a family meal?— is the one about the paste used for brick-making.
I also learned that on Sabbath night during Passover week it is customary to recite the Song of Solomon, that effusively sensuous outpouring of biblical pillow talk. A man and a woman and their mutual desire; the Daughters of Jerusalem and a cornucopia of sweet fruits and exotic spices. Who knew? We never did the Song of Solomon at any of our Seders when I was growing up.
We didn’t do it this year either. We did have a spirited conversation about politics, appropriate for all ages and a subject my well-informed mother-in-law is usually at home with.
Why was this Passover different from all other Passovers? On other Passovers, we tell the story of Jewish slavery and liberation from the comfortable distance of history and metaphor. We discuss our need to confront more subtle, personal forms of oppression. This year, Passover is an unavoidably political holiday. In 2016, there is a global refugee crisis that is more severe than any since the end of World War II, due in large part to ill-conceived regime-change initiatives on the part of the United States. American democracy is breaking apart as the wealth gap in this country reaches historic, unsustainable extremes, resulting in an explosion of public rage and blame-seeking and an implosion of our two-party system. Those of us who support outsider candidates on either side of this election have now seen with our own eyes the way the mainstream media — who are less interested in changing the flow of that mainstream than are those who must struggle to stay afloat in it— produces campaign pieces for their candidate of choice that masquerade as news reporting. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised when our favorite old well-respected news outlets are seen to cherrypick and massage the facts in order to cast doubt on candidates that clearly threaten the corrupt establishment that they are bastions of (I’m looking at you New York Times NPR Washington Post). But they’re wrong. It isn’t unrealistic or simplistic to maintain that you cannot sow the seeds of peace with tanks and guns. You cannot dismantle the structures that are responsible for vast wealth inequality while amassing a huge fortune of your own with the help of those structures.
Yes, we are making social progress. More people are free to be who they are, and to love who they love. The struggle against racism continues to take two steps forward and one step back; nevertheless, having elected our first Black President, America is ahead of where we were before the Civil Rights movement began. And yes, we may soon see our first female President. But if “women’s liberation” means only that women are free to adopt the same cavalier attitude about the loss of human life, to engage in the same reckless imperialism and self-serving manipulation of rules and resources as the men who got us into this mess, then it is a liberation that suffers from insufficient feminism.
Unfortunately, our Sunday school teacher focused his pedagogy on battle after battle; relentlessly recounting the ancient Hebrews’ constant struggles to survive against opposing peoples; drawing narrative lines in the sand and defending our territory like a zealous trial lawyer. I’m sure it successfully captivated some of my classmates— I saw them leaning in and listening intently. But this was definitely not what I had in mind. My heart broke a little, and my attention strayed.
I continued in Sunday school for a few more years after that, against my will. I grew into a young woman who was often sad, angry and confused; I could no longer hear God in the trees. I sought numinous experience through music, through ecstatic dancing and spiritual communion with fellow seekers in drum circles and at rock concerts. I sought solace for my disenchantment through various consciousness-altering substances and techniques—sometimes well-considered and enlightening, other times desperate and maladaptive. I sought answers, resonance and refuge in psychology, in alternative spiritualities and Eastern philosophy.
Now I’m middle aged. I’m married to an Italian Catholic man whom I love very much, and we are raising two fine sons. We teach them kindness and gratitude, respect for self and others, and to hallow life. We speak of God and other mysteries, we celebrate holidays from both traditions and are not members of any congregation. I have Passover Seder each year because I want my children to know where they came from. Because their Jewish DNA is a proud, solid fact that cannot be denied. Because I want to honor the resilience of my forefathers and foremothers. I’m certain that the centuries of Jewish ancestry that precede my lifetime have infused my sensibilities with more Jewishness than my ego knows. Because I believe there is great value in these stories we tell.
“Next Year in Jerusalem!” is our traditional ending, and our inclusive, progressive Haggadah explains that the Hebrew name of the city Yerushalayim can be read as deriving from Ir Shalem (“City of Wholeness”) or Ir Shalom (“City of Peace”). May we meet again next year in wholeness and in peace.
Why is this Passover different from all other Passovers?
On this Passover, I was not content to just say those words at the table, throw out the leftover charoset, and make candy from the leftover matzoh.
Meet me under the apple trees.
On all other Passovers I make the traditional Ashkenazi charoset I grew up with: apples raisins cinnamon honey and Manishewitz, crumbled matzoh subbing for the walnuts. This Passover I made Italian charoset: apples pears raisins dates prunes and almonds, cinnamon and ginger, honey and the sweet red wine. I omitted the pine nuts and chestnuts for my allergic son. And then made another small batch without the almonds just so there’d be no worries about cross-contamination. Turned out, if I’d only made half of the first batch, Dayenu.
Not that it wasn’t any good. I always end up throwing away some charoset when the holiday’s over, because I always make more than we need. Even if it’s delicious, even with a dash of horseradish mixed with it on the matzoh, there’s only so much charoset we can eat. Throwing out the extra has become part of my Passover ritual. As I’m scooping it into the trash I think of all the time and energy I spent chopping the fruit by hand, my fingers getting sticky with the juices. I think if I had more time or energy now I’d go out and find a hungry person to give it to. I think “You have a right to your labor, but not to the fruits of your labor.” I remember this counsel from the Bhagavad Gita, about finding fulfillment in the process of one’s work and remaining unattached to the outcome, because if there is a Jewish teaching that says the same thing I don’t know it.
The reason you can only have so much charoset, for those unfamiliar with it, is because whatever kind of charoset it is— Italian, Ashkenazi, Persian or any of the myriad variations cobbled together from ingredients locally sourced wherever Jews find themselves celebrating Passover— charoset is always sweet. Very sweet.
I consider this conundrum as I stir the fruits heating on the stove, as they soften and release their fragrance. Charoset on the Seder plate represents the mortar the Hebrew slaves used to build pyramids for the Egyptians. This sugary condiment is a symbol of our bondage and forced hard labor. Why should it be sweet? But it always is, from century to century, from the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe to the Americas. I’m sure there’s been plenty written about the reasons for it, but my Jewish learning comes up short here too, so I’m free to entertain some ideas of my own.
I think of how a task, any task, can be sweet refuge from tense relations or a troubled mind. What a relief it can be to have work that needs doing, in the face of existential uncertainty or even ordinary nervousness. I think of how there is sweetness in familiarity and the status quo, even a status quo that keeps one oppressed. Of how even hardened, long-term jailbirds can develop “institutional syndrome”— comfort with and dependence upon their prison walls. Freedom can be terrifying and lonely. Conversely, even a labor of love or a responsibility gladly undertaken can feel as oppressive as is one’s commitment to it— a paradox experienced by anyone who has been a parent, anyone who has thrown themselves completely into any kind of creative project, or has cared for a pet, anyone who inhabits a body.
Why was this Passover different from all other Passovers? This was the first year my mother-in-law joined us at the little Seder I hold for our family of four; the first Seder she’d ever been to. I thought she might have the same question I had about the charoset, so I made sure to do some research before she arrived.
I learned that in fact no one really knows how charoset even made it on to the Seder plate in the first place. Unlike matzoh or bitter herbs, the Torah doesn’t command we eat charoset, and there is no blessing for it in a traditional Haggadah. Some speculate that it may have come to us by way of the ancient Greeks, who enjoyed it as an appetizer on festive occasions. Once it had become a ritual thing, Talmudic sages debated its significance. Rabbi Ami theorized it was there to counteract the potentially poisonous effects of a worm that often lived in the lettuce or leafy greens we eat. Rabbi Levi opined that it was there to honor the memory of the apple orchards of ancient Egypt, where Jewish women and men would go to make love and deliver healthy baby boys in secret, defying their own physical exhaustion and the restrictions against Jewish childbearing. The narrative that eventually prevailed— maybe because it was the easiest story to tell at a family meal?— is the one about the paste used for brick-making.
I also learned that on Sabbath night during Passover week it is customary to recite the Song of Solomon, that effusively sensuous outpouring of biblical pillow talk. A man and a woman and their mutual desire; the Daughters of Jerusalem and a cornucopia of sweet fruits and exotic spices. Who knew? We never did the Song of Solomon at any of our Seders when I was growing up.
We didn’t do it this year either. We did have a spirited conversation about politics, appropriate for all ages and a subject my well-informed mother-in-law is usually at home with.
Why was this Passover different from all other Passovers? On other Passovers, we tell the story of Jewish slavery and liberation from the comfortable distance of history and metaphor. We discuss our need to confront more subtle, personal forms of oppression. This year, Passover is an unavoidably political holiday. In 2016, there is a global refugee crisis that is more severe than any since the end of World War II, due in large part to ill-conceived regime-change initiatives on the part of the United States. American democracy is breaking apart as the wealth gap in this country reaches historic, unsustainable extremes, resulting in an explosion of public rage and blame-seeking and an implosion of our two-party system. Those of us who support outsider candidates on either side of this election have now seen with our own eyes the way the mainstream media — who are less interested in changing the flow of that mainstream than are those who must struggle to stay afloat in it— produces campaign pieces for their candidate of choice that masquerade as news reporting. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised when our favorite old well-respected news outlets are seen to cherrypick and massage the facts in order to cast doubt on candidates that clearly threaten the corrupt establishment that they are bastions of (I’m looking at you New York Times NPR Washington Post). But they’re wrong. It isn’t unrealistic or simplistic to maintain that you cannot sow the seeds of peace with tanks and guns. You cannot dismantle the structures that are responsible for vast wealth inequality while amassing a huge fortune of your own with the help of those structures.
Yes, we are making social progress. More people are free to be who they are, and to love who they love. The struggle against racism continues to take two steps forward and one step back; nevertheless, having elected our first Black President, America is ahead of where we were before the Civil Rights movement began. And yes, we may soon see our first female President. But if “women’s liberation” means only that women are free to adopt the same cavalier attitude about the loss of human life, to engage in the same reckless imperialism and self-serving manipulation of rules and resources as the men who got us into this mess, then it is a liberation that suffers from insufficient feminism.
*
I am a Daughter of Jerusalem who has wandered far afield. When I was very young I’d sit under a tree and hear the wind rustling through the leaves and know I was listening to God. I would sing with my class in school— children’s voices carrying a simple melody— and my heart would fill. It felt holy to me. The few holidays celebrated by my fairly non-religious family— the candles, the foods, the gatherings— warmed me. At age 5, I told my parents I wanted to learn more about God. They happily obliged with Sunday school at our Reform Temple.Unfortunately, our Sunday school teacher focused his pedagogy on battle after battle; relentlessly recounting the ancient Hebrews’ constant struggles to survive against opposing peoples; drawing narrative lines in the sand and defending our territory like a zealous trial lawyer. I’m sure it successfully captivated some of my classmates— I saw them leaning in and listening intently. But this was definitely not what I had in mind. My heart broke a little, and my attention strayed.
I continued in Sunday school for a few more years after that, against my will. I grew into a young woman who was often sad, angry and confused; I could no longer hear God in the trees. I sought numinous experience through music, through ecstatic dancing and spiritual communion with fellow seekers in drum circles and at rock concerts. I sought solace for my disenchantment through various consciousness-altering substances and techniques—sometimes well-considered and enlightening, other times desperate and maladaptive. I sought answers, resonance and refuge in psychology, in alternative spiritualities and Eastern philosophy.
Now I’m middle aged. I’m married to an Italian Catholic man whom I love very much, and we are raising two fine sons. We teach them kindness and gratitude, respect for self and others, and to hallow life. We speak of God and other mysteries, we celebrate holidays from both traditions and are not members of any congregation. I have Passover Seder each year because I want my children to know where they came from. Because their Jewish DNA is a proud, solid fact that cannot be denied. Because I want to honor the resilience of my forefathers and foremothers. I’m certain that the centuries of Jewish ancestry that precede my lifetime have infused my sensibilities with more Jewishness than my ego knows. Because I believe there is great value in these stories we tell.
“Next Year in Jerusalem!” is our traditional ending, and our inclusive, progressive Haggadah explains that the Hebrew name of the city Yerushalayim can be read as deriving from Ir Shalem (“City of Wholeness”) or Ir Shalom (“City of Peace”). May we meet again next year in wholeness and in peace.
Why is this Passover different from all other Passovers?
On this Passover, I was not content to just say those words at the table, throw out the leftover charoset, and make candy from the leftover matzoh.
Meet me under the apple trees.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
On my way to the market (Flash Fiction)
Bright white sun my only company this summer morning. Glinting on slate roofs and gleaming on painted shutters; the sun is dancing in bountiful gardens zinnia to tomato vine, hydrangea to sweet pea; winking from treetops and sliding like satin over a coiled green hose, a silver bicycle, a child's red pail. The day smiling at me and me smiling back; not looking down, so I startle and "Oh!" out loud when a meter ahead of me on the sidewalk I spot a dead bird.
A robin she is, not a fledgling new to flight nor yet fully grown, laid out on her side on the clean concrete. No blood spread beneath her, no injury I can see, she is in fact beautiful with her ruddy heart of a breast still puffed out proud. Why? or how? I puzzle, shaken, as I walk on a half mile, looking up only when the supermarket looms suddenly before me.
What luck to see Mai, there among the yogurts with her rainbow striped gloves. It was in the frozen foods five years ago that Mai and I first met, the only two people around wearing wool gloves and sweaters in the blazing summer heat. Mai lived fifty cold New England winters that year I first moved to town, and she shares her advice for keeping fingers and toes warm, as well as her spare gloves on the occasions I forget to bring my own. We discover not just cold sensitivity, but we also have in common low blood pressure and a tendency to vertigo, and we joke that despite our obvious ethnic differences we are DNA sisters under the skin, members of a shared genotype. Mai is a sanguine spirit in the face of chilly temperatures and the open stares of ignorant, ungloved fellow shoppers; she is unruffled in response to her sometimes impertinent teenaged daughter.
Today it's not Mai's daughter who is with her but her friend Thérèse. Decades ago, Thérèse was a healthy young woman crossing a street, but a CEO in a shiny sedan ran a light on his way to a meeting that was more important to him than Thérèse was, leaving Thérèse barren and heir to a lifetime of painful surgeries that are paid for by a generous settlement with the CEO. Thérèse will tell you more about her physical condition on any given day than you need to know (especially, it seems, when you are in a hurry to get somewhere else). She is also the transmitter of reams of information on all matters of health-- biological, environmental, sociopolitical. As she speaks in her heavily accented but remarkably fluent English, points of light gather and twinkle in her blue eyes in a way that makes it easier for her husband to forget their childlessness. Today she is bothered by plantar fasciitis. Mai knows that pain too and I do as well and I can see where this conversation is headed so I quickly divert to the riddle of the dead robin.
Thérèse's got this one. She thinks the bird might have been sick-- the Departments of Health of all the towns in our region note a preponderance of dead birds such as this as a sign that West Nile virus is about. Mai laughs and says the bird could have just gotten pushed out of the nest. "That happens, you know, if the nest is too crowded. Sometimes one gets shoved out." And she laughs again. I blink, twice, and turning to Thérèse, ask her about the West Nile thing. Has she heard of West Nile in our area this year? Mai cuts her off and chuckles again about the bird being sacrificed, as if this is a joke that bears repeating. I have to go. I get what I need and head for the check out.
I get that Nature pursues its own ruthless Agenda with no regard for our individual human sensibilities and Mai is wise to accept this but to laugh? I'm not there yet. I'm not sure I ever want to be there. The afternoon clouds and I notice too late that I've missed the turnoff for the shortcut; I'm on the long road back. I'm confused, my bags are heavy and I need to get home. Home, where love is supple and abundant and there's enough food and bedding to go around and space is tight but we make do with what we've got. It's time that's our precious commodity. Not enough time sends us trampling over each others' words and brushing past each others' open questions and upturned faces; time hurrying on cleaves want from need, reveals truths we sought unknowing.
Still, you think you know a person. I don't understand. I want to understand, but I might never have the time to understand. My family will be hungry; I need to start cooking dinner. I take refuge in the bell peppers, in their ripeness an unyielding primary red.
A robin she is, not a fledgling new to flight nor yet fully grown, laid out on her side on the clean concrete. No blood spread beneath her, no injury I can see, she is in fact beautiful with her ruddy heart of a breast still puffed out proud. Why? or how? I puzzle, shaken, as I walk on a half mile, looking up only when the supermarket looms suddenly before me.
What luck to see Mai, there among the yogurts with her rainbow striped gloves. It was in the frozen foods five years ago that Mai and I first met, the only two people around wearing wool gloves and sweaters in the blazing summer heat. Mai lived fifty cold New England winters that year I first moved to town, and she shares her advice for keeping fingers and toes warm, as well as her spare gloves on the occasions I forget to bring my own. We discover not just cold sensitivity, but we also have in common low blood pressure and a tendency to vertigo, and we joke that despite our obvious ethnic differences we are DNA sisters under the skin, members of a shared genotype. Mai is a sanguine spirit in the face of chilly temperatures and the open stares of ignorant, ungloved fellow shoppers; she is unruffled in response to her sometimes impertinent teenaged daughter.
Today it's not Mai's daughter who is with her but her friend Thérèse. Decades ago, Thérèse was a healthy young woman crossing a street, but a CEO in a shiny sedan ran a light on his way to a meeting that was more important to him than Thérèse was, leaving Thérèse barren and heir to a lifetime of painful surgeries that are paid for by a generous settlement with the CEO. Thérèse will tell you more about her physical condition on any given day than you need to know (especially, it seems, when you are in a hurry to get somewhere else). She is also the transmitter of reams of information on all matters of health-- biological, environmental, sociopolitical. As she speaks in her heavily accented but remarkably fluent English, points of light gather and twinkle in her blue eyes in a way that makes it easier for her husband to forget their childlessness. Today she is bothered by plantar fasciitis. Mai knows that pain too and I do as well and I can see where this conversation is headed so I quickly divert to the riddle of the dead robin.
Thérèse's got this one. She thinks the bird might have been sick-- the Departments of Health of all the towns in our region note a preponderance of dead birds such as this as a sign that West Nile virus is about. Mai laughs and says the bird could have just gotten pushed out of the nest. "That happens, you know, if the nest is too crowded. Sometimes one gets shoved out." And she laughs again. I blink, twice, and turning to Thérèse, ask her about the West Nile thing. Has she heard of West Nile in our area this year? Mai cuts her off and chuckles again about the bird being sacrificed, as if this is a joke that bears repeating. I have to go. I get what I need and head for the check out.
I get that Nature pursues its own ruthless Agenda with no regard for our individual human sensibilities and Mai is wise to accept this but to laugh? I'm not there yet. I'm not sure I ever want to be there. The afternoon clouds and I notice too late that I've missed the turnoff for the shortcut; I'm on the long road back. I'm confused, my bags are heavy and I need to get home. Home, where love is supple and abundant and there's enough food and bedding to go around and space is tight but we make do with what we've got. It's time that's our precious commodity. Not enough time sends us trampling over each others' words and brushing past each others' open questions and upturned faces; time hurrying on cleaves want from need, reveals truths we sought unknowing.
Still, you think you know a person. I don't understand. I want to understand, but I might never have the time to understand. My family will be hungry; I need to start cooking dinner. I take refuge in the bell peppers, in their ripeness an unyielding primary red.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Quik Quiz! The Shortest Internet Quiz Ever! Only One Question!
Friends, it occurs to me that many of these internet quizzes we’ve been having fun with over the past year or so basically come down to just one pressing question: Who the fork am I? Whether it’s which great old movie star we’d be if we were a great old movie star, what element of the periodic table best matches our natural physical vibe, or where we actually belong (assuming it’s not where we already are), they’re all trying to answer us this. So I’ve developed a quiz for folks like me who seek enlightenment about this issue but just don’t have the time for those slightly longer surveys. Interested?
LET’S PLAY!
Who are you?
A. Piss off. These stupid internet quizzes make me twitchy.
B. I got Beyoncé! I really should live in Taipei! My personality color is deep periwinkle!
C. Extremely satisfied.
D. N/A
OKAY! PRETEND TO CLICK HERE FOR YOUR ANSWER!
You are a hero and a villain in the screenplay of your life. Within you gods and goddesses vie for expression; you’ve lived fairy tales, myths and legends. This bears repeating: You are the result of an exquisitely specific and absolutely unique interaction of genes and environment — there never has been, and never will be, another just like you. You are exactly Where Your Journey Has Brought You Thus Far, and you are also How, and Why, and from these coordinates you might get a glimpse of Where You Are Going. For your next big adventure perhaps you’ll cycle through the nine points of the enneagram; your electric imagination might find resonance in the 16 MBTI temperament types and several well-researched personality traits. A lifetime of developmental phases lie dormant or bloom in the fertile soil of your soul. You are the blessed wisdom and knowledge you have gained, and you are the thrill of all you have yet to learn. You are, particularly, the first things you ever did best— these are your birthright and the perfect gifts you bring to the party— but you are also indeed the things you love dearly and wish to do better, and you are the yearning expanse between. The evidence of your greatest strength, which you may yet be blind to, is embedded in the pattern of that same damned mistake you keep making again and again. You are the stories you tell yourself, and the shadows of those stories (which you suspect to be the real truth), and you are It: Sublime Truth. All you are is the genetic culmination of every member of your family that has ever lived (both sides); your family is called Humankind.You are 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen. You are the stars above you, the oceans and rivers at your feet. You are the shaft of sunlight through the blinds that kissed you awake this morning and you are the sudden thunder beyond the window that startled you out of daydreams at noon. You are every secret, stolen little moment of self-deception that you believe separates you from the rest of us and our community of lying, lonely, sad little moments. Yes, you are the snuck cigarette; the extra bowl of cereal you pretended wouldn’t count; the splurge that maxed out your credit. And you may even be the vengeful wish you’d like to think that you’re above; the blur you sometimes make of that thin line between inspiration and plunder; the skewed perspective that casts others as players in your private drama. But you are also the lovely, furtive way you glance at people you’ve never met sharing an easy laugh; you are the afterglow of the sweet, distant crushes you never acted on; you are the way you try to prolong that gaze into the middle distance, seeing yet not looking, mesmerized by the light and a cocktail of some really choice neurotransmitters— or maybe that was the tickle of God in your brain. You are a mere droplet in an ocean, your life one brief flicker of a firefly in the immense darkness of this overflowing universe. Yet you are so much larger than you imagine, and your quick choice to toss off a smile to that sad-looking stranger you just passed on the street eventually found expression in the laughter of a child who lives thousands of miles away. You are the exact same person you’ve always been and baby don’t you go changin’. Sweetheart, you rebirth with every breath. You are a pleasure to talk to my friend, and you’re my butterflies, the thrilling thud of my heart in my throat I will feel as I press “Post”. You Are Here Now.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
TO-DO LIST
- boys' lunches
- make beds/tidy mess
- laundry (*remember Nate's baseball uniform)
- gather books for donation
- playdates
- plan Ben's 7th b'day
- gather clothes for storage
- groceries (*remember coupons)
- prune thicket of email
- boys: summer activities (*remember to register for Cape camp)
- water plants
- purge soul of lingering fears and resentments. liberate self from anxious pretense and excess ego (*remember not to micromanage life.) plunge hands into the dark ground; pull up the weeds, the long-rooted and tangled angry narratives; unearth the gnarled clumps of anger and sorrow that have hardened to stone, the ossified fictions that hinder growth. gather them thoughtfully and hold them in the container of compassion I have woven strong with each and every mundane, daily act of tender care and then release them, that I may be free to see more clearly with untinted eyes and hear more acutely with untainted ears the beauty and brutality that surrounds me. so that I may speak more clearly with my own voice and follow my own path with surefooted grace. face each new season of my life with courage and curiosity, kindness and equanimity. (*remember to remove mask)
- prep dinner
- boys: homework
- paperwork
- (*remember that conversation with Josie seven years ago. We sat on a park bench, I pregnant with my second child and she with her fourth in as many years, and she told me about how despite the searing pain and the doctors' stern admonitions she sat up and pulled that last baby out with her own two hands, and as she spoke a monarch alighted on her shoulder and stayed there a full ten minutes at least until Josie was done speaking.)
- gym/meditate/write (make time)
- Nate's tooth money
- *remember the surprisingly early butterflies I've already seen this spring *remember the butterflies adorning nearly every mother's day card given and received this year *remember reading about butterflies or butterfly effects in several different instances in the last week *every seven years the human body regenerates itself completely *remember other times when life left me awash in synchronicity that would have seemed absurdly heavyhanded had I read it in fiction
- clean coffee maker
- tomorrow's clothes
- tomorrow's lunches
- make beds/tidy mess
- laundry (*remember Nate's baseball uniform)
- gather books for donation
- playdates
- plan Ben's 7th b'day
- gather clothes for storage
- groceries (*remember coupons)
- prune thicket of email
- boys: summer activities (*remember to register for Cape camp)
- water plants
- purge soul of lingering fears and resentments. liberate self from anxious pretense and excess ego (*remember not to micromanage life.) plunge hands into the dark ground; pull up the weeds, the long-rooted and tangled angry narratives; unearth the gnarled clumps of anger and sorrow that have hardened to stone, the ossified fictions that hinder growth. gather them thoughtfully and hold them in the container of compassion I have woven strong with each and every mundane, daily act of tender care and then release them, that I may be free to see more clearly with untinted eyes and hear more acutely with untainted ears the beauty and brutality that surrounds me. so that I may speak more clearly with my own voice and follow my own path with surefooted grace. face each new season of my life with courage and curiosity, kindness and equanimity. (*remember to remove mask)
- prep dinner
- boys: homework
- paperwork
- (*remember that conversation with Josie seven years ago. We sat on a park bench, I pregnant with my second child and she with her fourth in as many years, and she told me about how despite the searing pain and the doctors' stern admonitions she sat up and pulled that last baby out with her own two hands, and as she spoke a monarch alighted on her shoulder and stayed there a full ten minutes at least until Josie was done speaking.)
- gym/meditate/write (make time)
- Nate's tooth money
- *remember the surprisingly early butterflies I've already seen this spring *remember the butterflies adorning nearly every mother's day card given and received this year *remember reading about butterflies or butterfly effects in several different instances in the last week *every seven years the human body regenerates itself completely *remember other times when life left me awash in synchronicity that would have seemed absurdly heavyhanded had I read it in fiction
- clean coffee maker
- tomorrow's clothes
- tomorrow's lunches
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Frida Kahlo Poem: Love Embrace of the Universe
Fucked by fate, Frida
Grit teeth, pushed pain to canvas
And willed her child: Art.
Brush strokes slice like blade
Deep crevices in glass.
Deep cruelty in those details
This dew, that blade of grass.
Split fruit, spilled seed.
Excruciating--
The beauty for the taking
She need only to stand.
Extend the arm, clench brush in hand
Describe precisely the breaking
From in those
Places where steel splintered spaces
Between life and limb.
Split fruit, spilled seed.
An abundance of need
on this earth-- bound to nurture
Diego's naked vision.
So, Frida works the politics--
The global, the local, the
interfuckingpersonal.
Her religion?
Madre Mía,
She must have always known
Your arms were there to hold her
Ah sí she can let go!
She'll not now need these thorns.
Frida-- grown-- transcendent.
She is clay
leaf
breath
then sky.
Grit teeth, pushed pain to canvas
And willed her child: Art.
Brush strokes slice like blade
Deep crevices in glass.
Deep cruelty in those details
This dew, that blade of grass.
Split fruit, spilled seed.
Excruciating--
The beauty for the taking
She need only to stand.
Extend the arm, clench brush in hand
Describe precisely the breaking
From in those
Places where steel splintered spaces
Between life and limb.
Split fruit, spilled seed.
An abundance of need
on this earth-- bound to nurture
Diego's naked vision.
So, Frida works the politics--
The global, the local, the
interfuckingpersonal.
Her religion?
Madre Mía,
She must have always known
Your arms were there to hold her
Ah sí she can let go!
She'll not now need these thorns.
Frida-- grown-- transcendent.
She is clay
leaf
breath
then sky.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
In Loving Memory
The summer that my dad and his brother were 8 and 5 years old, they went off to sleep-away camp together. (It was indeed a very different parenting world in those days; "parenting" hadn't even become a word yet.) My father was appointed his brother's keeper: he was told to look after Nelson, and to call my grandparents if little bro was excessively miserable or got sick. So when Nelson did in fact get sick, my dad worried his young mind over whether or not to call his parents. The camp staff discouraged it-- they told my father that it wasn't serious and he shouldn't bother the adults on their summer vacation. One night a few weeks into this non-serious illness, my dad went to the infirmary to say goodnight to his brother. The next morning Nelson was dead, of complications related to polio. The directors had been making an effort to conceal the epidemic that raced through the camp that summer. Healthy children like my father were probably fairly easy to deceive. They woke my dad in time for him to see the ambulance driving his brother's little body away.
My father Alan Rosenthal rarely told this story himself. He would usually just say he always knew he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. But in my mind, even when I was a kid and he was an extraordinarily vibrant adult with a fast walk, a bellowing voice and a thriving medical practice, he always partly remained that tragically burdened 8-year-old boy. Knowing that story was essential to knowing who my daddy really was.
Specifically, Dr. Alan Rosenthal was a pediatric neurosurgeon. The kind who would spend the night at the hospital so he could wake hourly and go in himself to drain an abscess in the brain of a newborn he would operate on later the next day. Or who would find a way to MacGyver a life-saving fix to a malfunctioning shunt in the head of a hydrocephalic baby. He loved an audience for his surgical artistry, and he often tried to persuade my mother, my sister and me to watch his operations from the gallery above. Mom and Amy were regulars. I can remember trying it just once at about age 9; after braving the first few minutes of baby blood and brain surrounded by blue-green surgical drape, I quietly turned my chair around and my attention to my Mad magazine. (Sorry, dad.)
Above all, my father was the kind of doctor who spoke to his patients or their parents on the phone at length, on his own time, and continued to follow up with many of them through to adulthood-- much to the consternation of his bookkeeper, who couldn't begin to figure out a way to bill to the practice for these hours. Actually, he wouldn't even let her try. All this of course made him less available to me than I might have liked, growing up. But I understood from a young age that it also made him an exceptional physician. He was, to me, the smartest man in the world, and he used his brilliance to mend bodies and save lives. I worshiped him for it.
As a young girl I also adored the physical facts of him. His voice, gravelly even as a young man. The intense way he'd stare at you when he was talking, and the way that intensity would gently recede and take you in when you were talking-- the ocean in my father's grey eyes. Sometimes you'd be in one of these conversations with him for a while before noticing that he'd been wiggling his left ear at you the entire time. (Yup, he could do that. He could also draw a medical diagram on a chalkboard using both hands simultaneously, so long as it was fairly symmetrical. He loved to brag about that one.)
All these things my father loved: Man of La Mancha, the musical, and Don Quixote, the 17th century Cervantes novel it was based on, about a dreamer who's determined to revive chivalry and travels the country dueling with windmills he believes to be giants; "Greensleeves"; Simon & Garfunkel; and especially the baroque and classical music that so well matched his vigorous presence, and that he piped into the operating room while he worked. His tiny Italian sports cars-- he'd make sure Aim and I were belted into the back "seat"-- barely a ledge, really-- and we'd hang on tight as he zipped us around the rolling hills of Long Island. His stacks of pulpy paperbacks (Hammett, Elmore Leonard, the MacDonalds John D. and Ross)-- he'd bring half a dozen on a family vacation and finish most of them on the plane ride there. His bizarre food concoctions-- my dad never actually cooked, but he'd find a couple of random things in the kitchen and (alarmingly) decide it might be good to combine them. Say, chocolate syrup and mustard (actually, you know? molé-ish. And so it would begin.) Never mind that he was the only one who would dare sample most of these culinary experiments; he worked on perfecting them for months. Sartorial splendor-- he loved to pick out a few shirts, ties and jackets for a meeting or a night out and have his three girls choose what worked best. Occasionally he would exercise the veto; usually he was right. He wore a jacket and tie when none was required. On the other hand, he couldn't bear to throw away a pair of reading glasses, and he'd MacGyver those too when they broke. His night table drawer held baggies full of scotch-taped, paper-clipped, toothpicked glasses.
At various times my father walkedtoofast, talkedtooloud, talkedtoofast andthenwouldsuddenlypause in the middle of a sentence while the words caught up with his thoughts, staring intensely the whole time... beforecontinuingasbefore. Worked too hard, worked out too hard, played too hard, drank too much, drove too fast, argued politics too much too long too loud. God did my father love to argue, and he was really, REALLY good at it. I often thought that it wasn't so much a political opponent as his own demons he was sparring with, which at times made it very tricky and unwise to become that sparring opponent. But I did. Frequently. I think probably for the intimacy with him it afforded me, I picked up that bluster that sometimes lingered in the air around him, and spun the windmills for his Don Quixote. He had a few that he particularly liked to rail against, and they conveniently enough played right into my instinctive, inchoate adolescent political sympathies: liberal healthcare reform, dove-ish foreign policy, Robin Hood (he defended the 'unfairly maligned, misunderstood' Sheriff of Nottingham), Gloria Steinem for god sakes. This, from a man who insisted that our dinner conversation eschew teenage gossip and fashion in favor of the worldlier matters that he felt befitted our intelligence. That same man who insisted I apply to his beloved alma mater, Yale, despite my protestations that it was completely out of my league, who sat by my side on the beach during one family vacation as I completed the application while everyone around us was catching rays and body surfing, could also be the poster child for 70's-style male chauvinism. As a hormonally-ruled teenager in a halter top and platforms (or an Edwardian blouse and ballet slippers, depending on my mood), I only vaguely sensed that defending my gender's right to a voice and equal pay was the right move there. Now, as a parent myself who knows something about the power of reverse psychology, I sometimes wonder what my father was really up to. But perhaps it was just that, like Don Quixote, he wanted his chance at chivalry, even as he wanted his daughters to not need it so much.
Chivalry. He called Amy and me his raisons d'être, but if we were in fact the why of his existence, my mother was the indispensable how-- the lifelong partner through whom he grew into his best self. One of the many strange contradictions of my dad was the fact that, despite his ability to engineer those spectacular surgical feats, he was completely, mind-bogglingly incapable when it came to most modern technology. He needed my mom to dial a push-button phone for him. Touch screen? Forget about it. Computers? My kids at age 4 had things to teach him. My mother packed his suitcases, managed the family finances, and looked gorgeous on his arm whenever they went out. He showed his deep appreciation and gratitude to her generously, unhesitatingly. He'd often turn to whomever was nearby and just tell them how much he loved her, or how beautiful she was. He never passed a flower stand without buying a bunch for her; on her birthday he'd get her a bouquet for each decade and then some, so that the whole house bloomed. He wrote the most heartfelt, pithy, perfect messages on greeting cards. If he wanted a gift to be a surprise, he'd ask my sister, whom alone he trusted to understand my mother's sense of elegance, to pick it out for him. I believe that my father tried to protect my mother from pain and suffering until the day he died. He died of pneumonia. He survived lung cancer for almost five years. He complained as little as possible, and held on as long as he possibly could.
Close to two hundred and fifty people attended my daddy's funeral. That seems like a lot for a man who could sometimes be socially awkward and hated to schmooze. Some were people he had operated on, and who traveled long distances to be there. A precious handful were friends who had known and loved him since grade school, and before. I think he might have looked around at all of them in surprise, and said something like "they all came here for me?" It would have been genuine humility. It's not that he didn't have pride-- he did boast about his many medical accomplishments, and it wasn't unlike him to work Yale into the conversation within five minutes of meeting someone. But he never rested on any of his achievements. It seemed he never could rest. He always saw how much more there was to do. Even a typical day off for him was a frenzy of near-manic activity. He might start with 18 holes of golf, then on to three sets of tennis, a light lunch (followed perhaps by what was left of your light lunch), and then he'd top it off with back-to-back 45-minute spinning classes. And if he wasn't actually doing neurosurgery, well he could talk about it incessantly-- the intellectual challenges, the manual dexterity, the opportunities for quick-thinking inventiveness that so thrilled him. But even my father's boundless energy and brilliance combined with the best of modern medicine couldn't work miracles in every case. He couldn't save every life. And sometimes-- too often-- he had to sit down with desperately exhausted and frightened parents and tell them that he could likely save their child, but that the child would live with some degree of impairment, maybe severe. I don't believe that kind of conversation ever got any easier for my father. What he definitely was not, what he never became, was coldly intellectual or hard-hearted. But again and again, this deeply sensitive, shy man put himself on the line, in that agonizingly difficult place, for the good he could do.
Alan Rosenthal was a Healer, and he was a true hero. May he rest, in peace.
My father Alan Rosenthal rarely told this story himself. He would usually just say he always knew he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. But in my mind, even when I was a kid and he was an extraordinarily vibrant adult with a fast walk, a bellowing voice and a thriving medical practice, he always partly remained that tragically burdened 8-year-old boy. Knowing that story was essential to knowing who my daddy really was.
Specifically, Dr. Alan Rosenthal was a pediatric neurosurgeon. The kind who would spend the night at the hospital so he could wake hourly and go in himself to drain an abscess in the brain of a newborn he would operate on later the next day. Or who would find a way to MacGyver a life-saving fix to a malfunctioning shunt in the head of a hydrocephalic baby. He loved an audience for his surgical artistry, and he often tried to persuade my mother, my sister and me to watch his operations from the gallery above. Mom and Amy were regulars. I can remember trying it just once at about age 9; after braving the first few minutes of baby blood and brain surrounded by blue-green surgical drape, I quietly turned my chair around and my attention to my Mad magazine. (Sorry, dad.)
Above all, my father was the kind of doctor who spoke to his patients or their parents on the phone at length, on his own time, and continued to follow up with many of them through to adulthood-- much to the consternation of his bookkeeper, who couldn't begin to figure out a way to bill to the practice for these hours. Actually, he wouldn't even let her try. All this of course made him less available to me than I might have liked, growing up. But I understood from a young age that it also made him an exceptional physician. He was, to me, the smartest man in the world, and he used his brilliance to mend bodies and save lives. I worshiped him for it.
As a young girl I also adored the physical facts of him. His voice, gravelly even as a young man. The intense way he'd stare at you when he was talking, and the way that intensity would gently recede and take you in when you were talking-- the ocean in my father's grey eyes. Sometimes you'd be in one of these conversations with him for a while before noticing that he'd been wiggling his left ear at you the entire time. (Yup, he could do that. He could also draw a medical diagram on a chalkboard using both hands simultaneously, so long as it was fairly symmetrical. He loved to brag about that one.)
All these things my father loved: Man of La Mancha, the musical, and Don Quixote, the 17th century Cervantes novel it was based on, about a dreamer who's determined to revive chivalry and travels the country dueling with windmills he believes to be giants; "Greensleeves"; Simon & Garfunkel; and especially the baroque and classical music that so well matched his vigorous presence, and that he piped into the operating room while he worked. His tiny Italian sports cars-- he'd make sure Aim and I were belted into the back "seat"-- barely a ledge, really-- and we'd hang on tight as he zipped us around the rolling hills of Long Island. His stacks of pulpy paperbacks (Hammett, Elmore Leonard, the MacDonalds John D. and Ross)-- he'd bring half a dozen on a family vacation and finish most of them on the plane ride there. His bizarre food concoctions-- my dad never actually cooked, but he'd find a couple of random things in the kitchen and (alarmingly) decide it might be good to combine them. Say, chocolate syrup and mustard (actually, you know? molé-ish. And so it would begin.) Never mind that he was the only one who would dare sample most of these culinary experiments; he worked on perfecting them for months. Sartorial splendor-- he loved to pick out a few shirts, ties and jackets for a meeting or a night out and have his three girls choose what worked best. Occasionally he would exercise the veto; usually he was right. He wore a jacket and tie when none was required. On the other hand, he couldn't bear to throw away a pair of reading glasses, and he'd MacGyver those too when they broke. His night table drawer held baggies full of scotch-taped, paper-clipped, toothpicked glasses.
At various times my father walkedtoofast, talkedtooloud, talkedtoofast andthenwouldsuddenlypause in the middle of a sentence while the words caught up with his thoughts, staring intensely the whole time... beforecontinuingasbefore. Worked too hard, worked out too hard, played too hard, drank too much, drove too fast, argued politics too much too long too loud. God did my father love to argue, and he was really, REALLY good at it. I often thought that it wasn't so much a political opponent as his own demons he was sparring with, which at times made it very tricky and unwise to become that sparring opponent. But I did. Frequently. I think probably for the intimacy with him it afforded me, I picked up that bluster that sometimes lingered in the air around him, and spun the windmills for his Don Quixote. He had a few that he particularly liked to rail against, and they conveniently enough played right into my instinctive, inchoate adolescent political sympathies: liberal healthcare reform, dove-ish foreign policy, Robin Hood (he defended the 'unfairly maligned, misunderstood' Sheriff of Nottingham), Gloria Steinem for god sakes. This, from a man who insisted that our dinner conversation eschew teenage gossip and fashion in favor of the worldlier matters that he felt befitted our intelligence. That same man who insisted I apply to his beloved alma mater, Yale, despite my protestations that it was completely out of my league, who sat by my side on the beach during one family vacation as I completed the application while everyone around us was catching rays and body surfing, could also be the poster child for 70's-style male chauvinism. As a hormonally-ruled teenager in a halter top and platforms (or an Edwardian blouse and ballet slippers, depending on my mood), I only vaguely sensed that defending my gender's right to a voice and equal pay was the right move there. Now, as a parent myself who knows something about the power of reverse psychology, I sometimes wonder what my father was really up to. But perhaps it was just that, like Don Quixote, he wanted his chance at chivalry, even as he wanted his daughters to not need it so much.
Chivalry. He called Amy and me his raisons d'être, but if we were in fact the why of his existence, my mother was the indispensable how-- the lifelong partner through whom he grew into his best self. One of the many strange contradictions of my dad was the fact that, despite his ability to engineer those spectacular surgical feats, he was completely, mind-bogglingly incapable when it came to most modern technology. He needed my mom to dial a push-button phone for him. Touch screen? Forget about it. Computers? My kids at age 4 had things to teach him. My mother packed his suitcases, managed the family finances, and looked gorgeous on his arm whenever they went out. He showed his deep appreciation and gratitude to her generously, unhesitatingly. He'd often turn to whomever was nearby and just tell them how much he loved her, or how beautiful she was. He never passed a flower stand without buying a bunch for her; on her birthday he'd get her a bouquet for each decade and then some, so that the whole house bloomed. He wrote the most heartfelt, pithy, perfect messages on greeting cards. If he wanted a gift to be a surprise, he'd ask my sister, whom alone he trusted to understand my mother's sense of elegance, to pick it out for him. I believe that my father tried to protect my mother from pain and suffering until the day he died. He died of pneumonia. He survived lung cancer for almost five years. He complained as little as possible, and held on as long as he possibly could.
Close to two hundred and fifty people attended my daddy's funeral. That seems like a lot for a man who could sometimes be socially awkward and hated to schmooze. Some were people he had operated on, and who traveled long distances to be there. A precious handful were friends who had known and loved him since grade school, and before. I think he might have looked around at all of them in surprise, and said something like "they all came here for me?" It would have been genuine humility. It's not that he didn't have pride-- he did boast about his many medical accomplishments, and it wasn't unlike him to work Yale into the conversation within five minutes of meeting someone. But he never rested on any of his achievements. It seemed he never could rest. He always saw how much more there was to do. Even a typical day off for him was a frenzy of near-manic activity. He might start with 18 holes of golf, then on to three sets of tennis, a light lunch (followed perhaps by what was left of your light lunch), and then he'd top it off with back-to-back 45-minute spinning classes. And if he wasn't actually doing neurosurgery, well he could talk about it incessantly-- the intellectual challenges, the manual dexterity, the opportunities for quick-thinking inventiveness that so thrilled him. But even my father's boundless energy and brilliance combined with the best of modern medicine couldn't work miracles in every case. He couldn't save every life. And sometimes-- too often-- he had to sit down with desperately exhausted and frightened parents and tell them that he could likely save their child, but that the child would live with some degree of impairment, maybe severe. I don't believe that kind of conversation ever got any easier for my father. What he definitely was not, what he never became, was coldly intellectual or hard-hearted. But again and again, this deeply sensitive, shy man put himself on the line, in that agonizingly difficult place, for the good he could do.
Alan Rosenthal was a Healer, and he was a true hero. May he rest, in peace.
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