346 Days Until the big Five-0

Please note, I am tired of pulling the keyboard under the desk out to type the number Five. So, even though those Stunk & White (yeah obviously I never read the book and am not sure if I am spelling the names correctly) might want me to use the actual number for things 1 to 9 instead of writing them out, I am not going to do it. I think those people might be dead by now anyways. I can only reference the book because of things I have heard in everyday life over the years. See, I did not major in English. Oh for years, I have lamented over the choices I made, but now that I am approaching fifty I think I need to take a different perspective, and besides I have read "The Secret" so I am finally "in" on It (The Secrect to Life). If I could do it all over again, I would probably end up at the same parties smoking my way through all sorts of crazy things. That was what I was suppose to be doing in that "Chapter" of my life. Now I am in the middle of the book (hopefully the middle, otherwise I will be dead a lot sooner than I had hoped). I can look backward and forward, the real luxury of turning fifty. Otherwise, you are too young to look back or too old to look forward, the views are disconcerting.

Third Grade, DeWitt Clinton Grammar School (who was he??)

I got Mrs. Gottlieb. She was short, fat, black hair, and wore glasses. Why did ALL the teachers wear glasses? Was it part of some Universal Power trying to project a metaphor our 8 year old minds could not grasp? These people are "near-sighted" , do not trust them for they cannot see the true brilliance and value of the little children sitting in front of them. When did I start having these delusions of grandeur? Probably high school, that is definitely a higher level thinking order.

Mrs. Gottleib was in charge of teaching us how to write in Cursive, and if you ever saw my handwriting you would know what a horrible failure that woman was at her job. My handwriting is atrocious and I can finally see it is all her fault. I feel so relieved. The only other thing I remember about her is how she loved Origami. She spent endless hours teaching us how to make all sorts of things by folding up plain white paper in a thousand different ways. Guess what? I sucked at that too. It was worse than my handwriting. When everyone else was done and had a cute little sail boat, or puppy, or cube, I sat folding and re-folding because if I looked like I was done then they would all know what an eight year old putz looks like. And yes, I knew those words back then. Putz and schmuck and dupa (ass in Polish) were part of my ever growing vocabulary at home. You see, I told you, my real education did not happen during the day at DeWitt Clinton Grammar School. No, the life skills I was going to need to get by had nothing to do with nasty ass teachers, fractions, geography, learning about my home State of Illinois or origami for that matter. I could not fold my way out of what was coming at me in fourth grade.

347 Days until the Big 50

Was second grade second rate? Probably. I know it sounds like I have a chip on my shoulder about my grammar school, but actually school was not all that bad. The problems were mostly with the teachers at the school.

Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t care. After surviving Mrs. Master’s First Class Fright Fest for first grade I must have been suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. I don’t remember a great deal about what I learned in second grade. My second grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Kornacker, hence the reminiscence of a popular childhood song. Physically, she was the opposite of Mrs. Masters. Mrs. Kornacker could only be described as “tight”. She was little and had tiny eyes hiding behind her small pointy eyeglasses. Her blond hair was a firmly compacted covering with a perfectly rounded design on either side of her forehead. Her milky white skin made her look a bit like one of the mannequin’s in the windows of Seymour Paisen’s fine dress shop. She was short, very short and was always dressed in a suit like outfit, blazer on top, a-line skirt, 2 inch heel pumps. She could have probably hid under Mrs. Master’s moomoo type dress and no one would have ever found her.

It was with Mrs. Kornacker that I first noticed the idea of a teacher having “Pets” in the classroom. Mrs. Kornacker reserved her tight little red lipped grins for the kids she thought were her smartest students. Never mind that she probably had nothing to do with how smart the kids were. The teachers at DeWitt Clinton Grammar School had hit the proverbial educational jackpot. In the 1960’s and 70’s they got to work in the City of Chicago at a Public School filled with middle and upper middle class kids whose parents provided a safe clean neighborhood and a deep abiding respect and no interference policy for teachers, even the ones who placed kids in garbage cans. Oh, I know the pendulum has swung the other way. Now, out here in Suburbia, parents who were once silent victims of an oppressive educational regime now demand a say in how their children are educated. But back in my day, the only time we saw parents in a school was when they showed up to watch us sing once a year. And even then it was mostly the stay at home moms. A dad was never seen in school.

I cannot be sure if Mrs. Kornacker actually taught me anything. I continued to learn, but much of what I was learning came from my home. I saw my parents reading newspapers religiously and listened to my brothers who were five and 7 years older than I am. I too started reading the newspaper, first the comics, but as time progressed I would search out other parts of the paper for providing an opportunity to learn new words and see if I could figure out what was going on in the world around me. I also learned a lot in the alley where I spent a great deal of my spare time playing with children of all ages. Perhaps those are the real opportunities missing from my kids lives. No more newspapers. No playing with a dozen kids of all ages. Why bother when we have 120 channels worth of television to watch? They sit in class rooms with round tables or long tables and facing each other. No staring at the back of some other kid’s head with a teacher like Mrs. Kornacker showing her thin smile when and if she felt pleased by one of her students.

348 days until the Big 50

You don’t just get a “best friend.” It is hard work and a lot of luck. But I am all about “relationships” and perhaps that is why I never went to law school, or medical school or accomplished any great task like a marathon or any other “thon”. My focus, time and energy is always spent on people, my mom, my friends, my kids, my cousins…

My best friend is someone I met on the way to kindergarten. Our teacher’s name was Ms. Steinway. At the time, she may have been the only teacher under the age of 60 at DeWitt Clinton School. She seemed nice. It was downhill after that as far as teachers go. Even worse, my best friend and I were separated. It turned out we were not even suppose to be in kindergarten together from the beginning. Kids with last names starting from A to M (me) were suppose to be in the class that spent the first half of the year going to Morning Kindergarten and the second half of the year in afternoon kindergarten. Kids with last names starting with N to Z (my best friend) were on the opposite schedule. Yet, my best friend had just moved into the neighborhood and the classes had already been assigned so somehow she ended up in my group. It would be the only time we were ever in a class together yet our friendship cemented itself on the shiny hardwood floor of the big kindergarten room that year in 1965. And the friendship continued to flourish and evolve over the years amidst the alleys, gang ways and side streets of West Rogers Park.

During our 8 years of grammar school there were three classes for each grade. And you stayed with the same 30 kids from beginning to the end of your grammar school life. We all knew when we left kindergarten we would be saying good-by to something rare at Clinton, a nice teacher. We had heard stories from older siblings and cousins who had already been clearing the path what kind of close encounters with mean and difficult teachers we would be having.
We would be at their mercy. Parental involvement was unheard of back then.

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Masters, an enormous woman with big black hair resembling a helmet. She probably had enough spray on that do to be the inspiration for Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Her hair was so hard bombs would have probably bounced off her head and gone directly back to Russia. She must have hated our 6 year old guts. She never once smiled. That woman was angry about something and I remember our entire first grade class sitting petrified praying for the dismissal bell everyday that year. She would place kids in garbage cans when they misbehaved. Her opinion of exactly what misbehavior was included whispering, looking in the wrong direction, being unattractive and of course, the usual gum chewing. We use to have to sit in small groups at the front of the class during reading time and take turns reading from Dick and Jane books. We were separated based on skill level, so it was always very apparent which group someone was part of, high, medium or low. The smart kids read quickly and with ease. The medium kids varied more in how quickly and readily they performed. The low kids stumbled and mumbled. We were all on display. If it was not your reading group’s turn then you had to sit at your wooden desk nailed firmly to the floor and pretend to read. But what you were really doing was listening in on the reading group that was in a circle at the front of the room. It was impossible not to. So, if you were a lousy reader, you got to be humiliated in front of everyone. I can only imagine what effect that had. Luckily, I liked reading. I just hated Mrs. Master’s more so I somehow ended up in the middle group all the time. It probably had more to do with how nervous she made me than how well I could actually read.

Mrs. Masters would hand out a daily “prize” (balloon, pencil, sticker or a piece of gum you were not allowed to chew) to the best reader within each group. I guess it was her idea of motivation. It would have been better if she would have just learned to smile instead of scowling all the time and kept the lousy balloons and pencils to her big ass self. Luckily, I have gotten over the horrible feelings Mrs. Masters created in me, and First Grade, was just that, First, not second, and not certainly not last. I would have 7 more grades to go. Who, would brighten up my life in 2nd Grade? Stay tuned….

349 Days until the Big 50

I thought this went on yesterday. I did NOT miss a day. I must have missed a key on the keyboard though. I hope this works now. This is further proof I need to do all my writing and posting in the morning. I am obviously compromised in the evenings and I tried to put my post last night after a long day. I cannot find the original poem I planted on yesterday's post, but while I search my endless computer records I found this substitute which will have to do while I continue looking. I know this will say it was published on July 29th meaning there will be a vacany on July 28th making it look like I missed a day. I guess that is why we cannot, and more importantly SHOULD NOT, give to much credit to how things "look!" Because things are never really what they "seem" to be be.


Wishes on Kisses


The mommy kisses her little boy

The little boy kisses his daddy

The daddy kisses his little girl

And the little kiss swirls round the world.

Butterfly kisses float from eyelashes to grandma’s cheeks

While Eskimo kisses bump noses high upon snow peaks

Carefully placed kisses heal wounded elbows and knees

And a hug with a thank you kiss is sure to please.


Is it time to put the kids and the kisses to sleep?

Are the stars and clouds starting their moon light dance?

Can we go to a land of wishes in the sky so deep?

Where inside our dreams there’s always one more chance.

Noisy kisses fit perfectly between giggling friends

Whose playtime is over when the day begins to end.

Did you know there were wishes hiding in those kisses?

It’s true.

The people who love you want you to have sweet dreams.

They fill their kisses with wishes like water filling a stream.

Don’t forget to count all your kisses before you close your eyes.

So you will find your wishes before the morning sun rise.

And while we all sleep the little kisses swirling around the world will keep us warm and safe all night

Until the kisses land back on earth in morning light.

349 Days until the big 50

Bird Poop? or .....

Oh my
Oh my
My eye has a sty
I know why my eye has a sty
It happened when I looked up in the sky
I saw a bird fly by
And I thought I would cry
Because that bird dropped a worm in my eye
I quickly saw that this worm was shy
Because the worm jumped right out of my eye
It quickly slithered away to hide
The bird kept flying nearby looking for a new meal
The lucky worm had escaped what could have been a deadly ordeal.
Being lunch for a bird did not have much appeal

350 Days until the big 50

I must admit I feel like I am cheating when I simply go digging in my old computer files for things I can use on the Blog. It feels a little disingenous because I think I should be "creating" somethng new each day for the big countdown posting. Yet, I have always had a problem in that I write and write and write, but never RE-write. It is like sex for me, when it is over, it is over. I cannot revisit the moment because I need an entirely new moment. But perhaps if I started digging in the archives and simply "polish" some old pieces I might find a gem or two worth sharing. I promise not to pick anything that is obviously dated like my piece on "Desperate House Wives". Is that show still on the air? But if writing is any good, isn't it suppose to be timeless? You tell me. Here is a story from a long time ago when I was only 45 year old, and 20 pounds lighter.

HOARDING? WHY OF COURSE!

Over 5 years ago I took on the daunting task of moving my elderly mother out of the building she had lived in for over 40 years. I now consider hoarding a genetic defect, and I obviously got the “hoarding” gene from my mother. After all, my father, a European immigrant packed all his belongs in one small leather suitcase, which of course I still have. He understood the minimalist approach to life. My mother on the other hand would qualify for the Gold Medal of hoarding. Was it a mutation that occurred in the genes when the poor woman lived through the Great Depression and had gone without so much? What I found particularly interesting was her choice of things to which she needed to amass a huge quantity. What did I find? It would be less time consuming to talk about what I did not find. However, it would not be nearly as interesting.

First, I found her collection of wishbones sitting in a kitchen drawer. All that chicken she ate could not go to complete waste. This bag of wishbones kept her and I busy for about 20 minutes as we took them one by one and pulled them apart while making our silent wishes. Do people still believe in “wish bones”? When I was growing up my mother made fried chicken every Friday. When one of us found the wishbone we would jump for joy. As a child I was always wishing for things like albums and jewelry. I suspect my mom was wishing for a safe journey through life for all three of her kids. That day in the same kitchen more than 3 decades later, we sat pulling apart the wish bones and silently making out wishes. While I gazed at her crooked wrinkled hands wrapped around the tiny bony my wishes were always for her to have a happy and really really long life.

Each afternoon played out like another scene in our own “Moving My Mother” movie. My mother also loved collecting entire sets of dishes from every relative who ever died in our family. One afternoon I found a total of 6 full sets of dishes in large boxes. Each dish, cup, saucer and serving piece was individually wrapped in old newspaper for safe keeping. I opened each box and unwrapped a sample dish to examine the pattern.

My mother would quickly ask me

“Now whose dishes were those?”

“I have no idea. How would I know?” Then I examined the newspaper it had been wrapped in “Wait a minute. I know how we can solve this mystery” I exclaimed! “Who in our family died in 1968?”

“Aunt Ruth” she shouted like a happy contestant on Family Feud.
As my mother’s face lit up with memories of her beloved sister I cracked open the next box and begun unwrapping one of the coffee cups.

“Who died in 1983?” I asked.

“Oh that was Aunt Minnette.” She says wistfully while taking the cup into her hand. Her brother Mikey’s wife was one of her best friends.

A box of black and white photographs found in brown paper bags provided endless trips down memory lane and my mother easily recalled endless details including old addresses, phone numbers, and names of friends from factories where she worked during World War II. She never forgets anything. There is no irony that she also collects figurines of elephants. They are her favorite animal, and one that is known for having an excellent memory. There are elephant figurines on every window sill in the house and on all the coffee tables. A herd of elephants that could populate a small country managed to find room in my mother’s apartment.

But of all the collections, the one that belongs in the Guinness Book of Records is the dreaded Bag Collection. They were everywhere, drawers, cabinets, sheds, closets, under stairwells, behind appliances, inside other bags. There were bags made of plastic, and paper (with and without handles), and canvas and nylon with names from companies that had gone out of business long ago like Lyttons and Woolworths and Pint Size. There were too many bags to count. There wasn’t enough time. We had to be out in a year.

Our biggest fights were over the bags. “NO don’t throw that one out, it is strong and has handles.” She would scream. The inherent value of these bags was astronomical to my poor old mother. I offered to sell them on EBAY but she did not get the joke. I had to explain to her what EBAY was and after I did she became distraught. “You want my bags to go to strangers?” “Don’t worry I told her I will do back ground checks to make sure they find a good home.” “Don’t’ be so funny, we can use those bags” she always responded. It made no sense. She had not used them in 40 years. What was she waiting for? In her mind the potential for “use” far outweighed all other possibilities, especially disposal.

Thus, I got wise. While my poor mom who could barely walk, would sit from a chair giving me orders every afternoon I devised a plan to distract her. One day I went into her bedroom and opened a dresser drawer and found bags of necklaces from all those dead aunts who were kind enough to leave us their dinnerware. The plastic colorful beads were exactly as I had left them from days of playing dress up with my dolls. They were all tangled. I gave my mother a project! Now even she would be useful and she could do it while sitting. I asked her to untangle the necklaces. If they were untangled I could give them to my daughter to play with just as I had.

“Useful” it hit me like a thunderbolt. My mother hoarded, but was willing to give away anything to anybody if the thing would be “used”. My mother needed to feel useful and more importantly she needed all those things she had saved over the many years, the things she could never have had enough money for or the room to store them in during her impoverished childhood, to be “used”.

So on one of my many moving dates with my mom I watched her sitting at our kitchen table untangling the 50 or so necklaces she had accumulated while she mumbled about how much my daughter was going to love having the multi colored plastic beads that were the height of fashion in the 50’s. “You know your Aunt Ruth loved jewelry. She had to put a different necklace on for each outfit.” My mother lovingly talked to me about my many dead Aunts as if the necklaces she was untangling had brought them back to life in her mind. She never lifted her eyes from the task at hand. And while she stayed focus with her new found purpose, I secretly went back and forth throwing out all those bags in the dumpster sitting in the alley.

Towards the end of our packing odyssey, I found treasures only my family could appreciate like the collection of coin purses my grandmother had always used. Moving my mom was a lot of work, but finding space in my house for all those things I made fun of her for saving was even harder.

351 Days Until the Big 50

Countdowns. Names etc.

I never realized how difficult counting backwards was going to be. The other day I called my mother and asked her if she was still 90. She turned 90 on July 14th. She answered “no, I am going backwards, I am 82.” She can be pretty funny sometimes. I told her I was going to change her name to Benjamin Button, but she did not catch the reference and skipped to a different topic. Benjamin, my father, that is who you are named for. “My Benyamin”, and she says it so endearingly I can actually feel the love over the phone.

Too bad I grew up hating my strange name. I would badger my mother when I was a child about this topic. Actually, I still do. Beth, Betsy, Beverly, Barbara. All perfectly good girl names starting with the letter B that would not have made me stand out like a sore thumb among the Marlas, Julies, Eileens, Michelles, Judys, Janices , Audreys, Helens and Lauras. I grew up when people did not want some unusual name . Now it is more acceptable, almost chic to be something other than one of the top ten most popular names. Now everyone strives to make their kid stand out from the get go and it all begins with a name. By time the kids are 3 or 4 then the parents can make them stand out in some other way, usually sports, sometimes academics or music. Just as long as they, “stand out” or is it really about standing “above”. The competition never ends. Was it always that way? My mother will regale me with stories of how they helped each other “back then” or slept on beach without fear because there were no air conditioners. Now she finds herself making new friends and being irritated by some of them. “Estelle wants me to save her a seat in Bingo, but she shows up late and I am not going to get in a fight with someone else because Estelle wants to sit across from me. Yesterday she got all angry and huffed out when she could not sit near me. I am in a wheel, I cannot move. It stay where my caretaker puts me. Is she wants to sit by me, then she will have to show up on time.” The story sounds a lot like the ones I hear from my 10 year old about recess and who wants to play with whom and why it is not her fault if there are not enough swings on the playground. My mother calls all the old people where she lives “recycled teen agers.” I guess it is all about going green, not gangrene of course, that would be bad. Just girls in depends squabbling over their place in the dining room/high school cafeteria or Bingo hall.


My mother lives in Lincolnwood Place. I imagine a monopoly game aimed at the elderly. Now they either play Bingo or cards. But what if we could customize the monopoly game. It is done for other markets like Pokemon lovers or Disney aficianodos. I think the Senior Citizen Edition would be fascinating:

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Social Security.
In stead of 4 train stations, we would have 4 Rest Stops with Bathrooms for those who need to make frequent stops (hell, that applies to my age group now!)

Go Directly to the Hospital (aka Jail) , do not pass go, even if you have to “go”, and do not collect Social Security.

Get out of Hospital Free Card.

FREE PARKING, shows a pictures of a walker or a wheel chairs instead of a car.

COMMUNITY CHEST: Possible cards include:
Mazel Tov, Your Son became a doctor, you collect $1,000 (okay, obviously I am Jewish)
Mazel Tov, Your Daughter Marries a doctor, you collect $300 (after all you are just an
In-law.
Congratulations, Your Daughter became a doctor, you collect $10,000. Now aren’t you glad you told your daughter girls could be doctors too!
You buy stock in Depends, collect $200
You held on to your family home just a little too long, pay the tax man $10,000
You get into the movies at a discount collect $3.
You can no longer use the bus, call a cab, pay $40.

CNANCE: Possible Cards include:

Chance? What chance? There is no such thing.
Chances Are…. That was my favorite song
Chance, I tell you what chance is. That neighbor I hated for 40 years and was so happy
to get rid of when I moved into this place, just moved in down the hall.
Any Chance there is a bathroom within 10 feet of here?


Possible property sites:

Ellis Island
The Fruit Stand
Maxwell Street (Chicago version)
Perhaps a restaurant ROW featuring: What’s Cooking (okay, Chicago version again), The Bagel (Sorry, you may be able to take the writer out of a Jew, but you cannot take the Jew out of the writer), McDonalds with a Senior Discount Card.
States with a lot of old people: Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas , ANY warm climate I guess.
The corner
The Bench
Park “Yourself” Place
Bored With Walkers Place


In order to account for inflation or simple as a nostalgic gesture of good will houses would only cost $10 and apartment buildings would be $30. Also, if you afford them, you just rented like the rest of the world. Better yet, for those who could not qualify for a mortgage you would borrow the money from your sister and your spouses sister (which is what my parents did) and pay them back monthly instead of finding some money scavenger to put you into debt with interest payments so far above your means you could not crawl out from under it with a bulldozer!

Those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end and most of us were not even alive yet. In 1950 my mother was 32, and an old maid living with her parents and her sister. My father had just arrived from Europe. If time was really traveling backwards for my mother who is now 90 I wonder if she would make the same choices during her game of Monopoly in Real Life? Would she buy the same properties? Would she take a Chance on marrying a charming foreigner and having kids? Would she have seen through the charm into the darkness of his past and stayed happily living with her parents and sister for her entire life? Oh, well, she may want to go backwards and we can all fantasize on the “what ifs”, but in reality my mother likes Bingo and Card games better. Yes, luck is involved in all these games, but at least Bingo and Card games let you finish and start a new game a lot quickly than Monopoly, which can seem to go on forever at times. I don’t like playing games that feel as if they never will end. I preferred Scrabble, it comes with a timer and it involves words. But life, hopefully, is a lot more like Monopoly, really long. Keep going forward Becky, 90, 91, 92, 93 because if you start going backward eventually you might just erase me (and my crappy name). Then who in this world would remember Benjamin Katz and all that love you had for him?

352 Days to the Big 50

Today's posting is a pot luck of ideas that popped into my head.

Whoremones what happens to teen age girls
Moremones what happens to teen age boys
Scoremones what happens when whoremones and moremones get together


Catholic Guilt: A mother says “ G-d will get you and punish you so you better not do that (whatever that is, usually it is something your friends are already doing).

Jewish Guilt: A mother says “You are going to kill me with that kind of behavior. I will die of a heart attack and it will be all your fault.

Mixed Marriage means the both of best worlds of guilt but only if the mother is the Jewish one in the relationship:

Mother says: After I die because of your stupid behavior THEN the good lord is going to chase you down to the depths of hell where you will burn with all your nasty friends who made you behave like a moron because they did not want to be the only ones acting that way.


Looking back is hard, but looking forward is harder, which must explain why so many of us get trapped in the past. See you tomorrow, I hope....

353 Days until the Big 60

One of my favorite books, The Celestine Prophecy, teaches us to look for coincidences in our lives and to pay attention to what they may be trying to tell us. So, yesterday I went to lunch with three girl friends. One of them, T was talking about how she sent her 16 year old son to Africa for a month as part of a volunteer program. He flew internationally alone. I mean there were other people on the plane, just not anyone he knew. He would be incommunicado for the month. The cell phone and laptop will be of no use and it is unlikely he will have access to electricity. I kept thinking how brave my friend was and what a wonderful gift she was giving her child. True many of us cannot afford to give these kinds of experiences to our children, but we could and should find other ways to show our children we have confidence in them and encourage a sense of adventure. I am sure it will change the trajectory of her son's life. He will realize there is not anything he cannot do.

Later in the day I went to a fundraiser at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. It featured a storyteller named Connie Regan-Blake and her program was called Light & Shadow: A Storyteller's Journey in Africa. She explained her trip to Uganda in 2007 and how she found out about a group called BeadforLife. It was a remarkable story of courage and more importantly of how to find joy in life no matter what your circumstances.

Is Africa calling me?? Or perhaps BeadforLife is a non-profit I should be helping?

354 Days until the Big 50

Late Night, Last Minute but had to make sure I did not skip another day….

I am very tired right now which makes it difficult to write. It is 11:00 p.m. and both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are over. I was at a fundraiser for the Illinois Holocaust Museum. My father was a survivor. Most of his family was killed, but he and his younger sister survived. He survived in a Gulag in Siberia after running away from his home in Poland before the Nazis got there. My aunt, my grandparents, and my uncle ended up in Auschwitz.

After the war my aunt came to the United States and was able to bring my father here two years later. My father married an American born woman. That is why I always say I am from a mixed marriage. Even though they were both Jewish, one was born in Europe and one was born here. That might as well have been from different planets. Their union resulted in three children. I am the third. I guess that makes me the end of their story.

I will write more on this topic tomorrow. Good night.

355 Days until the Big 50

Lesson Learned

Today’s blog entry was accidentally deleted which is why the “Out of Sync” blog entry is a blank space. I mourn the loss of my words. They were actually very clever and I laughed often while writing about many different things including Chuck E Cheese’s, my husband, my best friend who goes by the initial R, my garbage disposal, science fiction, and a long hidden list of why life is unfolding as it is. I bet that you all would have loved it. Unfortunately I attempted to type directly into the blog and tried editing something and the next thing I knew it disappeared. I searched through all of outer space, but when I found the title there were no words in the Body of the document so I decided to do something REALLY stupid and hit “save” on the document in order to ensure it became nothing but a blank page forever and ever. I realized the mistake the minute I did it. So, I did what I always do, I self medicate with carbohydrates and walked my dog and mentally kicked myself in the ass for at least 2 more hours. By that time, after two hours of writing and two hours of mentally kicking myself in the ass, the morning was gone. I left to do a very brief work out at the health club and then I had an appointment to have my hair colored and cut. All in all I would have to say it was a rather unproductive day.

Since one of my “Turning 50 Years Old” Resolutions is to become the eternal optimist and to not let little things get me down, I have decided to create a silver lining by saying this all happened so I could “learn a lesson.” The lesson learned is so simple I cannot believe it took me the horror of losing a piece of potential Pulitzer caliber writing to get me to TYPE EVERYTHING IN WORD FIRST!! There is a reason it is called “word perfect” and it is because of all the added features like spell check and fancy other stuff. So, never again will you have to face a blank page on my blog. I am going to type it 100 times: I will type everything in Word Perfect First and then Copy and Paste into the Blog. Good night.

Out of Sync

356 Days until the Big 50

Dear Chuck E. Cheese's,

Thank you for providing the perfect enviornment for an adult to get lost in. I think you are superb compared to McDonald's Playland for so many reasons including:

The comfortable cushioned booths.

The numbering of children for the sense of security that every mother craves in this era of being afraid to let your child out of your sight which allows us to totally ignore our children AND have peace of mind.

Some damn fine pizza (even in Chicago, a city known for its pizza).

A lesson every MBA Program should include which is finding a way to charge $20 for two miniature tootsie pops, s piece of string that is suppose to be a ring, and a fake worm. Perhaps President Obama should be consulting this smart little mouse on how to stimulate our economy.

I needed you today more than I needed those two Strawberry Margaritas last Saturday night. My visit today came as a complete surprise. I stopped saving Chuck E. Cheese's coupons more than 2 years ago. My son is now 13 and would rather face a firing squad of the biggest bullies at his school than be seen anywhere near a Chuck E Cheese's. How ironic that I spent the sum total of his first year away at College at your fine establishment before he ever reached kindergarten. I guess it was my idea of a Head Start Program. It worked. He was adding and dividing and calculating points for pathetic plastic prizes faster than you can say Massachusettes Institute of Technology. He skipped simple number identification in kindergarten and went straight for the addition problems.

My daughter is almost 11. She was also a dedicated cheese pizza loving fan from an early age. I guess you might say you were her first true love. However, she is already finished with her third summer at sleep away camp and is quite picky about where we are purchasing her clothes these days so I never anticipated she would choose a beautiful summer day to ask me to take her and an old friend she has not seen in a long time to Chuck E. Cheese's. When you are only 10 years old, how old would you have to be when you first met to consider someone an "old friend?" Enquiring minds might want to know. This friend was someone she met when she was just three. It was like they were having a second honeymoon today. I use to take these two lovely ladies to Chuck E. Cheese for a girls night/afternoon out all the time. They were giddy with anticipation as I drove the old familiar route. "I love their pizza!" my daughter said to her
"childhood friend" with more excitement in her voice than she had when we bought her a big girl two wheel bicycle. Oh, Chuck E, you melt her heart.

On a personal note, the reason I was so excited was the timing of the request could not have been better. I spent the morning helping two adult male cousins with special needs and they had worn me out mentally and emotionally. I know I need to do the "right thing" and not abandon them though I really do want to. Luckily the "love of my life," my sister in law (don't tell my husband) has been my constant companion during the long journey of helping these two brothers. They are the sons of my mother's brother. After both their parents died my mother was the one in our family who decided to "adopt" them. Their parents have been dead a long time, and they often slip and call my mother "mommy" Bekcy. You see, no matter how old they become chronologically, they are very much little boys. Our family has and still does refer to them as "the boys." As my mother got older she became less able to guide and supervise them. So, in addition to giving me her huge collection of plastic and real jewelry before she died (thankfully I still have her and she is 90 years young) when I moved her into a retirement community aka "an old people's home" she also bequeathed "the boys" to me. Most people inherit money, I got two special needs adult males.

It has not been an enviable experience dealing with their contant crisis ranging from finding a suitable living arrangment, managing a myriad of medical bills, dealing with unemployment compensation, and keeping exploitive people away from wreaking havoc with them, teaching them how to use a microwave, and a vacuum cleaner and answering the same questions 1,000,000,000 times.

My plate is plenty full already. But the family has dwindled or moved away and they are incredibly needy and once you become involved with them it can literally take the oxygen right out of your blood. So, Chuck E. you showed up today and I was more than relieved to hand over my 30 bucks and let my daughter eat your pizza, play your games and enjoy her friend while I refilled my diet coke cup a hundred times and wrote in my journal until all the frustration evaporated and I was able to smile again. My diet coke cup runneth over in gratitude to my old Grey Friend. Hey, maybe I found the perfect location for my Big 50 party? BYOB everybody.

357 Days until the Big 50

Frank McCourt died. I remember when I was reading Angela's Ashes and like I do with all my books, I carried it with me and read it wherever and whenever time allowed. I was on a stationary bike at the health club reading Angela's Ashes when all of a sudden tears started pouring out of my eyes. I could not stop them. I got up hoping no one noticed and ran to the bathroom. I was embarrassed. I was enthralled. I was in love with Mr. McCourt. As years went by I had the chance to see him being interviewed on television and his humor and intelligence always came shining through.

He was a writer. But first, he was a teacher. All the obituaries spoke in depth of his long career as a teacher in New York. His third book, Teacher Man is now on my list to read. I had read Tis, but never bothered to pick up the third in the series of his memoirs. I think about teachers a lot. Not just because I have two school aged children, but because a long time ago I wanted to be one. As a young child, I would line my dolls up on my bed and teach them everything I knew. I am sure I had some of the smartest dolls on the block. As the years went by I realized the reason I wanted to be a teacher was because I had not had any positive experiences with the teachers in my grammar school. It was sad but true. Oh, there may have been one or two exceptions in the entire school but not enough to out number the negative ones.

There is a series of books my kids read in First Grade starting with The Teacher from the Black Lagoon and I believe it proceeded with a wide variety of types of Teachers from the Black Lagoon (math, science, gym). In the end though it was always the child's run away imagination in fearful anticipation at work, and the teacher ended up being sweet and nice. I always told my son that in the real world of my childhood, the teachers were far from sweet and nice. They really could have been from the Black Lagoon.

Frank McCourt had some tough teachers in Ireland, but he ended up being a magical teacher in New York. I did not become a teacher. My mother told me it was a dangerous profession. I guess that is because we were living in Chicago at the time and our city schools were generally miserable. It never dawned on me that I could teach in the safety of the suburbs, but this is another story. A story of how my mother limited's point of view flowed down into the gene pool. (see tomorrow's post).

I am so jealous of any child who had the privilege of being in Mr. McCourt's classroom. I will pray that my children will get a teacher like Mr. McCourt one day.

358 Days to the Big 50

The keys on the keyboard on the slide out shelf of my desk have a totally different feel to them and require a lot more pressure from my fingertips. Please read the previous blog to understand why I am discussing the keyboard. I don't like change. I never have. But it will be one of my goals this last year of my 40's to begin to embrace change. I must start by stopping myself from constantly joking about how I do not like change. Mind over matter. I believe I can convince myself of anything. I think everyone has this power. I can write 1,000 times how I do not like to eat cereal and eventually I will truly believe I don't like cereal. I don't plan on doing that, but I could. It is part of that saying about "happiness is a decision." I just saw that cute quote on a piece of tin in an aisle at Target. There were a whole bunch of hanging tin plated decorations with catchy and very meaningful quotes like "People matter more than Possessions" and stuff like that. Which is interesting in that they are attempting to get us to buy some "thing" to remind us of just how unimportant "things" are.

Can I really hypnotize myself by writing something a thousand times until I make it happen in my mind and in my life? I think so. I once lost weight that way. I just kept telling myself I had no appetite and I kept writing down how skinny I wanted to be and eventually it happened. Of course 5 years later I started eating a lot again and soon the weight returned. Can I make my distaste of change into a love of change? Or will my new found brave approach to embracing, chasing and loving change eventually just change back to my old deeply embedded fear of change? Can I change the way I feel about change on a permanent basis? Or, will it be like yoyo dieting with periods where I not only overcome the fear of change but learn to love change and periods where I stand perfectly still refusing to change one single life pattern from the previous 49 years. Fifty or Bust! I am ready for the ride. Bring on the Changes. (please hum David Bowie singing ch..ch..ch..ch.ch. Changes....

359 Days to the big 50

Irony: A paradox between what happens and what might be expected to happen.
Paradox: A statement that seems contradictory, but that may nevertheless be true. an enigma, as a person or thing that possesses contradictory qualities

I needed to look up the definitions of the words Irony and Paradox because even though I use those words often I feel there is a complexity involving and surrounding them I have not yet fully grasped. I think knowing how they are defined by Webster's Pocket Dictionary (I stole it from my 13 year old son's bedroom) should help me understand the reason I accidentaly knocked a little cast iron Rhino figure sitting on the second shelf of the hutch on the desk I am working at onto my Laptop computer at which point the tiny horn bounced off the number 5 taking the little number pad with it to the ground.

The Rhinoceros has become a motivational symbol in my house ever since one of my husband's friends gave us a book entitled Rhinoceros Success by Scott Alexander. My husband and I are both on the same quest to live up to our potential and that means reading and learning from a wide variety of motivational, and inspirational sources. Soon after reading the book, I was buying every Rhino figurine I could find. We took pictures of ourselves with Rhinos at a wide variety of museums and zoos. I am far more superstitious than my husband. So I need to know if there is a connection between our belief in the power of Rhinos and the fact that one of them fell off from the middle of the Hutch sitting on the desk and the only damage done was to the number STOP! Pull out extra keyboard....5 key. Let me say right now, we are not Rhino worshipping cult figures. We simply use it as a type of good luck charm, or perhaps as a way to motivate ouselves into being the best we can be.

You see, now I am now forced to pull out the little extra key board I keep hooked on the sliding shelf in the desk whenever I want to type the number STOP! Pull out extra keyboard... 5. Otherwise I have gotten use to resting my wrists on my lap top while using the laptop's keyboard for everything but the number STOP! Pull out the extra keyboard...5 (and that little per cent figure which is on the Capital portion of that key). Are you bored reading this yet? I am bored writing it. But I need to get this out so I can continue to move forward with my life and my blog. I do not want to take the time or the money to get the number STOP! Pull out the extra keyboard...5 fixed on my laptop. I would have to send it into Dell. I think Dell should offer House Calls the way doctor's use to. I cannot be without this laptop right now. Yet, this is the time I have chosen to start a blog about turning STOP! Pull out the extra keyboard... 50

See it is disruptive to the writing process and I just made it disruptive to the reading process. So you will never hear/read me talk about this annoying lack of a number STOP! Pull out extra keyboard ....5 key on my laptop ever again. But please know I am willing to go to any lengths to continue on this mission. Perhaps I should reward myself when it is all said and done by having the number STOP! Pull out extra keyboard....5 key fixed once I have successfully completed the countdown. Is that irony?

a poem?

Do all writers start out as poets? I remember the first time I wrote creatively (not as an answer to a question like "what did you do on your summer vacation). It was a poem. I may even have it somewhere in a tiny spiral notepad. "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue blah blah blah. And you are too." Dear Lord, perhaps we all start out as plagarists. Who was the first person to come up with the "Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue" line? It has been used so much I cannot even recall where it started. I would love to know.

I have not written a poem since high school. Yet, one just popped into my head. I think it was prompted by a gift my brother and sister-in-law gave me. A beautfil leather bound journal. Whenever I get journals as gifts I consider them an invitation to write. My sister-in-law is always encouraging and supporting me. I wonder how I will be able to thank her one day. Perhaps I will write her a poem.


A Poem, July 17th

Blank pages
Silence rages
A Dried out pen
What, Why, When
Drooping Eyes
Sad Surprise
Stories untold
Mysteries unfold
Finding my place
Is an empty space

How can I fill the pages?
Quietly sooth the rages
Fill up the pen
Discover the why and when
Open my eyes
Uncover the lies
Tell the stories
The pain, the glories

Where are the words?
Why are they hiding?
Could it be they are there?
Waiting to be shared
I will never know
Without the necessary energy flow.

Pass the box, forget the milk...

My husband bought a box of Honey Nut Cheerios the other night during a routine stop at the grocery store. Usually he is like the main character in Jack and the Bean stalk (and a little like the goose who laid the Golden Egg – not that I am calling myself a golden egg, I mean he also is the only source of income in our family. I usually send my hunter man out with an easy to follow list of 1-2 items and he returns with bags and bags of all sorts of goodies, none of which are on the original request list. I was thrilled the other night when I asked him if he could stop and get some Diet Coke . It was a rare and wonderful sight when he showed up with the actual requested item. But he still had bags and bags of things I had not requested. But how could I complain, I got what I wanted. I will tell you how I can complain. I got more than I wanted which is not always a good thing. Even after 15 years of marriage I had kept a dark secret. I had a terrible addiction. My husband knew about the Diet Coke addiction. Everyone who knows me is aware that I sleep with an IV hooked up to help with a continuous 24 hour delivery of Diet Coke into my system. But there is another addiction and it is one I have been hiding for a long time. My favorite food is not Carson’s Ribs, Fettuchini Alfredo or the Salmon and Sweet Potato combo at Wildfire. No, I can be totally turned upside down and into a slobbering fool by a box of cereal. So, what possessed my husband to buy a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. He usually buys himself a wide variety of food, but never cereal. When we first got married he made fun of the fact that I considered cereal a snack. I don’t care for milk. I just ate it “dry” like potato chips. His idea of a snack was a food product that was actually found in the snack aisle. But lately I think he has been picking up some of my bad habits and he has been snacking on cereal. I know which cereals to buy so I will be able to control myself and not fall off the wagon into the sea of consumption, and Honey Nut Cheerios is NOT one of them.

I ate the entire thing in less than 36 hours. It is my cereal addiction rearing its ugly head. I guess that makes me a cereal killer. I know what cocaine and heroine can do so I guess I should be thankful my drug of choice is a carbohydrate laced in some sweet tasting sugary combination. I even have my top ten list of all time favorite cereals. If anyone ever creates a fancy restaurant where all they serve are bowls of cereal I bet it will be impossible to get a reservation. When I go to the grocery store the Cereal Aisle is like the walk of temptation for me. My top ten list, oh it changes from time to time when a new kid on the block comes out of nowhere and takes my taste buds and seemingly bottomless belly by surprise, but here goes:

Puffins (original FLAVOR)
Honey Nut Cheerios
Cinnamon Life
Lucky Charms
Frosted Flakes
Golden Grahams
Go Lean (regular, NOT crunch)
Coco Puffs
Fiber One (any of them) (have added value in departments other than just taste)
Good Friends by Kashi

360 Days until the Big 50

I Suck. I did not even make it an entire week and I already missed one day. Am I a prisoner of my childhood? NO! I cannot let this early mishap derail my initial goal. What does this have to do with my childhood, you may ask. Well that is a long story and this is a short blog. So suffice it to say originally I was going to lie and post a 362 days until the Big 50 and no one would have been the wiser. Especially since I realize no one is actually reading all this. Yet, I cannot tell a lie, even to myself. I want to, and normally I would have except I am trying to escape from my childhood by breaking out of all those old familiar habits I have so successfully employed over the last 49 years. Usually I would try to cover up the mistake, and then forget about it rather than admit to it and use it as a learning tool. Learning to fail and then to keep on trying might be the most difficult lesson I never learned. Perhaps that will all change when I turn 50. I will fail and push forward and fail again and again until I learn to love failure at which point I will then consider myself a great success. None of this is making any sense to me either if that is any consolation.

So, here is my excuse for why I missed a day. (I will try to avoid letting that happen again):

I had to help my mother celebrate her 90th birthday. That is a good thing. I had to be with my oldest brother who I rarely see. That is a bad thing. Thus, my childhood comes rearing its ugly head. Oh, I have conquered all those demons a hundred times over and yet.....there they are staring me in the face again. Tough little buggers those demons. He does not frighten me. I am just pissed off that I let it distract me from my noble goals of succeeding in life. I consider this blog and my daily entry to be a living testament to my children that one should never give up. Yet, knowing I was going to have to see him was enough to plant some subliminal energy sucker outer of my day. I was distracted, and disorganized. I cannot blame him because that is what he does, he blames everyone else. I refuse to go there. I am going to take responsibility for my own life. I will not get angry that I bust my ass helping my special needs cousins, raise two somewhat functional children, oversee the care of my 90 year old mother and then have to look at him acting like a weirdo lamenting how difficult his life is all because we had a crazy childhood. I have moved on, damn it. I know he cannot, but why the hell does it bother him that I have? But bother him it does. It bothers him to the point of acting like some poor pathetic misanthrope when in the presence of our entire family. He cannot think of anyone else and he wants all of us to sit and think about him too. Well this is what I have to say about that...

Narcissism is a terrible thing to waste......

Especially on other people!!!

So go ahead, self obsess all you want. I know you got dealt a bad hand bro but I was not the dealer and I got a lot of the same cards. You don't see me sitting in a puddle of self pity. I had enough sense to get out...of our childhood. If you want to stay there. Go right ahead. But I know the truth. That 90 year old woman you cannot even spend 10 minutes thinking about made sure you got a great college education and became a successful business man. You did not even bother to buy her a card or a gift or send her flowers. Your selfishness is what irritates me. I know you think I hate you because you made my life miserable when we were growing up, but I assure you I have left all that behind me. It is the way you are acting in the HERE and NOW that I cannot stand. But NOW I am going to have to abandon that anger as well, because once again, I am going to move forward while you will be stuck in the rear view mirror of my life. I know your back there, but I have already passed you by...bye bye

I can't wait to turn 50. I imagine a whole bunch of new opportunities and experiences just waiting for me. So if anyone is out there reading this, I will see you tomorrow.

362 Days until the Big 50

One of my favorite things to do is to read. I guess it started when I memorized my first book while sitting perched on a kitchen table in Humboldt Park. Someone, I am assuming it was my mother's sister, read the same book to me so often I was able to repeat it back word for word corresponding perfectly with the pictures on the pages. In my mind, I was reading and not just memorizing. Eventually I learned how to actually read, and had to move off the kitchen table and sit in a chair. I have always found great comfort in words whether they are written in the form of a novel, a short story, a poem, an essay, or the lyrics to songs. I think of words as keys and I use them to unlock my thoughts, and feelings so I can make sense of the world and my place in it.

When I had my own children and re-entered the world of children's books it did not take long to see what first drew me to my love for words. For a long time my favorite book was The Great Gatsby, then it was Great Expectations and then the Prince of Tides. When my son was born my favorite book became Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss. Then when my son turned 3 my best friend gave him the book, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and I had a new idol. Move over Fitzgerald, Dickens and Conroy, Mr. Silverstein has just waltzed into the room and into my heart. His poem Where the Sidewalk Ends spins the idea of childhood dreams into a tapestry of a never ending chalk filled paradise. So, it was the idea of Sidewalks that made me go back and re-read the poem.

I have started riding my bicycle again, another passion that usually starts in childhood. Some passions have to wait until we are old enough or coordinated enough or strong enough, but not reading or bike riding. Those are love affairs that can begin with one word picture books and tricycles. Yet, while I never stopped reading, I did stop riding after I moved from the city to the suburbs 12 years ago. Growing up I needed my bicycle for so many reasons, the most important being as a mode of transportation since I grew up in a family that did not have a car. But in the Big City you don't need 4 wheels to get around. Two will do. So I rode and rode and rode. Then I realized all that riding was also a great way to lose the extra weight I tended to gain every 2-3 years. And even better, riding my bike along the Chicago lake front from Hollywood to Oak Street Beach was a great way to meditate and day dream about books I might write one day.

When I moved out to Buffalo Grove with my one year old son I put my bike in the garage and forgot about it. Growing up in the suburbs has made it easy to live a life without bicycles. My kids need to be driven everywhere. Some suburbs have no sidewalks at all. Even more dangerous are all the main avenues with 4 to 6 lanes of traffic. I realize there are bike trails but you have to drive to a lot of them just in order to start which means hooking the bike up to a carrier on the car and THEN going somewhere suitable for a bike ride. It just takes all the romance out of it for me. So I started riding around my neighborhood out here in Suburbville USA.

I am here to say, it is not true that you never forget how to ride a bike. I have fallen numerous times. I seem to have loss my sense of balance and/or confidence. I am quite nervous as I maneuver through streets to get to the one accessible bike path in my neighborhood. Suddenly everything seems so narrow. I am only about 20 pounds more than I use to be yet I feel like sidewalks and the bike paths are made for well coordinated stick figures. I have developed a horrible fear that I will run into another bike rider when I see one heading towards me. Then it dawns on me. I am not that much larger and uncoordinated than I was 20 years ago. I am not the problem.

Our culture has alloted space for the things it worships, cars, big cars. If we had been truly intelligent during all this urban/suburban planning we would have made much wider sidewalks and big fat bicyle trails running along every street and highway. Just think of how skinny we would all be from the walking and riding. Obesity epidemic? There would not be one. We could even break out the old grocery carts we all pulled along Devon Avenue when I was growing up. I wonder how that might help with firming up my flabby arms? And think of the stories a kid with a box of chalk could come up with along Sidewalks that never END?? Oh Shel, I miss you.

363 Days Until the Big 50

I use to run after guys on motorcycles the way little kids chase the sounds of the bells on the ice cream truck. The summer of my 19th birthday I fell for a life guard who had a motorcycle (cause enough for a multiple orgasm even before any physical contact). I would take the Devon bus going away from my house and towards the beach so I could then get a ride home on his motocycle. I would never wear a helmet. It just wasn't sexy. Years later when MTV was born I would watch Videos filled with young tan people on beaches, on motorcycles, tempting each other in short shorts and would think, "that was me once." Oh, I knew my youth and all the wonder it held was slowly slipping away. Now I see a motorcycle and think, "No way would I get on one of those. Why aren't those people wearing helmets, don't they know how dangerous it is to ride without a helmet?"

364 More Days Until The Big 50

The countdown begins..... I must post at least one thing a day until I turn 50. I am not allowing myself to skip one day. Not ONE. No matter how short or stupid the Post Might Be, it Must still BE.

Okay, I was out to dinner the other night with two friends. One of the friends is a Jewish Girl married to a Jewish Guy. The other friend is a Catholic girl married to a Jewish Guy. As we were joking around the Catholic girl started to explain what prevented her from doing bad things in her youth, Guilt. Her mother would tell her not to do things like drinking and sex because if she did then G-d would punish her. Ooooohhhhh I am so scared I said. Your catholic guilt cannot hold a candle (no pun intended) to my Jewish guilt. My mother told me if I did anything bad it would give her a heart attack and kill her and I would have to live with that hanging over my head for the rest of my life. Well tomorrow my mother turns 90. I guess she was lieing to me because by my recollections she should not have gotten past my senior year in high school. Happy Birthday Mom.

Rough Draft

Today I turned 49! So, I have decided to consider the first 49 years of my life and the next 12 months as my "Rough Draft". I will begin revising on July 12, 2010 when I turn 50 and hope to have a "final version" before July 12, 2060 (yeah, I am going all the way to 100 BABY).

In the meantime, I am going to have a COUNTDOWN to the big 50 on this blog. I am not exactly sure what form this will take other than I am committing myself to posting at least one blog segment a day as part of the COUNTDOWN. This project will culminate with my one woman stand up show (location to be determined) on the Saturday, July 10, 2010 (the weekend prior to my big 50 BDAY). Everyone I know will be invited. Anyone who reads this can attend. I do not want any gifts! I mean it. I only want you to buy all your own drinks, because the more you drink, the funnier I will get, GUARANTEED! I will not be spending a penny. In returned for your kind attendance and purchasing of your own alcoholic beverages, I will provide the entertainment. I have already started preparing the script. I encourage you to tell all your friends. By making this a public promise I hope I will actually go through with it. As the little engince that could once said...

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can......

So mark your calendars, Saturday, July 10, 2010. Be there, be drunk (don't drive), be happy.

Quiet Men

I will never forget Sollie’s funeral. He was my upstairs neighbor and before moving upstairs he lived down the block. That is what we did in West Rogers Park. People moved from apartment to apartment, but they rarely left the neighborhood. If you only met Sollie once you would never have guessed he was a man whose passing would bring together so many people from so many walks of life. He was so quiet and unassuming. My husband and I got to the funeral early because we were bringing my mother, one of Sollie’s best friends. We passed by the front row expressing our condolences to Sollie’s wife, son, daughter and granddaughter. My husband and I had only been married for 3 years at the time and we lived in the apartment above Sollie and his wife. They were married for over 50 years when Sollie passed away. Within minutes the funeral home was filled to capacity and many people would need to remain standing during the service.

Each eulogy was more eloquent than the one before it and they all moved everyone in the overcrowded chapel to tears. The first to speak was a Senior Partner at the Law Firm where Sollie had been working for the last 20 years of his life after he had retired from being a United States mailman. I later found out this attorney was a major fixture in Chicago, someone who had easy access to the halls of Power in our country’s third largest City. Next the woman who was the President of the Sisterhood at Sollie’s temple where he had worshipped faithfully for over 6 decades spoke wistfully of the light Sollie’s life had brought to so many. Then Sollie’s son spoke, the awe and regret dripping off of every word. Finally, Sollie’s granddaughter brought her self to the podium with the poise and power of someone whose 16 year life reflected all the hardship and trouble usually spread over a much longer time. She learned how to handle herself at her grandfather’s knee and she knew standing there she was the legacy he was leaving behind, his mark on the world.

Sollie once landed on the beaches of Normandy in a living hell, but he refused to speak about it. He came home after the war and repeatedly walked the same route for forty years delivering mail for the United States Post Office. I guess he thought of that as his second tour of duty serving our country. And Sollie was all about duty and service and delivering the goods. Eventually he had to retire from the Post Office but he could not retire from serving. So he delivered the mail in a law firm that was so big it needed its own mail delivery system to expedite business from office to office, floor to floor and building to building. But whatever Sollie did, he did it quietly and with great dignity and reserve. He let his smile do all the talking for him. Monetarily speaking, he left a pension and little else. Spiritually he left a wake, a cascading invisible ocean wave that lifted every soul he ever touched. I did not think I would ever see a funeral like Sollie’s again. I was wrong.

When I met Melinda and Ilene I was a freshman in High School. They had gone to a different grammar school than I had. They were already best friends, but more importantly they were neighbors. They lived on the block we all wished we could grow up on, the one filled with kids and friendships just waiting to blossom every spring when the flowers bloomed along the sidewalks and the bicycles came out of hiding . I remember meeting them individually, Melinda in Biology and Ilene in gym. On that first day I did not realize they knew each other, but by the end of the week, I fell into this triangle of a friendship that was going to last a life time. Oh, there would be some major fall outs and long separations for all us at one point or another, but a life time gives you chances for reconciliations and starting over. And last weekend any bumps in the roads we had traveled seemed so incredibly unimportant.

Since those days in high school we have managed to get married, produce 6 kids, celebrate 4 Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, accumulate 3 dogs, 2 rats (both my sons), and three suburban homes complete with attached garages and a total of 9 bathrooms. Not bad for three girls from West Rogers Park in Chicago who once occupied two town houses, and one apartment (each with only one bathroom). While Ilene and I never left the Chicago “area”, Melinda followed her heart and her close knit family to Arizona 7 years ago. Her parents and three brothers had moved there while we were still in college. I remember visiting Arizona with Ilene when Melinda was staying there one winter. We were in our early 20’s. I did not return there again until Melinda’s daughters’ Bat Mitzvah three years ago, once again I was with Ilene. Then last February, Ilene and I went back for Melinda’s son’s Bar Mitzvah. We always make sure to take a picture of three of us standing together trying to look like show girls. Last weekend when Ilene and I went to Arizona we knew we would not be posing for any pictures or raising a glass to toast another celebration. It was the first time in our friendship when we would be mourning together over the loss of a parent. I came into the friendship with only one parent. My father had died when I was 9, long before my freshman year in high school. Sadly we had already been together to mourn the loss of a sibling when Ilene’s special needs brother died in 2001. You would not expect to bury a sibling so young but I guess death has its own time line.

It was Melinda who called to tell me about Ilene’s brother. I was in my car when she reached me on my cell phone. She told me to pull over first. I knew it meant she had to tell me someone had died but I would never have thought it would be Ilene’s brother Mark. He was only 2 years old than us. He reminded me of my cousin Shelly. When we were growing up we called them “slow”, or retarded, but now those words seem so antiquated. As Mark reached adulthood his parents made sure he had an independent life style and he was living in a group home and had a job. The funeral was to be graveside at Waldheim, the oldest Jewish Cemetery in Illinois. My father was there. I went with Melinda and we stood next to each other behind Ilene and her parents who were sitting in chairs. After the service Melinda turned to me and said “I would like to meet your father now.” I thought she was nuts. I rarely went to the cemetery. It was so far from everything else in my life. It was just so far from life. But that was so Melinda. She was almost bubbly about it. It helped us to get through the day. She even grabbed another one of Ilene’s friends, Sue, to join us in our search for my dad.

I knew what section we would be in before we ever left our houses that day for Waldheim Cemetery, and could not believe the weird twist of fate that Ilene’s brother would be buried in the same section as my dad in a Cemetery that was so huge it took up enough land on either side of a main four lane Avenue to put multiple football fields. When we found my dad’s headstone Melinda looked at it and said “Wow, 1970. It was so long ago. We were so little.” And we were. But now we were adults, mothers, and here I was mourning again. Before I could get too caught up in the emotion of realizing how incredibly tragic it is for a 9 year old child to lose a parent, and then realizing I was that 9 year old child, Melinda blurted out “Nice to meet you Harry” and I had to laugh. I thought to myself, thank the lord for friends like Melinda and Ilene, the ones who fill your life with laughter even when you want to cry. I turned and saw Ilene and her parents getting into their cars. I wondered where Ilene and her brother might have been in 1970 while I was at my father’s funeral. They were probably playing in front of their townhouse on Kedzie with Melinda and her baby brother, dodge ball, jump rope, or Simon Says, who knows? Those are the details that get lost in the tunnel of time. Thank goodness for time.

My mother will be 90 this July. Ilene’s dad has been battling Parkinson’s for years. Yet, it was Melinda’s dad we were mourning first. And like my neighbor Sollie, his passing would provide me with a glimpse into the vast world where quiet men move, changing and shaping lives while barely making a sound. It was sad, but it was also inspiring which I believe would have made Melinda’s dad, Gil, very happy. Perhaps I could be one last person he would touch without realizing the impact. Proof that one lives long after they stop breathing.

Growing up without a father made me shy around other people’s fathers. I was always more comfortable with the moms. At least I thought it was the lack of having my own dad that made the other fathers seem so mysterious. But this past weekend I discovered it may have been more than that. Ilene pointed it out to me. When we were growing up the fathers were not driving us around, coaching teams, joining Me and My Dad groups at the JCC or Indian Guides/Princess at the YMCA. Park Districts did not offer Daddy Daughter Dances. Dads were part of the family but not the extended family, the neighborhood family, unless of course you are talking about Melinda’s dad.

Maybe I did not realize it because Melinda was the third of four and the only girl. So by time I entered her life, Gil’s dance card was pretty full. He and his wife had already adopted most of the kids on their block and their two oldest sons had been coming home for years with friends from grammar school and high school, and anywhere else they may have been hanging out like Wrigley Field where they earned money as Vendors selling hot dogs and soda. Melinda’s family was everybody’s family. That is how Melinda’s family made you feel from the moment you walked in the door. There was always a full house and plenty of smiles. Everyone was welcomed.

Gil’s two oldest sons attracted a wide variety of friends and many of them were in need of guidance, and more importantly a safe harbor where they could rest before returning to whatever chaos was in their own homes. But we did not know that when we were kids. We did not know about the turmoil in other people’s homes and hearts. Gil and his wife Jeanine must have. They made it their mission in life to make other people’s lives a little easier by opening their home and in Gil’s case offering his wise business sense and advice for free to any one who chose to listen. And listen they obviously did, because at the funeral once again I was sitting quietly and learning what greatness is all about. It comes by changing one life at a time, not being famous or fabulously rich. Although it was apparent that Gil was a great success in life and his sons and daughter faithfully followed in his footsteps as would his grandchildren, he wanted more than that. As one after another person got up to speak about Gil it became obvious Gil’s true desire in life was to reach out and improve the lives of more than just his own children. I kept thinking how completely unselfish, and brave this must have been especially in a culture that worships competition and coming out on top. Not to mention he did all this while raising his own 4 kids, building his own business and tending to his dedicated wife.

Gil knew more for others did not mean less for him, or his family. Instead it had the opposite effect. It filled their home and lives with laughter, memory making stories, and an abundance of the one resource worth more than all the money in the world, friendships. Gil obviously knew giving people a chance could make the world a better place for everyone. Not something I expected to learn from a successful business man in this day and age. Not when they are bailing out greedy bankers, predatory lenders and crooked investors like Bernie Madoff. I guess there still is hope. I hope there are more Gil’s in the future extending a hand to wayward kids in need of advice and a real role model, what my mother always called a mensch. I have to believe there are and they will be part of Gil’s legacy just like his own children and all those other children who became like his own over the years.

Speech I gave at My Son's Bar Mitzvah

By now you have heard me tell the story of your first year in life 10,000 times. You challenged me then and you still challenge me now. However, I look at these challenges differently. I see how you have made me stronger and smarter and I want to thank you for that. Since you were totally resistant to sleeping for the first 12 months of your life, I use to walk for miles with you in a baby bjorn attached to the front of me. I will always remember how you searched the sky and trees with those big beautiful brown eyes. You looked genuinely fascinated by the world around you. Now you watch the Discovery Channel still searching for new experiences this world may have in store for you.

I also started reading to you practically from the day you were born. I loved reading to you because you paid such close attention to the pictures and the sound of my voice. I was convinced you understood every word. You were only about 6 or 7 months old when you started turning the pages of the books as I read. In the beginning I would say “turn the page” at the appropriate time, but it did not take long for you to simply know the right moment and begin turning the page as soon as I finished reading it. When I saw you turning the pages with out me having to ask, I knew I had a smart little baby on my hands. Today we are turning another page together.

What does your becoming a Bar Mitzvah mean to me, your mother, the woman who brought you into this world and who loves you more than words can say? I have fulfilled a dream by bringing a bright wonderful Jewish man into the world. Growing up I wanted to help my people continue to exist because I was so painfully aware that our very existence was a fragile gift. I could not think of a better way to honor the memory of the family I never knew who perished in the Holocaust than to bring another Jewish life into this world. I was lucky to have one Bubbie, but knew so many other children who had 4 grandparents. You have been blessed with five grandparents, a literal bonanza of unconditional love, not to mention your wonderful Uncles and Aunts. And today they are all here to be with you as you become a Bar Mitzvah. Your Bar Mitzvah also has a special meaning for me in that I am able to share it with my mother Becky who will be 90 this July. It was a promise I made to her when you were born that she would be here to see you become a Bar Mitzvah and she is.

I have put a lot of pressure on both myself and on you to make a difference in this world. I know it is important for you to become a well educated and successful adult, but a meaningful life must include much more than that. You are such an intelligent young man with so much potential. You have an opportunity to truly make this world a better place. I hope on your journey you will discover the way to happiness is by following your dreams and finding that by making other people’s lives better, you automatically enrich your own life.

The value of the life we make is a question of quality and not quantity. It is not about how many friends you have, but how good, dependable, and caring the friends you do have are. It is not how much money you have, but how you use your money to make a better life not just for yourself, but for those you love and those in need. I want you to know I will think of you as a great success if you become a kind, responsible and generous adult who respects everyone regardless of their status or position in this world.

Another one of my favorite memories from when you were a small child was your love for animals. There were early signs you would become an animal lover. When I would take you for long walks in your stroller, the mere sight of a dog would make you point and kick your feet because it made you so happy. You loved going to the Zoo and the Aquarium and still do. I am not surprised you picked helping an animal shelter as your mitzvah project. You have a way with animals and a truly kind heart. And it is both your intelligence and your kindness I am hoping will become the qualities you will carry with you into adulthood.

I remember when as a little girl I would sit next to my father in synagogue playing with the strings on his talit and loving the feeling of the soft strings between my fingers while listening to the congregation chanting in words I did not understand but felt resonating deep inside me. Today, you are wearing your father’s talit and I keep thinking how lucky we as a people are to have those strings to bind us to a rich history of perseverance and purpose. Those strings are a tie not only to our shared Jewish history, but to the ties that bind our family. And you come from a family with a long history of not only surviving the unthinkable but having the strength and courage to keep moving forward. I hope you will always remember and respect the past and feel a responsibility for creating a better future for yourself, your family and the Jewish community.

I love you, and I know I am going to respect the man you are becoming.