Basement Archaeology
Cleaning the basement is somewhat akin to an archaeological excavation. Digging through layers of boxes, you can uncover relics from the past: coats you haven't worn for 50 years, baby announcements and Bat Mitzvah invitations for a daughter who is now over 40 years old, a game of Twister that at our age would present a very significant health hazard, yellowed copies of the New York Times from September 11, 2001, and one announcing the Israel Egypt peace agreement dated March 26, 1979.
We found perhaps thousands of photos—mostly of our children but occasionally of travel experiences—the barges on the Amsterdam canals, vistas of the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog, the cobblestone alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem. I went through all the photos, throwing out the duplicates and the ones out of focus, and putting aside ones with special meaning: birth, B-Mitzvah, graduations, relatives whom I loved and who are now gone.
For some reason, my mother passed on the family archives (broadly defined) to me: a copy of my diploma from SUNY Albany (1974), letters I wrote from camp when I was 8 pleading with my parents to take me home, aerograms from Israel in 1975 describing life on Kibbutz Maayan Tzvi, a photo of my father sitting behind a World War II B-17 bomber.
Perhaps the oddest item, and without question the one that impacted me the most, was my father's brown leather wallet. Opening it up revealed his Social Security card, New York State driver's license, and, within the translucent plastic pockets generally used for displaying photographs, four disintegrating four-leaf clovers.
I have my father's Boy's High yearbook from 1941 and his varsity football sweater—a heavy black wool garment with a large "B" emblazoned on the front. But neither of these, nor the multiple photographs of him, had the emotional impact of his wallet and its contents. And I'm trying to figure out why.
Unlike photos of special moments and objects representing his athletic skills, these were mundane items that accompanied him in his daily life. They were in his back pocket as he navigated the side roads of Queens and Brooklyn on his way to grind and mix spices at J. Raphael and Sons. He would have pulled out his wallet when he treated his children and their friends to Carvel ice cream on Bell Boulevard or when he and I had coffee and apple turnovers at the Scobee Grill in Little Neck. Perhaps they were in a drawer in his bedside table as he lay in his room at Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital in New York. The wallet also contains a check for $35 made out to, in my father’s handwriting, Dr. Robert Levy, who was, if I remember correctly, the Oncologist who first treated his Hodgkin’s Disease.
In the context of his early death, the desiccated four-leaf clovers struck me as ironic. But perhaps they were a message sent to me from beyond the grave: Luck is how you define it. Yes, he died at a young age. But his life was blessed with a wonderful family who adored him. He had friendships that lasted a lifetime. "The crown of a good name is above them all[1]." He was recognized as an honest, caring, and decent man. His work, as I have been told, was a difficult burden for him. But he persevered. He got up every morning at 5:30 am, navigated an hour's worth of traffic, spent 9 hours mixing, grinding, and packaging spices that would provide the flavoring for most of the meatpackers and pickle makers in New York, and then spent another hour in traffic. If God was looking down on him, and if there is a heaven, I think he has earned his luck.
P.S. On a lighter note, my father handed down this tongue twister that I now share with my grandchildren causing delightful giggling. Try it:
One smart fellow, he felt smart.
Two smart fellows, they felt smart.
Three smart fellows, they all felt smart.
[1] Ethics of our Ancestors, 4:17—"Rabbi Shimon said, there are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of kingship. And the crown of a good name is above them all."
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