Thoughts on My Mom from Bina Mazal Adam's Simchat Bat

Zeh hayom asah Adonai, nagilah v'nismecha vo".  "THIS is the day that God has made, let us celebrate and rejoice in it

My Mother’s English name was Beulah.  On multiple levels, this puts her on the “B” list for baby naming opportunities.  But everybody called her “Billie”.  Her Hebrew name was “Bracha”, which, in Hebrew, means “blessing”.

Like her granddaughter and grandson-in-law, my mother loved music.  We had a piano in our living room and she used to delight in playing and singing.  She performed the lead role in a number of Jewish Center of Bayside Oaks musical performances.  If you like, I can sing you a couple of stanzas.

When we were children, she would play a movement from Mozart’s Piano Sonata #11 – and we would whirl and dance across the living room like dervishes, then collapse on the floor. She would wait a couple of seconds and then start again.  Alya and Nomi are probably thinking that this explains a lot.

Like Nomi and Keith, my mother loved children and children loved her.

She was a pre-school teacher for approximately 25 years and the beloved camp mother at camp K’far Masada in New York for many years.

I still remember children at camp following her around shouting with great delight: “Billy, Billy,”.

That memory came to life about 13 years ago when Nomi was a counselor at Camp Moshava.  As we arrived for visiting day, we spied her coming towards us with children hanging on her arms and legs; all shouting “Nomi, Nomi”.

My mother’s life wasn’t always easy.  She was 43 when my father died and she also lost a second husband to cancer.  But she both sustained and was sustained by her family.  Nothing gave her greater joy than her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  I wish she could have been with us today at the Simchat Bat of her 39th great-grandchild.  Three more are on the way.

My mother lived in a time when families were closer – not necessarily emotionally closer but physically closer.  She lived within walking distance of all her cousins and, in fact, one of her cousins live in her home.  When I was growing up, we lived in driving distance of all of our cousins and we saw them every week.

It’s harder now.  Jo, Jacob and I are in Atlanta. Alya and Esteban are in San Francisco. Nomi, Keith and Bina are in Baltimore. Nomi, Alya’s and Jacob’s cousins stretch from New York to Jerusalem. We have come to deeply appreciate Facetime and Skype, although it is not the same.

But Jo and I are so comforted that Nomi and Keith have such a wonderful family of friends here in Baltimore.  Jo and I are so grateful to everybody here for taking such good care of Nomi, Keith and Bina.  True friends are a wonderful Bracha.

Thank you all for being our extended family, for joining us today, and sharing this wonderful simcha.

Thoughts on Turning 65

Vitiligo sounds as if it could be either an exotic sexual act or the language of vitamins. Since, I am the author of this treatise, it cannot be the former, as I have no awareness of the like.  The latter assumes that C has the capacity to communicate with D, K and friends.  If this was the case, what would they say? “Nice job on scurvy?”

In fact, vitiligo is a dermatologic condition causing the loss of pigment on areas of skin. I first discovered that I had this ailment when visiting a dermatologist for an entirely different condition.  He deemed my other complaint to be “boring” but, at seeing patches of white under my arms he exclaimed “now that’s interesting” and diagnosed the condition.  As a side note here, “that’s interesting” is not an utterance one welcomes hearing from a physician. 

In my world of metaphorical thinking, vitiligo was a clear sign that I was fading away. 

Clearly, there is much that is lost and gained in aging. Hair comes to mind.  In this regard, I have fared better than some.  Although, I have come to postulate that there is a direct inverse relationship between the hairs on your head and those in your ears; as one diminishes, the other multiplies.  Perhaps it has to do with the physical law regarding the conservation of matter.  But, it has become clear to me that, as one ages, the term “getting a haircut” becomes increasingly expansive in its definition and, quite literally, covers greater territory.

Teeth also seem to come to mind. To my great regret, having eschew the genetic blueprints for my father’s good looks and athletic proclivities, I instead inherited his disposition to gum disease.  I am a poster child in this regard.  To be fair, the loss of bone tissue along with abutting teeth have been nicely replaced with implants that, when x-rayed, make my skull look like a being out of an early James Cameron movie.  And while no one will ever confuse me with Arnold Schwarzenegger, I do share a birth date with another highly-regarded action star – Mr. T.  Who knows, perhaps we were switched at birth.

Continuing along our list of losses, I am missing a sliver of my meniscus and I also have no spleen.  The missing spleen was removed 35 years ago to address an idiopathic blood disorder.  Idiopathic is a medical term for “we haven’t a clue”.  The absence of this organ has not had any long term deleterious impact, although to paraphrase Dracula: “the night is still young”.  I am reminded of the one about the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist.  Says the pessimist: “Things are terrible, they can’t possibly get worse”.  The optimist: “Things are terrible, but they can always get worse.”  Where were we? Ah, the missing spleen; the one significant impact has been my being more susceptible to infections.  Thus, my physician’s insistence that my annual check-ups be accompanied by inoculations to a broad array of infectious diseases, some of which haven’t seen the light of day since the Boer Wars.  

On the gains side, my daily morning and evening hygiene regimen have swelled to a good 20 minutes.  Brushing, flossing, water picking and antihistamine nose spray now fill the evenings in morning periods once reserved for intimacy or extra sleep.  I have regained some of this lost sleep by initiating a routine of daily meditation – which is like sleep but much more fashionable.

Additionally, people tell me that I haven’t lost my sense of humor.  I am not sure, however, that they consider this a compliment.

I could go on.  However, in assessing our lives, the essential metric is not what we have lost and gained but who.  The loss of my father was, in the context of my life and my identity, definitional.  My cousin Jonathan’s death reframed core values and my world view. So many others as well; Bobby Bauer, who in high school was the best of us; my cousin, Stuart whose occasional bluster obfuscated his profound kindness and humanity. My Father in law Hal whose passion for social justice and his care for all people was unmatched.

But I have been blessed with so many personal gains; all encapsulated in six words: A remarkable family and dear friends. The rest is commentary. 

Dear Dad- Written March 25, 2017

Dear Dad

The Yiskor candles are burning in my kitchen.  It has been 45 years since your death.  I was 19 years old when I shoveled dirt onto your coffin.  I’m 64 years now and I’ve lived 15 years longer than your cancer truncated life. 

It has been a difficult number of months for me.  I took over a significantly troubled non-profit organization two and a half years and, while many things have improved dramatically, our financial situation is dire.  Revenue has not kept up with expenses and we ran a significant deficit last year.  We are faced with dramatic cash flow challenges. There were and continue to be extenuating circumstances which made this task virtually impossible.  Part of the fault lies also with me.  There are things I could have and should have done better.

The organization’s financial challenges have caused me enormous anxiety, to the point that I faced severe panic attacks this past summer.  At this point, I am only able to maintain functioning with the help of a cocktail of anti-anxiety medications.  Even full dosed, my mood remains edgy and nervous.

There is so much to unwrap as I attempt to understand the profoundly painful emotional impact this current situation is having on my psyche.  But I cannot help recall vivid childhood images where, perhaps fueled by a Depression Era Weltanschauung, you raged at me for being fiscally careless.  In retrospect, the memories seem, to be honest, ridiculous.  Perhaps I was 6 or 7 when you screamed at me for not squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube.  I still can remember feeling so utterly confused by the ferocity of your anger. Perhaps you remember the day at the Renaissance Swim Club when a dime dropped from my hand and rolled under the soda machine.  You screamed at me demanding that I get the custodian to move the machine so the dime could be retrieved.  I believe I was 11.  Even back then I remember thinking how unreasonable that demand was.  But you were my father.

And so 50 or more years later, the thought that I am being judged for financial carelessness, the organizational equivalent of squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the tube or failing to reclaim the dime from the bottom of the soda machine, has elevated my anxiety to frightful levels.  I am once again, the small child, in pajamas, in the bathroom with improperly squeezed toothpaste tube clutched in my hand. 

Intriguingly, even understanding the underlying emotional dynamic doesn’t seem to, in any way alleviate my anxiety.  It is the little orange pill that seems to do the trick and, while not transitioned in to “Mr. Happy” I am able to proceed with the tasks and responsibilities of the day.  At least until the medically induced calm begins to subside. 

I think about your life and I remember with such clarity your humor and your charm.  But, in retrospect, also realize that lurking underneath your warmth and your smile were deeply troubling emotionally painful demons. That you were claustrophobic was well known by all family members.  Thus, you never flew and rarely took highways as the exits were spaced too far apart. And it is why you chose to be treated on an outpatient basis when your Hodgkin’s Disease was first diagnosed.  We would drive you to the hospital, wait while you underwent chemotherapy and then rushed you back home before the nauseating effects began. 

A relapse of the disease a year later necessitated your admission to Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital in New York where, after 3 weeks, you passed away.

Later in life as I studied at the Columbia University School of Social Work, I began to think about your claustrophobia in metaphorical terms.  At age 18 you entered Pace University in New York to study to become a history teacher.  After your freshman year you were recruited and served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.  The war concluded and you returned home, planning to continue your college studies.  But your father would have none of it.  It was time to go to work in the family business – J Raphael and Son’s Importers and Grinders of Spices – where you remained until cancer found you. As I learned later in life, it was work that you never enjoyed and never gave you a real sense of satisfaction. I vividly remember screaming arguments between you and your brother Sidney.   Your joy came after work with friends and they were a balm to your restless and pained soul.  At age 27 you met my mother and by age 31 you had a wife and three children.  Any semblance of freedom was gone.  At work and at home you were trapped, you were on a life highway with no exits.

I think of you now in my period of anxiety.  Deep within my psyche, here is the scathing voice of my father berating me being careless with money. But I also think that there is a tinge of your claustrophobia – that I am trapped, that I cannot succeed in this job and that I will be jobless when I return to Atlanta.  I am not a psychiatrist, but it occurs to me that claustrophobia is broad, full impact anxiety – overwhelmed by the painful constrictions that life has presented you and fearful of living them out on a day-to-day basis. 

As I make my way through my own emotional challenges, I have come to better understand the nature of your anxiety and profoundly debilitating impact of the stresses you must have felt.  But for you, there was no orange pill and perhaps at home and at work there was no relief.  That anxiety, that fear, that sense of life closing in on you from all sides must have been unbearable. It is hard for me to truly comprehend your emotional pain or understand how you managed the unrelenting psychic distress. Squeezing the toothpaste is more than depression era parsimony, it is the unforgivable wasting of the limited resources that provide an opportunity to live a happy life.  We are all feeling squeezed. I look back at your life and now understand that the ongoing pressure on your psyche must have been relentless and unbearable.   You weren’t yelling at me but raging at life’s unrelenting pressure. By the way, since that day I have never squeezed the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.