When Will I --I --I Be Safe?

So, I was down in the laundry room in my building. I had to stay there while my wash cycle was going because the one usable machine (the other clearly had had a cycle problem so all the old detergent was encrusted in the basin, courtesy of one of my neighbors) tends to shake with loud bumps on the rinse and spin cycle. I rather have to throw myself on it to keep it from shaking. The space is like most laundry rooms in old buildings, dimly lit, and in that part of the edifice that fills up with cobwebs and dust. As I sat in one of the high chairs they have down there, next to the machine, so I could stabilize it, I started to think. I had forgotten to bring my phone and the medical guardian I usually wear because I live alone and if something happened to me, I could probably go days without discovery. And then I noticed the particularly thick layer of dust on top of the two massive water heaters, some of it hanging in fuzzy strings from the overhead covers. "Could cause a fire," I thought. No one ever cleans it, though we have people who come in to clean weekly. Then I thought, well, since I have none of my emergency devices down here and most people are ensconced in their apartments to be safe from the coronavirus, what if I had a heart attack?

Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host on the conservative spectrum (I know a lot of folks denominate him a "hater"; alas, that means I am also a hater, since I think he makes a lot of sense, though I think people who know me wouldn't say I was by any measure--but who knows)  also came into my head, as he was talking in the last few days about the illusion, or delusion, perhaps that we cannot reopen the United States for life's business, until we are "safe".

Then the tune from Linda Ronstadt's song "When Will I be Loved" came into my head. I started to sing to myself, in a variation, "When Will I--I- be Safe?"

He says "never". I think "never" is about as accurate as you can get. Society always balances interests and creates as much "safety" as is possible given the fact that without exception, every single one of us is going to die. Some die sooner than others. I know we are not allowed to raise it, but we even facilitate the deaths of our youngest citizens (the unborn) as a matter of right, and in some countries, and some states in America, the elderly. You are not necessarily safe either in the womb nor in the care of some of your loved ones.

Some die at a very old age. My father lived till 90 and probably would have lived longer had his doctors not been dismissive of him (and me) and our concerns about their ministrations such that he died of sepsis. My mother died relatively young of cancer at age 48. One of her sisters at 59, another at over 90, and the last is 93 and kicking.

I feel really sorry for people who suffer from hypochondria. I used to be one of them, pretty much through my late teens, an early signal of the obsessive compulsive struggle I have had all my life. I used to fear choking. I was always checking how I swallowed. And if I was able to. That went on for a long time. Then, after my father had a heart attack, I was convinced I was going to have one. I think that spell was about a year.  I could swear I felt palpitations all the time. Around the same time, I noticed quite a few people were committing suicide, and so I became terrified, since I was actually also depressed, that I might commit suicide. I couldn't be near any high place fearful of an impulse I couldn't control. I went about my business oddly enough, and even successfully, but I saw the world as if through a haze the whole time. This was all through my lapsed period of religious faith.

I still have a residue of that old anxiety, and I actually have to watch out for the triggers.  My best friends laugh at the fact I don't cook. There are lots of reasons for it, but one of those reasons only the fewest of the few have known up to here, is that when I cook meat or fish, I am always afraid, even if I have cooked it to a crisp, that it might not be sufficient to have warded off trichinosis, or food poisoning, or whatever can kill you. And it's why I don't cook when I do have guests. I order the food, which I know doesn't mean that all will necessarily be well, but at least I would not be directly the cause. I am afraid to cause harm to others but in a compulsive, irrational sort of way.  I especially avoid pork for that reason.  Just the other night I had a couple of salmon patties and became worked up that they weren't done enough. I almost threw them out as I have often done in the past. I suppose it is a sign of some improvement that I didn't. They were tasty, and I lived.

Right now, I cannot watch the news at all, and I keep apprised of what is happening out there by reading headlines, and listening to some talk shows, not because I am in a high risk group (though I am), but because the pounding of the media, despite the statistics which dispute them, a knot will suddenly rise in my chest and my stomach drops.  Some of the pundits who are certain of their position as the rest of us are not allowed to be, say that if you dispute the nature of the response and its perpetuation, that is total shutdown, you deserve to die. Maybe I shouldn't say what I think, because then I might die, and whether or not I died of Coronavirus, the pervasive "theys" would say, "See, she deserved it; she didn't believe rightly." Yeah, the magical thinking of my cooking life looms here too. So even though I am obeying the rules, my mere thinking that the measures might be over the top, and certainly my saying it, is tricky.

So, I can imagine those poor sods who still have a raging case of anxiety. What has been done to them, and even to me at some much smaller level, cannot be undone, even if things are opened up again. Human beings are walking bundles of germs. That isn't going to change when or if the authorities, and the scientists, none of them consistent from one day to the next, get a handle on this particular virus.

I don't see myself going out with a mask every day, after all of this. I have a terrible time wearing one, and taking back in my own breath and sweating into the material.  But I know that I will never shake hands again. I said this in some other entry, that one of my psychological quirks (sometimes I wonder that I was ever able to function in life at all) was that I don't particularly like being touched (I am no David as in David and Lisa, an old film with Keir Dullea, but that film and his extreme difficulty always resonated with me) and I have never liked shaking hands, always aware of the transference of germs, particularly so when the other hand is wet. I have always been grateful for a dry hand, and made an effort to be sure that mine was dry.  I have routinely gone into large venues, which never, perhaps oddly, particularly distressed me--maybe the need to ride subways and busses as a kid was a cognitive desensitizer--but will I again? At this point, more than seven or eight weeks not doing so, there is a part of me that is now accustomed to the absence. In his old age, my father never liked to go to public events. I am very much like he was in personality, so it is conceivable that I could easily forego them. And as the years have passed the routine of going to large concerts which was more so when I was young, has diminished significantly, except maybe for the Hollywood Bowl. But there is the movie theatre. I guess I can go when others are at work, when they go back to work. Usually the theatres are empty then. I don't know. As I said, I am a lot less obsessive about my health than I used to be, for all the therapy and other resources I took advantage of over the years, and maybe because with older age comes some soupcon of wisdom. And of course immersing myself in my religious faith, which, as also I have noted in prior entries, intellectually at least, I have come to accept that death is a door that leads to Eternal Life since the Act of Redemption. But I realize that with my--eccentricities still lurking--I am a walking contradiction, fearing and believing I need not fear.

Lawyers talk about reasonableness as a measure of action and lack thereof as a matter of liability. The question that has been flying about during the last nearly two months of course has been whether it was reasonable to shut down the world because of this particular disease. Lives were saved perhaps on one end. Lives were lost on another.

So, here I am, about to go back downstairs and get my hopefully now dried laundry. This time I will take at least my telephone. When I get back up here to my apartment, I should be safe, right?

Well, as long as a small plane doesn't crash into my apartment (happened on my old block some years ago; a man taking a nap in his bed was killed), or I don't slip in my bathroom and break something (about a year or so ago, I walked in, slid and fell on my ample butt, luckily), or die on the toilet (very common locale).

So, like Dennis says, "never" appears to be the reality of my, and your, absolute safety, even if we surround ourselves with bubble wrap, and close the society every time there is a virus. But we do the best we can. And it's all right, isn't it, if we disagree on what is the best way to do what is "reasonable"?

Back to Jerusalem from Emmaus: The Right Direction

It is particularly nice when I can say in these pages, "I was there!". And "there" in this instance is Emmaus, just outside of Jerusalem. Well, by car or bus, just outside, about 11 or 12 miles. But back in 33 A.D. or so, that was quite the walking haul.

Just so happens that today's Gospel is about the two travellers on their way to Emmaus after the the Crucifixion of Jesus. One is Cleopas; the other is unnamed.  They are dispirited individuals. They have left Jerusalem. One might even say they are giving up. The person in whom they had put their hopes of the salvation of Israel, of all men, is gone. A man joins them. He seems not to have heard of the cataclysmic events and they pour out their hopes and consequent disappointment.

They ask the man to join them for supper. And so he does. It is only at the moment that He breaks bread, as he had done the night before He suffered, that they realize with Whom they eat, the Resurrected Christ, The God of Israel made Man.

Picture at the outdoor Church at Emmaus 2018

They are fed, and they are renewed. Christ disappears. They now set out to go back to Jerusalem, their hopes restored.

When my bus companions and I arrived in Emmaus, it was just after dark, perhaps around the same time that 2000 plus years ago, the two travellers and Our Lord sat down to supper. Our group's priest prepared to say Mass, so that we, too, would be fed that night, and so we would have the Grace to restore our hopes.

I remember. I felt so at peace that night, in that place, in part because I was, in a small way, participating in what is one of my favorite Gospels. .

That peace has been escaping me during this last nearly eight weeks. I have had a harder time than even usual in praying. I have tried to live stream Mass every day, replicating, albeit remotely, my usual activity of the nearly last 9 years. But some days, it has seemed that I was distancing myself, kind of like leaving town in a spiritual way.

"I don't need to watch Mass today," I have quietly thought. Faith is, for me at least, though I think I have read this somewhere, is a matter of habit. One must make the effort, regularly. My practice has been disrupted.  No doubt some will relate to this.

People who eschew religion, either out of contempt or out of indifference, or some philosophy that makes it unnecessary to their lives tend to think being religious is some kind of palliative. It is hard to maintain one's practice of faith on a good day. On days like the ones we have been having, it is like climbing a mountain.

But today, aside from the blessed reminder of Cleopas and his companion, I got the chance to be close to our Lord, in a sense to have Him travel with me, by sitting with Him in His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament--all while adhering to the social distance mandate.

At least, for the moment, I am going back toward Jerusalem, in the right direction.

Der Oberst (The Colonel) by Constantine Gochis

I know for a fact that my father was an officer at a Prisoner of War Camp in Florence, Italy during World War II, during part of his tour of duty. He told me some stories over the years. One was that one of the prisoners was an artist, who did portraits on copper of his German contemporaries, did a portrait of my father while he was in the camp. My father got that item and others of potential nostalgic value back to the Bronx, where, to his lifelong sadness, it was burned in a refrigerator fire in his family's apartment. Overall, the impression I got of my father's time working in the camp was that he was enamored of the prisoners, both German and Italian. This story suggests that early in his experience there, just after as he calls it "a major breakthrough" by American troops, he was less enamored of at least one German officer. The thing is, I know the context is true. I also know that he saw things that he didn't like to talk about, like most returning vets of that era and eras before and after. But whether he had this encounter with this particular prisoner, I cannot say. He never told me this particular story.

DER OBERST

I was the Receiving Officer of the Prisoner of War Camp when our troops made a major breakthrough.  My compound had ten stone-topped tables, perhaps chest high to the average man.  Each post was manned by a non-commissioned officer and a Private soldier to assist in searching the incoming prisoners.

My function was supervision, and in this regard, I went from one post to another, depending on the necessities of the moment.

The ten lines were practically interminable.  As far as I could see, the uniforms were the gray of the "Wehrmacht", the German army, now thirsty, hungry and compliant.

My attention was suddenly caught by an anomaly.  Post three was in the process of searching a bedraggled Italian soldier, almost hidden in a shabby overcoat that was several sizes too big for him.

Behind him stood a tall, resplendent "Oberst" or Colonel, immaculately correct in uniform, from shiny boots to an impressive array of campaign ribbons, including an Iron Cross.  

"What a contrast," I thought.  One of Hitler's "Herrenfolk" a veritable Siegfried, leaning over a mud-caked, reluctant co-belligerent, who clearly, in the lottery of life might have been a Caruso, perhaps a Caravaggio, or even a Lucky Luciano, the latter having expiated some of his sins for which he had been deported to Sicily, by assisting our OSS in the invasion.

The Italian was emptying his voluminous pockets of dark grey shears, perhaps several dozen, when the wooly repository was emptied.  This was probably loot from one of his past campaigns.

"Why shears?" one might ask.  "Why not," one may answer, "if that's all there is to collect as a conqueror."

The "Oberst" leaned forward to get a better view of the merchandise, lifting the visor of his exquisitely embroidered cap. 

"Ach," he said, "Inferior Italian manufacture."  His English was flawless, though accented, as if just out of Hollywood casting.

It was now his turn.  He stood briefly erect as if expecting his usual assistance, then reluctantly bent to empty the magnificent leather luggage at his feet.

Clearly he had done better than the Italian soldier.  The first item he produced was an ornately engraed silver scabbard that housed a stiletto.  Without doubt, it was pure silver, the design worthy of a Benevenuto Cellini.  It may have been a Cellini for all I know.  There followed fins of gourmet identity, a jar of Russian caviar, and lastly, a bottle of champagne.

"I will be allowed to keep this," he said, his hand still clasped around the neck of the bottle, more a statement than a question.

I shook my head in the negative.

"You know I have rights under the Geneva Convention," he said.

I thought of a moonless night on an Italian hill, where some months before, a German soldier tossed a "potato masher", a German grenade, where I was standing with my machine gunner and another soldier.  The image of this eliptical trajectory came to me in slow motion.  I recalled that I did not hear the explosion, but I was still alive.  The machine gunner and the soldier were dead; the machine gun itself no longer functional.

There followed the inevitable mortar attack.  The missiles, equipped with whistling devices to augment the terror, rained on us mercilessly.  Then silence, the sound of dying, the pleading of the wounded, some calling my name, some the usual cry "Medic! Medic!"

But there was no help.  The night was long.  I could not move one way or the other without body contact with the dead soldier on my left and the dead machine gunner on my right.  In the morning, the dead were borne on their GI blankets, one soldier on each corner, to a slatted six by six truck, piled like cattle for disposal.  The soldier on my left was a big man, and heavy. One combat-booted leg scraped the ground, as he was borne, like Hamlet, to the "battlements" of the truck.

The resplendent Colonel waited imperiously for my reply.

There are no words that can frame a reply, even to this day.  I took the bottle of champagne from his reluctant grasp and smashed it against the stone table top.

"I will speak to your Commanding Officer," he screamed.

He did.

I was reprimanded by the Commander.  

As Good a Time as Any to Think About Death

Our parish may be closed, but fortunately, the core of the regular parishioners try to remain in communication with each other as lockdown physically separates us. Today, the communication brought sad news. One of our long time attendees, Bob DiFrancesca, died at midnight of the cancer he had been fighting for many years. If there is a service during this period of containment, it will only be at the graveside, 10 individuals permitted to be present at appropriate social distance.

As with so many others I have known, I think of myself as having been more than an acquaintance to Bob but not quite a friend, meaning that, outside of parish events, and seeing him at Mass and having pleasant conversations, we didn't actually spend a lot of time together. But I knew he was kind. I knew he was faithful to his Catholicism, and quietly so, one of those who would sit in the back during Mass and come to pray when there wasn't a crowd. As always with such individuals, when they pass away, I regret my having not sought out a more frequent association.

He died during the pandemic, but not of the pandemic. Gives me pause.

Don't get me wrong, the need to guard the public health of our citizenry, including myself, is not to be dismissed. But something odd there is about the herculean, cataclysmic effort to prevent people from getting or dying from the coronavirus, when there are just so many darn things that people are dying of as we speak. It is almost as if we humans can control this potential cause of death, go inside, lock our doors, then perhaps we will escape those other causes. But that's the thing that seems, at least to me, to be crazy making. We won't. We can't.

I used to have night terrors, well into adulthood, alas, when they long should have subsided. They almost always involved sudden impending death. I would wake up screaming (I have a few stories where it happened, believe it or not, amusingly, when others were present). I don't like to fly, not so much because of the dying part, but the awareness of the seconds before the dying in a tin can.

My very faith makes death not only an inevitability, but a door to eternity.  So, over the years I have tried to practice the concept of Memento Mori, Remember your Death. The idea is that keeping death before your eyes (Benedictines also highly recommend it) you live your life better in preparation for it. You will be motivated to live a good and full life. I haven't been good at the practice. Like most of us, I tend to focus on the fear part, not the motivation part. I haven't been good at taking creative or even some physical risks (not wild ones I might add but to me almost anything is wild, raised as I was in a be careful style of parenting). Living a good life? I don't know. I suppose I have done a little bit of that, but I can tell you my motivations aren't as pure as I would like.

As I write I have been remembering a painting I stood in front of a long time when I was in London in 2013. It was in the National Gallery. I had never heard of it, though it is very famous and highly discussed. It was painted by Holbein, the Younger. Him I knew of, at least in theory. Anyway, it is a painting of two well dressed men, an ambassador and his friend. They are clearly rich. And they are clearly men to be well regarded. Aside from the sharpness of the color of the paint, so much so that it almost felt like a photograph, I was intrigued by this almost flat, ghostly, floating skull in the foreground. I stood there a long time. I got close. I got far away. I think it was after that, reading about the painting, that I learned of memento mori.

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-paintings/the-ambassadors-holbein.htm

The thing about it, this way of thinking, is that if your prayer, or meditation, brings fruit, it will be that you/I will let go of the need to hold on so tightly to life that you pretend it won't end, and you can actually, I can actually, enjoy that life instead of shrivelling up in a futile effort to protect myself.

Besides, as to me, if I believe in the Resurrection, then there was never anything to fear. Remembering death is to remember the promise of eternity.

Well, that's at I have come to think. I wish I could live it better. Hopefully, there is still time.

An Essential Infusion

I have always admired those religious people, in my case, fellow Catholics whose practice seemed truly touched by an intuitive certainty such that to watch them in prayer was to see their very closeness with God. I think my admiration though has always been tainted by a sense of suspicion, and that suspicion is enforced by the secular world, the world that laughs with its opposite certainty that those people "are crazy".  I think, then, that I have lived a push pull existence within my faith. Besides, the idea of being close to anyone, let alone God, has always been a source of discomfort rather than joy. Oh, there are all sorts of explanations for it. They are not relevant anymore if ever they were. So, my way of approaching God is more in my head, and not in my heart.

Although I have been an active parishioner of a Catholic Church for going on 37 years, it has always been more an act of will than a a natural inclination and I have always been aware how easy it was to leave for some thirteen years, and how easy it could be, how readily I could find some excuse, to leave again.

When I was retired back nearly 10 years ago, I began to attend Mass daily. I also began to serve. Having a depressive and anxiety core, triggers abound. Having a frame, mission, tasks, if you will, keep me from giving in to those triggers. Among those, after I stopped working a regular job, was attending Daily Mass, and receiving Daily Communion. Whether I feel it or not at any given moment, I believe with the Church that the Eucharist is the "source and summit" of my life. It is something that feeds and sustains. He is something that feeds and sustains.

One thing I tend to feel, well, two things, pretty regularly and I have been feeling since it was deemed that Churches were not essential during this phase in human history denominated the "Coronavirus Crisis", are fear and anger. Fear I guess is often expressed as anger.  I guess also I fear that while some lives are being saved, many others are being destroyed, and not just figuratively, by a particularly gross deprivation. 

Even before this crisis, maybe 40 percent of professed Catholics attended Mass, so once this particular one is over, and before the next inevitable one, the longer the time away, and a new routine established where will we be? Many say, within and without the Church, it will be fine. Anyway, people can pray anywhere, right? Until anywhere also becomes impermissible. But then I guess I am just being gloomy. And distrustful of human nature. Well, that brings me to a praise for those priests, and some Bishops, who besides providing Mass remotely (both digitally and physically) have found creative ways for the pious and those of us who without a frame to mold us and keep us intact to receive sustenance. The internet is filled with those opportunities for prayer and screen community.

It may be at a distance, but it is a physical proximity. It is just outside a garden. 

I cannot get close; all the civil and criminal law proprieties are observed assiduously. The gate to the garden is locked. The building is locked. But at least I am in the Presence for a short while. The birds join, hummingbirds, starlings, and cavorting crows. It is warm in the sun, and cool in the shade as the breeze skims the plants.  

It will have to do for this day. I go home. I watch some mindless television. I read. I say the rosary, though my heart, which is a bit hard to start with, is not in it. 

But the gates of hell will not prevail. 

As for me, I will keep chugging along, with God's Grace. 

A Mother Who Knew Chaos and Trusted Her Son

https://wine.webinarninja.com/live-webinars/261827/register

I suppose, like every human being, I am riddled with contradiction. This is one of many of mine. I am a person who pursues my faith, but I am often pessimistic about the very faith I profess. In times like these that pessimism is not as tempered as I would like by my faith. In fact, I am very aware of the strong temptation to give up, if not to spin out of control.

So, it was a bit of a lifeline that my pastor mentioned a webinar by a group I had never heard of, Women in the New Evangelization. It was only an hour and a half, but it was rejuvenating. There were two specific things that resonated among others. One was the idea that God can be discerned in the chaos--something which frankly never occurs to me when I am in the middle of it.  It is ever more critical to listen for His voice particularly in these days of competing circumstances and imperfect human exhortations that surround us as we are confined to our homes. The second was a reminder of Mary, the Mother of God, as a model, a model for those of us thrust into chaos. After all, her very life was thrown into chaos, from the moment the Angel Gabriel announced that she would bear Jesus Christ. When she said "Yes" to God's mind bending plan, in, from my weak kneed point of view, not so simple trust, she was acceding to a life upended. She would endure not only the usual sufferings of the time in which she lived, but the exquisite pain of her son's suffering and death for a purpose that she could only ponder, and not completely understand until it all unfolded.

It is probably paradoxical for me to write that realizing is comforting.  I think that part of it is a realization that if I can let go of my anger, fear, distrust in times like these, stop being resistant to the storm around me, the chaos, as she did, I actually would be at peace. I fight the problem. She leaned into it. She absorbed it. Her words to the stewards at the wedding feast , "Do as he tells you," quietly but firmly uttered, she speaks to me, to you, to us.

So, here I am at the end of this Saturday in these strange times spinning a little less frantically, psychologically and spiritually speaking.

Oh, there was something else the speakers mentioned that occurs to me. Gratitude. It is important to be grateful fo r what we do have even amid the storms and stresses that bombard us. I am thus grateful that today I had this short period of emotional refueling.

This webinar is available now for view for those who did not "attend" in person. Some might find it helpful. If even one person does, then that's another thing to be grateful for, I am thinking.

As to me, and this blog, going forward, I am thinking, just thinking of adding a video component aimed largely at the faith crowd, and anyone who might want to explore faith. Now, as I say, this is just a thought. Now that I am of a certain age, and am personally in the category that the late Nora Ephron dubbed, "I Feel Bad About My Neck", I am not crazy about how I look in pictures, let alone moving pictures. On the other hand, it is a logical addition to a blog, vlog, or whatever thing is developing and has long been developing on line. But first, I have to figure out how to get the right size and be able to upload properly. We shall see.

Forward by Constantine Gochis

I think I remember the man of which my dad wrote in this story. Well, not him actually, but my father's speaking of him, and his shy knocks on the door to ask for help on the small issues of life which become very large when you get old. Then, my father was probably just in his seventies, or younger. Things change. My father has been gone for 12 years. I assume Yitzhak, if that was his real name, has been gone for much longer than that. The newspaper, The Forward, is no longer paper. As with everything else, technology has required adaptation. I doubt Yitzhak would have approved.

FORWARD

He clung, precariously, to the back of a seat as the bus driver made sudden starts and stops.  He looked fragile and lost.  We stood very close.  I could see his eyes, enlarged behind thick lenses, looking straight at me with no sign of recognition.

"Yitzhak," I shouted, ". . . you've forgotten your old friend?"

The eyes responded.  The face beamed with pleasure. He did not call me by name.  He was never able to articulate it in the twelve years of our acquaintance.  

"My friend!" he exclaimed, finally, in the way he always adressed me, with a laughing sound that stretched broadly beyond the scope of the two words.  

"So," I asked. "Vee gays du?", that is, "Where are you going?"

He teetered, challenging disaster, as he fumbled for a tattered envelope.  I knew immediately what it was.  I had seen it many times before--his gas bill.  He always paid his utilities in person.  

"Still no checking account?  You couldn't send a money order? I chided him, good naturedly.

It was a question I had asked countless time, a futile inquiry.  Yitzhak did not trust banks, or checks. "Money orders cost money," he would retort.  I frequently offered the use of my own checking account, to no avail.  He was fiercely independent and proud.  Yet, if anyone was in need of governmental assistance, it was he.  Yet he consistently disdained any help.

"I never took before.  I wouldn't take now."

Suddenly I sensed that something was amiss.

"Yitzhak," I shouted.  "You're on the wrong bus."

He was embarrassed but he laughed as he always did when he was uncomfortable.

"But it says on the envelope. . ."

"Never mind," I insiste. "It's the wrong bus. Shnell, Yitzhak, let's get off."

The bus driver had stopped the vehicle too fare fro the curb.  We descended with great difficulty.  Yitzhak assured me throughout the process, "I can make it. I can make it."

We made the return trip together.  I could not abandon him in his manifest disorder  By my calculations, he was bordering ninety years of age.

It was the "Forvetz", the then Yiddish news weekly, now printing an English edition, called the "Forward" that brought us together.  We were neighbors.  Every Tuesday I would encounter him waiting for the mailman.  Tuesday was when the "Forvetz" arrived.

One time, when the mailman came, the "Forvetz" didn't.  It is difficult to describe his dismay. I have seen major tragedies that produced less reaction.

"So you go to the corner. They carry the weekly."

"They charge a dollar, thirty five."

"Maybe it will come tomorrow," I reassured him.

"Tomorrow," he moaned in a dirge like like tone, "Tomorrow."

It did not come that week, nor he next.  He was inconsolable.  I had to intervene. 

I called New York, one of the newspaper's distribution points.   We were promised delivery, for sure, the next week, with a replacement of the missing issues. He was only partially mollified.  Then he was suspicious.

"Maybe someone is stealing. . ."

"Who reads Yiddish in this neighborhood?" I asked.

I then made a cardinal error.  I bought a copy of the latest issue from the news stand and offered it to him. He was not pleased.  Had it been anything other than the "Forvetz" he would have refused it.  His mental struggle was visual.  He glanced alternately at me, then my offering.  The newspaper prevailed, barely.

In tie, I learned the importance to him of the weekly. It was his only pleasure.  He seldom went out, except to shop, or to wheel his invalid wife to her doctor.  He spoke of children, but I rarely saw any evidence of filial attachments.  He was not gregarious.  He was solitary except fo that wife who sat perpetually before a television set, too bent out of shape for surcease from trial.  He had no interest in soap operas. There was no music.  He busied himself with household chores and waited for Tuesday.

We talked in a melange of pidgin English, some Yiddish, though his deafness precluded a real two way conversation.  I listened, mostly, understood with difficulty, and waited for a polite interval that would allow me a gracious retreat.  Yitzhak was painfully repetitive.  

In those twelve years I lived in the building, his hesitant knock on my door came frequently.

His problems were not major.  A letter from Social Security terrified him though usually it was nothing more than an advisory. He would never sit when he visited.  He was ashamed of having to ask for help.  Frequently, he had problems with his bank. He was sure they were underpaying interest on his meager Certificate of Deposit.

There was no room for proligacy.  He and his wife subsisted on an aggregate Social Security of seven hundred dollars a month.  The rent took more than half.

He was fourteen when the Germans left ony rotting potato skins for the staving Polish populace in 1914.  After the wafr he took his fabric weaver with him to Argentina, married, witness the antics of the Peronistas, removed to America for more years of privation.  He related these sadness without rancor, sotically, almost as if he accepted a Divine Judgment, an immutable predestination.

We shared our tales of privation, my own, in the Great Depression, not as horrendous as his.  We talked, that is, he talked of the trials of his beloved Israel, quoted the latest from that beacon of light, the "Forvetz".  It was his "Aliyah" to the promised land he would never reach.

For casual conversation we spoke of the weather and those occasions when chicken was selling for forty-nine cents a pound.

One day his familiar knock again summoned me to the door.  It was a Tuesday.  He did not want to come in.  He was smiling. There was no sign of travail.

"I got something for you," he said, his eyes glinting and enlarged behind his thick glasses.

"Today, I get two "Forvetz", one in English.  He unrolled the paper revealing the masthead.

"This one is for you," he said happily.  He was sharing a part of himself.  He did this every week subsequently, with the very same ceremony.

When next his subscription came due, he allowed me to use my checking account for him.  He was happy when I enrolled also.

"The only newspaper that writes the 'emmes'." 

The other day, I went by my old building, and inquired after my old friend.

"They moved, a long time ago," I was told.

I don't really want to know any more than that.  I like to think that every Tuesday he ispacing, with usual apprehension, before the new mailbox.  He is stopping now and then to peer into the distance for the mailman.  His eyes are wide and expectant for the news that links him with the world of his "emmes", his truth, his dream.  

Moving On to Happy Days

I have been very distressed by various threads I have read, some in which I have commented and responses to some of which I have initiated since I returned to Facebook at Easter Time. I should say, I am more distressed than usual. Disagreement with the prevailing opinion means being labelled "stupid" or "uncaring". I don't think I am either. But it is of no moment. I was sitting outside in the warm afternoon sun, thinking, attempting to pray. And then it occurred to me.



I have an opportunity here and I have been fighting the problem. In these times of home confinement I can stop resisting what has been offered, essentially a life of retreat, not the running away kind, but the spiritual kind. And if ever or whenever the time of official "stay in place" ends, hopefully I will have developed a new pattern that is no longer jarred by the babel of daily life.



It remains to be seen, of course. I am very weak as all created beings are.

But, I shall take one step at a time. I begin by returning, once again, to my father's stories. I happened to be going through a cupboard and ran across my binders full of them, along with a variety of other memorabilia which, if I do not record them here, will end up in a dumpster after I am gone, my being the end of this line of our family.  That is what is important. His personal history is history worthwhile.

So, here is a one pager from my late father.

HAPPY DAYS

A lot depends on when an event took place.  In the autumn of my years, some happenings long ago that seemed of supreme memorability become pale and forgettable in retrospect.  Still, there are some memories so epiphanic in scope that they still engender a tingle or two.

I left the confines of an autocratic parochial school and entered the public school system in the last year of the elementary stages.  Actually, I did not leave their confines. One might say I was expelled.

The precipitating cause of my ejection was a "Waterman" fountain pen.  It was mind, a treasured item in those historic days before the "ball point" variety of these banal days of superfluity.

As proof of my ownership, I painstakingly carved my initials at both ends of the pen.  It was stolen nonetheless. 

One day, during a test, I saw the item in the grubby hands of Spiros Tryforos, the scion of the owner of a chain of flower shops. When he refused to return my property to me, I beat him severely. This caused Spiro Tryforos, Sr. to enlist the intervention of our Principal, who was also the venerable pastor of our flock, in the name of justice.

I received several whacks with a wicker rod, and was told not to return to school unless I was accompanied by my father.

It would have been foolhardy to bring my father into this dispute.  The patriarchs of this community never disagreed on matters of discipline.  I brought my mother.

Mother did not speak Greek, but on this occasion, she berated the Principal and the flower vendor, who was also in attendance, with sufficient English articulation to cow them both.

"How dare you beat my child!" she expostulated. 

She then asked for a refund of unused tuition and said that I would not return to a school where the leaders were barbarians, I thought the word "barbarian" apt in that it is of Greek origin and used as a caustic negative to those who were not Greek.

It was one of the happiest days of my life.  

Easter in the Time of Coronavirus

I admit it. I am not feeling it. It is Easter. The commemoration of the day the Lord rose after the ignominy of crucifixion by we who do not deserve Him. 

Yesterday was a pretty day after several of rain. It is a rain that California needs, so I am grateful for that, even though my terrace is corroding and one of the companies that was to come and look at it cancelled because of the modern plague. But today it is back to weatherly gloom.

I attempted to get on line for my parish Easter celebration, both last night for the Vigil, and this morning for the main empty Church Mass, but the live feed kept freezing and my internal disposition was turning to impatience and anger from plain old discontent and utter distrust of my own society.

I will find a Mass to watch later. It doesn't matter when I go, after all. Watch the thought that follows next. . . .it is the Devil cavorting around--it doesn't matter if I go, as I cannot go in the first place. What was once holy obligation according to the history of the Church from and after 2000 years ago, such that people met in the catacombs to celebrate the Eucharist, to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, (in the face of certain death)  is no more, at least for the always extended duration of whatever history will describe this set of events to be. All I  can think with ever rising rage is how readily the Bishops found no other way to serve the faithful than to close it all up because the secular world said it was a must. (But kudos to the priests who sought ways to do what their leaders failed to do).  I know. I hear the objections. But. . . .But. . . .you don't care about who dies. I am not going to argue. Here is my question back to you. Do you care about the millions of lives (example, the over six million who have lost their jobs) that are being destroyed by the reflexive closing of the entire society? And we are talking literal death here as well. If a person loses a job, there is no support for the family, there is less food, there is loss of home and hearth. There is despair. There is death. One can care and disagree about the solutions. Of course, you and I aren't in a position to advocate. We are merely prohibited and restricted and required to accept what is proffered, in all its contradictory glory.

As you can see, my thoughts are all over the place. Anyway, I took my mandated mask, made in China, as that was all I could get on line, and went out to the local supermarket.

As I was walking I thought of something a friend of mind often says about life. Don't know that it is theologically sound, in fact, I am pretty sure it isn't, but it is an understandable emotional default, one that I am feeling today, well at least so far, today. "Too much Good Friday; not enough Easter Sunday". 

I am getting lots of Easter greetings on my phone. I hope that later in the day I will be able to muster the will to send greetings back. Right now, not so much. In fact, right now, I feel a lot more like Mary Magdalene at the Tomb. These are moments when I understand Peter's denial, and even Judas' betrayal with complete clarity.

It was starting to drizzle when I went out. I didn't wear the mask until I got closer to the store. Up to getting to the corner I had seen one car, and one person walking, so I wasn't feeling too much like a criminal. Once I got to the corner, I put the thing on, and as usual found breathing difficult as I took back in my warm exhalations. "Don't think about that too much!" I said to myself.  And for the first time in years, because it would make a spectacular mess, I am not applying lipstick!

There was a small line. Everyone was pleasant. That was nice. I now have supplies. I felt the urgent need to have Hot Cross Buns, perhaps because they spoke of normalcy. But now, looking back, those Hot Cross Buns reminded me of something, and maybe as the day wears on and I find a Mass to watch, as I will after I make this entry, will turn this mood around.

There is that Cross again! So, here's the thing. I think this is theological. Christ indeed has risen! But the Cross is the ever-present road to our Resurrection following after His. What has changed from before and after the Crucifixion and Death? The reality of Resurrection. My feelings are irrelevant to reality. I must endure those feelings, as I cannot control them, but persistence in faith, despite the feelings, despite the jaunty efforts of the Devil, is the solution. Will I not stay with Him?

I sense the contradictions in my writing. I am betwixt and between in belief and unbelief.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! This is what today I must recite over and over.

He went into the depths of human depravity and reconciled with us. Surely I can bear my disordered feelings du jour. The alternative is separation from God. I would do anything to avoid an eternal bad day.

Just hold on. Look! He is there, just behind us.