Not that I wasn’t interested in girls; I was desperately interested, and spent many nights agonizing over how to get them to like me.
Read More

The temptation that I didn't act on
Read More

I LOVE chocolate – fudge cake, fudge, frosting, M&Ms, 3 Musketeer Bars. You name it. Each has a particular association for me.

As a youngster, my family vacationed in Charlevoix, MI, a lovely resort spot on Lake Michigan. In their downtown was a fudge shop named Murdick’s. We would wander over, watch them make the fudge and buy some to take back to our room in the guest house; always chocolate for Dad and me, butterscotch for my mother. She didn’t like chocolate. I knew there was something wrong with her. Years later we discovered the same Murdick’s fudge shop on Martha’s Vineyard. I enquired. The manager confirmed that it was, indeed, the same. The store in Northern Michigan had been run by two brothers who had a falling out, so one came to our little island in the Atlantic Ocean to start his own shop. We can now buy the same velvety delicious fudge from my youth on our vacation island.

In college, the best item on the menu at the Student Union was the fudge cake. Since I was always dieting, I got it for lunch with skim milk to save calories. One must drink milk with chocolate cake. It’s in the rule book. My senior year, once Dan and I were serious, we bought a little black and white TV for my dorm room and Betty Crocker chocolate frosting to eat while watching TV. We had two spoons and just ate right out of the can; we could not devour the entire can in one sitting. I had a little fridge in the dorm room too. Looking back, it is amazing that I maintained my weight at 90 pounds.

Once married, we lived in a roach-infested apartment in Waltham, MA across from a supermarket. On Sunday mornings, Dan ran across the street to get the Sunday paper and a 3 Musketeer bar for each of us which we would savor as we read the paper. Good times.

Birthday cakes, wedding cake…always chocolate. None of this white cake. And what is Red Velvet? I wore a red velvet dress on my 10th birthday, but that is certainly not an allowable flavor for cake!

Four and half years ago, as I approached my 60th birthday, I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. Despite my sweet tooth, I had always been slim, but time had caught up with me and I didn’t like the profile of my body that looked back that day, so that summer, I worked with a trainer on exercise and diet. I became a gym rat and gave up my beloved sugar. I lost 18 pounds and looked great. Chocolate was only for very special occasions. But after four long years, I grew bored and motivation lagged. My husband always has sweets around the house. I can usually avoid the ice cream, but lately, I’ve been dipping into the M&Ms and, though I am in the gym six days a week, I see the damage the sugar is doing. So, it is back to the spartan eating for me. So long chocolate. I still love you, but I love a slender body more.

He paused, looking like a person who was calculating an age difference or trying to recall the age of consent.
Read More

He left school at the age of fourteen, and though he can lay brick, overhaul a transmission, frame a building, tailor jeans, pull a lamb, lie under oath, move a piano, weld steel, grow vegetables, jackhammer pavement, shoe a horse, steal a car, take down a tree, drink God into oblivion, and kiss like the devil on LSD, he has never taken Intro to Psychology.
Read More

Readers of Retrospect may recall my maternal grandparents from two other stories, No Way To Say Goodbye, about my grandfather’s death, and Which Side Are You On?, in which I discussed their flight from the Cossacks and their search for the American Dream. They were a significant part of my childhood, living with my parents, my sisters, and me in our big red brick house in New Jersey. We called them Nana and Papa. (Interestingly, one of my sisters now has two grandchildren, and she has them call her Nana too.)

Both of them arrived at Ellis Island sometime between 1905 and 1910. I believe that Bertha came from Kiev, in what is now Ukraine, and David came from Pinsk, in what is now Belarus. However, when I was growing up, it was always just Russia. Borders were pretty fluid in those days, but they certainly considered themselves Russian rather than Polish, Ukrainian, or anything else, and the language they spoke (in addition to Yiddish) was Russian.

Bertha came to America with her parents and a brother and sister when she was probably around 10 or 12, and they lived on the Lower East Side of New York. Her name in Hebrew was Basya (which would now be Batya under modern Israeli pronunciation). When she wanted an American name, she chose Bertha, which I always thought was an unattractive-sounding name. Maybe she thought it sounded less like an immigrant than Bessie, which would have been the obvious choice. She worked in a garment factory, like all the young immigrant girls of the day. When I learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in history class, I was very thankful that she hadn’t worked in THAT factory! Her father had been a merchant in the old country, and they brought some diamonds with them when they left, sewed into their garments to avoid detection. The diamond ring I wear is one of the diamonds they smuggled into the US, and I treasure it for that reason. I gave my oldest daughter, Sabrina, the Hebrew name Batya in memory of my grandmother.

David came by himself to join two of his brothers, Abe and Pinchas, who were already in New York. His parents and other siblings stayed behind. His story of being smuggled over the border in the bottom of a hay wagon was exciting and terrifying to me as a child. He must have been about 17 years old, and traveled halfway around the world on his own. His name was David, so no Americanizing was required. He and his brothers started an independent painting and wallpapering business.

The story of how they met is a bit vague. Apparently Bertha’s parents had a store — or maybe it was a pushcart — on the Lower East Side, and David saw her there and was interested. He started coming around frequently, and invited her to take long walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and back. And then they got married. David was about 7 years older than Bertha. At some point after they married, they moved to New Jersey, where they could have a house and a yard for their children. They never had a car though, which must have made it hard for him to transport his painting and wallpapering equipment and supplies to his various jobs. They both took great pains to get rid of their accents, and they succeeded. Listening to them speak, you would not guess that English was not their native tongue.

Politically, they were Socialists. I remember learning from them about Eugene Victor Debs, who ran as the Socialist Party candidate for President five times. David and his brothers went to meetings of The Workmen’s Circle, an American Jewish organization formed as a mutual aid society to help Eastern European immigrants. It stood for socialist ideals, promotion of Jewish arts and music, and the preservation of the Yiddish language. It also came to be very influential in the American labor movement. I was taught from a very early age never to cross a picket line!

Bertha and David lived in the same house in Jersey City for many years. It was a duplex, they lived upstairs and rented out the downstairs. They had two daughters, and were so proud to be able to send them both to college. And then after finishing college, both girls married doctors, every Jewish parent’s dream! When my mother (their younger daughter) got married in 1943, she and my father went off to Indiana where my father was stationed at a military hospital. After the war they came back to New Jersey with an infant and a toddler, my older sisters, and lived with Bertha and David until they were able to buy their own house. Then at some point, after they were settled in a spacious house with a medical office attached, Bertha and David sold their Jersey City house and moved in with us. This may have been around the time I was born, because my sisters (who are 5 and 7 years older than I) remember going to visit them in Jersey City, but I do not.

Having my grandparents live with us had many benefits. My sisters and I never had a babysitter when we were growing up, because if my parents were going out, my grandparents were there to take care of us. Although Nana never learned to drive, Papa had his license and was available to take us any place we needed to go. Papa was also very handy – not only did he do any painting or wallpapering that was needed around the house, he could fix anything that was broken. He was warm and loving, and more like a father to us than our father, who was working all the time. Nana made the best rice pudding in the world, which still makes me salivate when I think about it. They were both very musical too, and passed their love of music on to us. Papa played the clarinet, and Nana sang.

Nana loved cats, which is probably how I learned to love them, since my parents were opposed to any kind of pet that was bigger than a goldfish. She would often manage to entice neighborhood kittens or cats into our backyard, and she and I would play with them. However, we were not allowed to bring them inside the house, so I was never able to have one to keep. One of the best photos in my very sparse baby book (classic third child baby book) is this one of Nana and me playing with a kitten in our backyard.

My favorite memory of Papa was that every Sunday morning, while the rest of the household was still asleep, he and I would walk down the street about a block to the delicatessen to buy lox, and then another block to the bakery to buy fresh bagels, still hot from the oven. We would usually buy a cake at the bakery too, if there was one that looked particularly delicious. Then we would go back home and have lox and bagels for breakfast. We would have the cake for dessert after dinner. Gastronomically, that was the best day of the week!

Papa died in 1962, and Nana in 1977. Democrats were in the White House at both of those times. I am sure that if they were alive to see what is happening in this country now, they would be even more shocked and terrified than the rest of us.

I first published this story three years ago, on the prompt New Beginnings. Since it only got 3 comments, I’m thinking most of you never saw it. So here it is again. I’m feeling a little more optimistic now about 2020 than I was three years ago about 2017, but our country is not out of danger yet!

New Year’s Eve is one of my favorite times. Saying good-bye to the old year, however good or bad it may have been, and ushering in the new one, with all of its promise. Making resolutions, and possibly even keeping them. Drinking champagne and watching the ball go down in Times Square. (For years I wanted to go to Times Square for New Year’s Eve instead of just watching it on TV, but I never made it, and now that my blood has thinned from living in California for so long, it looks much too cold to be appealing.)

One of my favorite things about New Year’s Eve now is the fireworks. I don’t remember fireworks being associated with New Year’s Eve when I was a kid. Back then it seems as if they were reserved for the Fourth of July. But now it has definitely become part of the New Year’s Eve tradition. In Sacramento, they have two fireworks shows, a shorter one at 9 pm for families with children, and a longer one at midnight. Truth be told, we generally go to the 9:00 show, because the parking and the drive home are easier then, and that way we can still watch the ball go down at midnight.

The best fireworks I ever saw were on a New Year’s Eve about a dozen years ago in Ixtapa, Mexico. We had gone there for a weeklong vacation with my sister’s family and two other families. Everything was amazing that week. The weather was perfect, the food was delicious, and the resort we were staying at had three pools, including one with a swim-up bar. It was right on the beach so we could swim in the ocean as well.

On New Year’s Eve, there was a particularly elaborate dinner and a show, which was great fun. There were musicians, and magicians, and an audience participation bit where my husband was called up on stage to perform. After the show ended, around 11:00, we wandered over to the beach. I think we must have been told there would be fireworks at midnight, so we were just hanging out on the beach enjoying the night air – some of us may have been a little tipsy – and waiting for them to start. Suddenly, with a boom, there they were, exploding directly over our heads! We stretched out on our backs in the sand and looked up above us as magnificent explosions of color appeared one after another. It was the most beautiful and mesmerizing thing I have ever seen.

Undoubtedly it was unsafe, and would never be allowed in the US. Some flaming bit could have fallen down right on top of us. But the danger made it even more exciting and memorable. The arriving year was off to an amazing start, and I knew it would be a good year!

I only wish I could feel as optimistic about the year that is about to come. Even those Ixtapa fireworks would probably not be enough to make me feel good about 2017. This will be a new beginning certainly, but it may be a pretty terrible one. Or it may somehow turn out okay. I only hope our nation makes it to 2018.

If I were struck dead right now, how many years would the insurance buy for Beth and the kids?
Read More