Next hurtle – what contractor in his right mind would undertake this project with such an unrealistic budget and very tight timeline? It was now June and we needed to open the school in September.
Read More

Naval Funeral

My friends Tippy and Toppy had the fabled attention span of goldfish.  Whenever I made eye contact with them,   they’d meet my gaze for just a few seconds and then they’d turn away – as if they had bigger fish to fry.

But they were dearly beloved friends and always  there for me –  until that fateful day when I offered them a cigarette.   Sadly the tobacco I crumpled into their bowl apparently poisoned them and they went belly up.

My father said we’d give them a naval funeral,  and when we flushed them down the toilet,  I shed some heartfelt,  six-year-old tears.

 

RetroFlash / 100 Words

–  Dana Susan Lehrman 

My dad co-owned a car dealership during the early years of my life. He worked six days and two nights a week, so wasn’t home to eat dinner with the family a few nights a week. My mother had a housekeeper who cooked meals in those early years. Those women cycled through, staying a few years at a time. They were all pretty good cooks, something my mother was not. My mother learned some basic recipes from her sister’s housekeeper: roast beef, meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, brisket, some form of chicken, Swiss steak. I hated Swiss steak.

My brother and I were well-behaved kids. We didn’t horse around too much, had good table manners, did what we were told to do. We weren’t perfect. I was a fussy eater. I had to have the crust cut off sandwiches and then the sandwich had to be cut a certain way. But tuna and PB and J were reliable favorites for lunch. On Sundays, we either went out for, or brought in deli from one of two favorite restaurants in Detroit. I loved mushroom barley soup and made a whole meal out of a bowl of it. I still relish it when I can find it.

When Dad wasn’t around, Rick would try to provoke some reaction from me. He would kick me under the table. The best was to get me laughing until milk came out of my nose. Then he had really accomplished something! That would drive our mother to distraction. She didn’t know how to handle such unruliness. By and large, she didn’t have to. We were good kids. We always ate in the breakfast room unless there was company over, or a birthday party. Then the dining room was set with Mother’s fine china, good linens, silverware and crystal. I have it all now, but never use it, not even when I am serving a holiday meal. I don’t have cleaning help to do all the polishing and ironing.

We moved out of Detroit to Huntington Woods (2 1/2 miles west) in 1963. As best I can remember (such things were not discussed with the kids), Dad’s partner wanted out of the business in 1965; Dad didn’t finish paying for the buy-out until the first semester of my senior in college; ten years later, but before then, for various reasons, the business was underwater and he sold it back to Chrysler at a loss in 1967. He went to work for his cousin, who owned a Buick dealership. The housekeeper was gone. Mom cooked all the meals. Rick was gone, meals were very quiet.

My mother barely knew how to cook. She didn’t teach me. She said having me in the kitchen made her nervous. So I was an unskilled bride when I married in 1974. I learned the same basic recipes as my mother, with a few new variations. I worked each day; Dan went to grad school, either came to the office or came home after class and I cooked a meal for us. We ate on the card table; a wedding gift from my parents’ best friends. On Saturday nights, we went to Tony’s Italian Villa on Rt 9 in Newton for homestyle Italian cooking and on Sundays we joined the rest of the Pfau family at my mother-in-law’s table until they moved to New Orleans in 1977.  Then we were on our own. By that time, we had bought our first condo and moved to Acton, very far west of the city. Dan was out of grad school and working in Cambridge. Soon, I would leave for my first sales job in Chicago. Life turned upside down.

In Chicago, I either traveled, so ate in my hotel, or ate modestly in my apartment. I cooked one meal during my 16 months there. On Thanksgiving, I invited a friend over for meatloaf. Other than that, it was lots of “boiled meals in a bag” (before microwaves) or tuna melt on an English muffin. Christie and I frequently got together for dinner and a movie. She and her family made me and ex officio family member. Dan and I visited about every two or three weekends. Those were like little honeymoons and we really enjoyed ourselves, always going out for fun meals (often with friends) when we got together.

When I returned from Chicago, we lived in the Back Bay, both traveled a lot and from then until I had David in 1985, we ate out almost every night. Why not? We were DINKs – “dual income, no kids” and lived in the city. We enjoyed ourselves. In our last condo – 412 Beacon Street – we had several good friends in the building (with the great luxury of a garage in the rear). If I cooked, everyone had to walk past our unit on the way to the elevator. It was like a big frat house – could they come for dinner? Why not? Lots of fun in that building. We all entertained the others frequently.

We moved to our current home in Newton in 1986, when David was 15 1/2 months old. I hadn’t worked since he was born and stayed home a few months longer. As a management consultant, Dan traveled several nights a week. I went back to work when David was 18 months old and I hired a live-in nanny who would often feed David. She was a better cook than I. She taught me how to roast a chicken and made David hand-cut french fries. Once I became pregnant with Jeffrey, I stayed home for good.

Dan traveled 3-4 nights a week, so I did lots of breakfast-for-dinner with the kids. Jeffrey grew into a very fussy eater (part of sensory integration issues along the autism spectrum), so lots of French toast, pancakes, or (much to their liking), McDonald’s. I tried not to do that too often. But Sunday night, I always cooked and we had a nice family meal around the table.

Jeffrey loved pizza, particularly from a chain called Bertucci’s. We noticed they had all the makings in a case by the take-out counter. He begged me to buy the dough and the rest of the fixings so that we could make our own. I even bought a pizza stone for him to cook it in our oven. I helped him spread some flour on the counter top and roll out the dough (we tried to flip it, but never mastered that technique), he spread the sauce, the cheese, and put on some pepperoni. He watched with excitement as it baked up. The Featured photo was one of his personal pizzas, along with fruit salad, so we had something healthy to go with all the carbs. He was always delighted with his effort.

Dan retired in 2002. Jeffrey left for college in 2007. With my kids gone, and Dan retired, I did too and we go out for dinner almost every night now (we brought in during the lockdown). Eating out was Dan’s daily entertain. Getting together with friends or eating out after a matinee movie was better. Now I cook one or two meals a year – when we have family for the holidays.

Here is my table and my cooking the last time I had everyone for Christmas – 2019! I serve buffet, but always try to set a nice table.

My Vineyard house was on the Edgartown house tour this past August. I set the table with my mother’s silver, Irish linens and Blue Tower Spode china, which works better on the Vineyard than in Newton. Though I would no longer actually eat this way, it does make a pretty table.

 

We didn’t know Victor 20 years ago. His wife is in a book group with several of our friends. They live in Newton and Martha’s Vineyard and now we, too, are good friends. Victor is Dan’s frequent golf partner and we go to dinner with the couple. One evening, he revealed why he retired early.

Victor was a telecom entrepreneur, finishing a meeting at the World Financial Center at 200 Liberty Street in the shadow of the World Trade Center Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. He witnessed the attacks. As part of his recovery therapy, he wrote a lengthy essay about his experience. An excerpt appeared in the Martha’s Vineyard’s Times in 2015 and was reprinted this week. He submitted it to the 9/11 Memorial Committee, who were gathering testimonials for their museum and archives. It won a cash prize for memoir writing, which he donated to the Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs of Newton and Nantucket (his companion that day was from Nantucket). A phrase from the essay, (I will link to the whole story), appears on the wall to the room that memorializes the 2,754 souls who were lost that day, as one enters the main entry to the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.

While we still looked up, a man jumped from the building to the ground…At that instant, the towering glass and metal mass of billowing smoke became human.

He did not escape unharmed. He developed bladder cancer from inhaling those toxic fumes, underwent painful biopsies and chemotherapy. He is fine now, enjoying his retired life with his daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren. He and his wife travel a great deal when there is no COVID to contend with.

He also gives back. Among his many charitable endeavors, he is on the board of the Newton Boys and Girls Club and works with 9/11 survivors. Just a few weeks ago, he told us about two sisters who worked in the towers. One, after many attempts, had just learned she was pregnant, called her sister in another office to tell her the joyous news. The newly pregnant sister was incinerated that day. Her sister survived. Victor works with the survivor to help her overcome her grief and survivors guilt. She will be doing a PSA for the 20th anniversary.

https://www.mvtimes.com/2015/0909/journal-entry-september-11-2001/

The last time we traveled to New York City, in November, 2019 (before COVID), we visited the rebuilt World Trade Center, took the tour, saw the slurry wall, the memorial to those who perished that day. It is a huge site; I had never seen it before. It really drives home the enormity of the loss, the number of names on the monument (some with white roses, left by grieving family members), and the effort it took to rebuild while paying tribute to the fallen. Today, the area is, again, a thriving hub of people and industry.

Two of the flights came out of Boston that morning 20 years ago. Many of the losses were local. There is a memorial in the Boston Public Garden as well. Every year there is a public ceremony where names are read aloud, bells tolled. Remembrance helps. The Taliban are back in control of Afghanistan after 20 years of war. We must remain vigilant against terrorism, both abroad and domestic. Hate makes people do evil things.

A new Netflix film came out on September 3 called “Worth” depicting the efforts of attorney Ken Feinberg and a colleague to cajole Congress to create a fund for the survivors of the victims of 9/11 and how to equitably distribute those funds. On September 1, I watched a YouTube discussion from the JFK Library, hosted by film critic Nell Minow involving the film’s stars Michael Keaton, Laura Benanti, the film’s screenwriter and producer Max Borenstein, and Ken Feinberg and his colleague Camille Biros. The discussion was wide-ranging, but the thrust of it was about empathy, which in 20 years has all-but disappeared from the public arena. Congress, then led by Republicans, came together to form The September 11th Victim’s Compensation Fund for the good of the people whose loss was unimaginable (actually, as I learned from watching the film, it was to ensure that the airlines weren’t sued, but also about redress for the victims’ families). Michael Keaton (who plays Feinberg in the film), name-checked Jim Jordan, saying could we imagine these people doing that today? It is all about destroying the “other”, red vs. blue. No common good or empathy. And the rise of social media has made this so much worse, amplifying the worst instincts of people, hiding behind online personas. A really sad state of affairs.

An excellent opinion piece by Will Bunch, sent to me a few days ago by a good friend is worth the time to read.

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/how-september-11-2001-attacks-changed-america-20210905.html

The following is the description of what that day was like in my household, 20 years ago:

9-11 in the Pfau Household