Tuesday, January 9, 1968
Hi, Flav. Well, I’ve done it again! I’m the proud father of a 7-lb., 9-oz., bouncing baby GEOFFREY! Ah, well, what the hell, at least he’ll have plenty of clothes to wear.I almost went out of my mind this morning. Didn’t realize until we were practically, at the hospital that I had a 10:30 client meeting this morning. Jesus, what an ass I am! I got to a telephone about twenty after eight, leaving Susan along at the obstetrical check-in desk. Tried to reach O’Toole, but he’d left for work a few minutes earlier. All the phone call got me was a contemptuous grunt from old garbage-mouth and a profound longing to retrieve the dime I’d thrown away.
Susan was following an attractive, young nurse down the corridor when I got back to he check-in desk . I took off after them. “Is this the father,” the nurse asked Susan when I came up and gave her a slap on her rump.
“No,” I said, “she just lets anybody come up and slap her on the…”
“Seth!” Susan said, cutting me off before I said something to embarass her. She turned to the nurse. “Yes, that’s the guilty party.”
The nurse laughed. “And, you were just an innocent by-stander, I suppose?” We all laughed then.
After showing Susan to her room, the nurse asked me to follow her to the Doctor’s dressing room, where I could get into the blue uniform I’d have to wear in the delivery room. Oh yeah, fogot to tell you, Flav. We’re natural childbirth nuts, Susan and I. All three kids delivered by the LaMaze method. She pointed out the place I should stand when I was finished getting dressed and went back to get Susan.
The nurse was waiting for me when I got to the place she’d designated. She motioned for me to come with her and took me to the room where Susan was waiting. Dr. Morrison hadn’t arrived yet, but Susan wasn’t suffering for companionship. She had three student nurses with her, all of them brand-new in OB, all of them very serious-looking and intense because Susan was their first “natural.” Susan looked very chipper, sitting with her feet dangling from the side of the examining table, regaling them with anecdotes from our first two births and answering the questions they were tossing at her. Things got very quiet for a moment or so after I came in, but Susan said, “that’s all right, don’t mind him. He won’t bite,” and the conversation picked up again. I kept looking at the clock on the wall every two minutes, wondering when the hell the doctor would get there and if I would have time to make a phone call before we went into the delivery room. Wondering, also, whether I’d be able to make contact with anybody when I did get through.
The doctor showed up at ten to nine, gave Susan an internal, told her she was pretty ripe, but he was going to give her a little something to speed things up, since he had a 10:30 lecture to give on the LaMaze Method, muttering something about hoping he didn’t have to give it in the delivery room.
I slipped away at five after nine and tried to reach Kevin at the office, but he wasn’t in yet. Crosby wasn’t at the bank, either. Things were still not popping at nine-twenty, so I tried to get O’Toole again. Still not there. The people at the bank told me that Crosby wouldn’t be in all morning because he had a meeting with his advertising agency. Said they’d be glad to give him a message, though. I told them no thanks, I didn’t think it would be necessary.
At about ten of ten things were still not ready to pop and Dr. Morrison was still muttering about maybe having to hold his lecture during the delivery if Susan didn’t hurry up. I started getting the feeling he meant it. I called the office at five of and Kev still wasn’t there. When I got back, Susan was getting another internal. Dr. Morrison shook his head and said she was making progress, but it looked like he’d have to give his lecture in the dellivery room for sure. By this time, Susan started believing him.
At quarter after ten, Morrison gave the nurse a sheet of paper and told her to call the people listed on it and tell them the lecture would be held in Delivery Room C. Susan was a bit unnerved at that, but Dr. Morrison said there was nothing to worry about, things would be a bit crowded but he’d been known to work under worse conditions. Susan nodded to him, but I could tell by the look on her face that she hadn’t been worried about that part of it at all. Neither had I, to tell you the truth. He glanced over at me and said I’d better try my call again because they’d be moving to the delivery room any minute and I wouldn’t be able to make it later on.
Kevin still wasn’t there. Out of desperation, I asked to speak to Frank. I could have kicked myself when he answered the phone. Why hadn’t I thought of that before.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Frank?” He was there, I heaved a sigh of relief.
“Yeah, Who’s this? Seth?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Hey, Frank, listen…”
“Where the hell you been? We’ve been looking for…”
“Hey, Frank, calm down, willya, I’m at the hospital…”
“Hospital? What for? You have an accident?…”
“No,” I laughed, “Well, yeah, in a sense. Susan’s about to deliver.”
“No shit! That’s great. Congratulations, Sethie-boy.”
“Hey, listen, Frank, that’s not why I called. We’ve got a client meeting this morn…”
“Know all about it, Seth-baby. Know all about it. Hold a sec.” He started speaking to somebody in his office. “It’s Seth. HIs wife’s having a baby.” He laughed and I heard the sound of somebody else laughing, too. “Sorry, Seth. That was Crosby. He’s here in the office. Well, look, you go have your baby and don’t worry about a thing. Frank’ll take care of everything this end. See you tomorrow?”
“Far as I know.”
“Okay, then. Go have your baby.”
Taking stuff to John
There’s a story my mother liked to tell about the time she had been recovering from another operation on her bad leg, the one she’d had polio in as a child. It seems she’d been in the hospital for about a month and when she got home, she’d been sleeping on the living room sofa because she couldn’t manage to climb the stairs to the bedroom. She was still able to hop around and fix dinner and all, though. I was away at college, so she didn’t have to worry about me, and Harriet was gone, as well, having eloped that spring. Mom didn’t talk about that very much, since Harriet had eloped with a goy. So, there wsa only Dad to worry about.
One day, it came to her that she hadn’t seen old John for quite a few months, even before she had gone to the hospital.
Old John was just about the ugliest black man I had ever seen. He was very, very black, had a long scar on his face, very strong arms and legs so bowed that if it weren’t for his only being about five feet tall, I could easily have crawled through his legs as a child. He was a hunchback and had very deep black eyes and shiny white teeth, which made him very frightening to me. To my mother, though, he was a “godsend.” He’d actually worked for my grandmother in her grocery store while my mother was growing up, doing all the hard work like carting boxes of canned goods, sweeping up, taking the trash out and things like that. After my grandmother died, he seemed to have adopted my mother, even though she didn’t have the grocery store. I don’t think he had any regular schedule, but he always seemed to be there when the snow was three feet deep or when there was a heat wave or such. He would come to do lots of odd jobs, put coal in the furnace, go to the grocery store in the snow, stack wallpaper in my father’s storage room, and take care of the vegetables in our victory garden, making sure they were watered, mow the lawn, paint the porch, stuff like that.
At any rate, Mom’s leg was feeling better and she decided to visit old John.
She hobbled to our station wagon, put her cane on the passenger seat, and managed to ensconce herself on the seat with her bad right leg on the seat and her good left leg free to work the pedals. “I went to John’s sister’s place, which was the last place I knew he lived,” she told me. “Then, I went to the door and knocked. John’s sister came to the door and told me John was in the old age home near the vinegar works on Cold Spring Lane, so I got back into the car and rode to the old age home near the vinegar works. It was ugly and dark and smelled of rotten apples form the vinegar works,” she told me.
When she got to the old age home, she found that John was on the third floor where the sickest men stayed and he couldn’t come down because he was too ill, so she somehow climbed those three flights of stairs. “I couldn’t have made it except that there was a handrail that went all the way up and I held onto that.” It had taken her the better part of a half hour to climb the stairs.
“Once I caught my breath, I looked around the room and it was so gloomy I could hardly see anything. ‘John,’ I called out. A couple of voices responded, but I recognized John’s voice and looked toward him. It was too dark to see him until a couple of people turned on their lamps. Then, I saw him sitting on a bed almost at the end of the floor. He’d got so skinny I could hardly recognize him. I went to him and he was very glad to see me. We talked a while and then I had to leave. I told him I’d come back next week.”
During the next couple of days, Mom called her friends, plump Margaret whose husband was an electrician and who had moved to Aberdeen, but was always ready when Mom called; pretty Helen whose husband was a race course blacksmith who travelled a lot; skinny Estelle, whose husband had been a paperhanger like my dad, until he died of cancer at 35; Joan, whose husband looked like the Joker from the Batman comics and who worked as a garbage collector.
By the next Wednesday, they had managed to gather together enough stuff to fill the back of the station wagon with the seat down, and Mom went back to the old age home.
“I got some of the people who worked in the old age home to carry the stuff upstairs. There were a couple of boxes of clothing and sweaters so they wouldn’t have to wear those dingy gray pyjamas all the time and could stay warm in the winter. There were a half dozen nice lamps, even one that stood on the floor and held three bulbs. There were a couple of mirrors, some shaving equipment, a phonograph with some records, a couple of radios so they could have some enjoyment, even a small TV for John to watch.
“You should have seen their faces. They were so happy, those that could get out of bed gathering around the boxes, picking out stuff. Then they turned on a few of the new lamps and the room lit up. Their faces lit up, too. I was so happy. Then, one of them turned on a radio and started playing that awful schwartze music and I had to leave.”
Old age did not creep up on me
One morning while shaving, my father
appeared in the mirror. He’d gained
a bit of weight since his death,
A few more hairs adorned his scalp,
his mustache was now a goatee,
but when I cut his face, I bled.
Stairs are steeper, my prostate’s
no longer a walnut and my
blood sugar’s emulating an eagle.
My bad cholesterol’s naughty.
My good’s behaving, my
triglycerides are sinful.
I’m too fat, better start walking,
don’t strike like I used to,
have trouble picking up spares
.
Food has to be spicier; better be
low in fat. I head for the kitchen
during the dirty scenes.
When they talk about a washed-up
32-year-old tennis pro, I chuckle, but
I understand Michael Jordan’s knees.
My wife preceded me to the grave
but I have no interest in seeking another –
not ready for all those changes.
My brain’s in decent working order;
my senses are more acute, except for taste –
though my neighbors say the TV’s too loud.
Smell’s more sensitive to cigarettes but I’ve
had to buy a new set of pots and pans.
My feet hurt more.
My butt tingles while watching the tube.
Being a grandfather’s great.
Payback time is here!
Myth
Three old women
dance around a tree
scared of life,
fearing death.
Should they rest or
dance until they drop?
One sits down,
the others dance.
The next stops cold
and climbs a fence.
The third samboes
into butter.
“Come,” says the first,
“let’s speak of days
when all the songs
had not been sung.”
“I’d rather sit here
than sing songs
with you of things
I cannot fathom.”
“Absurd,” snorts the first
“I’d rather melt
than teeter
there like you.
“Let’s live for today,”
she continues,
spreading the third
upon her bread.
“I’ll stay right here,”
quavers the other,
“on my perch
where I feel safe.”
Morning comes after dark,
winter trees are stark.
Two old women out of three
eye each other wearily.
Dear Dad, (8/8/96)
8/8/96
Dear Dad,
Finally I am here in Europe. It is thrilling to finally be here – to finally get to practice the languages I’ve studied – to be learning so much Czech especially. The Opera Workshop was a good experience for me. I understudied the role of “Don Ottavio” in Don Giovanni. So, now that is under my belt. I got to sing a small part also in La Bohème, “Parpignol” – very short – but, it was experience.
I am still very nervous and insecure about my singing – I’m still more comfortable with straight acting – but – I think with more practice, and experience, I will become more confident. As part of the Opera Workshop, I felt like I fit in – I felt very much a part of everything even though I was disappointed to not get to sing in Don Giovanni. I learned that I do have a lot to offer to Opera – that I can sing it, and with some hard work, I can sing it well.
I still feel that I don’t need it. For me I think this is a very good place to be. I think when we need thigs, then we have no choice, and when we are not free to choose our own paths, we can easily stumble. I wish to live life as a series of choices, always free to choose, free to make mistakes, and since I am free, I am therefore responsible, and not simply a passenger on the train of life, but the captain of my own train (like Fred would have said.)
I think of you often while I am here. I hear your voice guiding me. I don’t know how well I have ever told you just how much I do Love you, father. Your words to me as a child still guide my living today.
Today I was in a beautiful old town called Tábor (which is Czech for “camp”) south of Prague about 100 kilometers. I stood by a wishing well, a 50 hallers coin in hand (about 2 pennies) and I thought of my life, and of Cheryl, who will soon be my wife, and of what I wanted in life, and of what I have. It was a quiet moment, no fanfare – but I realized that the only thing I really wished for was exactly what I have.
My life is burgeoning today with the promise of fruit. Yes, there are things that I want – but, all things are within my power to achieve or attain.
Here I am in a small town called Sedlec-Prčice, 70 kilometers south of Prague (your beloved city of the Brotherhood of the Common Life). I am, for this month, a teacher of English to 11 Czech students, ranging in age from 14 to 50. It is very difficult to teach this language – but it is fulfilling work. I feel very much that I am contributing positively to their lives.
…
Back in Opava, where we had the Opera Workshop, I had a dinner with a group of people including the founder and organizer of the whole affair, Dr. Harry M. B. Hurwitz (Harry to me). He explained his philosophy on life, and I heard your voice. He said he thought of Goethe, of his spending half a lifetime (more) working on Faust, and of the lesson of Faust as he saw it. He said Faust was a man who did many bad things, many foolish things – but that the reason Goethe has him saved at the end – is that he woke up every day – and tried – tried to learn something new – throughout his whole life, despite a deal with the devil – he sought to accomplish something, through all his foolishness, most of all, he cared whether or not his life had meaning, and whether or not his life had any effect on the world. Harry explained how to him what was always most important wsa that he leave the world a little better than he received it. Harry said it, but I heard your voice saying it to me 20 years ago.
I remember bemoaning my fate to you, as a child, that in all the world, I had no “peers”. You taught me that E. A. Poe and Shakespeare and Keats, and Beethoven and Schubert, and Plato – these were my peers, that I must listen to their voices as if they spoke to me. Today I no longer lament – Today, I have a peer. My dear love, Cheryl, is the most wonderful woman I have ever known, and ever loved. I am complete with her. I am me, wholly – my faults and my talents.
I am happy in my life. Funny that I can be so happy and yet still very sad. Sad for the ugliness that I see – sometimes sad for the ugliness I tolerate.
When I was in northern Moravia, I took one day to visit Auschwitz (known hereabouts as Osvětím). I can not fathom such hatred, such violence, such inhumanity. I later took a tour of the Jewish Quarter of Prague. There is a synagogue there, restored, whose interior walls are completely filled with the names of victims of the Holocaust, from the Czech lands. Not only can I not fathom it, I refuse to. I will reserve no place in my heart for hatred – only enough for sorrow to lament it – and hopeful for courage to combat it – for it still exists today – in Bosnia – in America, in the Czech Republic.
I have visited here some old Jewish cemetaries. Some badly damaged by the Nazis and/or communists. I found in one many Adlers. I wonder if they were related.
I wonder why I know so little about my own family. I know only that they came mostly from Russia. I believe all four of my Grandparents were born in America – the first generation here. I believe your granfather’s name was Pearlovsky – though I have never seen it written, nor ever heard of another Pearlovsky.
I wonder at this silence – this void in my life. I wonder why I have run away so many times. I wonder why I so rarely call or write, why I have hardly known my immediate family as anything more than familiar acquaintances for so many years.
I wonder at how life goes on – how we all get older. How I am almost 30 – and how I feel like I have lived four or five lives – disjuncted and not just one.
But I do believe that I have a voice – one which I am still (or perhaps just) now discovering. A voice to say many things – to write many things, to do many things, and mundanely – to sing many things (though that is not the voice I meant.) I also know that that voice is the voice of your son.
Dad, I love you,
Jonathan
Haiku poems
i
i reach for you
empty arms return
the night is chill
ii
i wake in dampness
stretching toward the light
struck dumb by the fog
iii
were i to leave shore
would the waves swallow me up
would i return in spring
iv
dark clouds hovering
obscuring the sun’s hot rays
rain is sure to fall
v
winter settles in
will the heat of summer
keep me warm
vi
where fires burn today
next year after the spring rain
morels will sprout
vii
bereft of their blooms
do the thorny rose bushes
grieve as much as i
viii
would i were the crab
who so swiftly sheds his shell
when it hurts too much
ix
oh curious bug
climbing up the southern wall
don’t look down on me
x
would i travel far
if i had six legs and wings
or would i stay home
xi
i wrestle with thoughts
that crack my resolve
authumn breezes pass
xii
weeding my garden
in the hot noon sun of july
i thirst for you love
xiii
autumn clouds looming low
assuming fantastic shapes
if i could only fly
xiv
when the frost comes back
portending the coming snows
will i be patient
xv
those fleecy mountains
rising on the western ridge
my name called clearly
xvi
was i someone bad
did i do some awful thing
cancer’s come to call
xvii
i seem to have learned
much about pain
this winter
xviii
songs don’t sing themselves
they need many instruments
on many branches
xix
spring was foggy
why didn’t i know that
until winter came
xx
the melons grow large now
we’d better make use of them
before winter comes
xxi
trudging through the snow
as the red salmon swimming
against the current
xxii
has my life become
like the hapless horseshoe
leaning against the pin
xxiii
yellow rose petals
lying in the shallow dish
along with some red
xxiv
laughter of the spring
will their joys be muffled
in the winter snow
xxv
fiery august skies
raindrops quickly soak my clothes
my body shivers
xxvi
sultry august rain
tomatoes fatten themselves
roses push skyward
xxvii
will i find the words
to capture this autumn day
before winter comes
xxviii
my cucumbers hide
under their broad protective leaves
hot july sun
xxix
fiery august sky
huge torrential drenching
clothes cling to my skin
xxx
heavy my garments
quickly drenched my skin
cloudburst in august
xxxi
fiery tendrils
treetrunk shattered in twain
august strikes again
xxxii
steam rising from the bay
crabs lurking in the seaweed
July at the beach
xxxiii
August at the beach
wisps of smoke floating, stinging
jellyfish rule the day
Metamorphosis
Reading like a vacuum cleaner,
sucking up images, skimming through
less traveled areas, going over
and over the denser spots,
loading examples into my bag,
mixing them with moments peculiarly
mine into some new melange.
(cooper’s alley)
in 1942 when i was seven mom used to
send me for a haircut and a movie show
every other saturday she’d've preferred that
i play ball with the other kids but i hadn’t got
to liking sports yet go play with your friends
she used to say i don’t have any i’d reply
after the movie i’d go by cooper’s kosher delicatessen
for a hot dog with bologna or a hot roast beef sandwich
with french fries and gravy then i’d look in cooper’s trash
and there would be a couple of cartons of cigarettes
some bags of sugar and some liquor most of the time
i’d leave the liquor alone my folks didn’t drink i’d take
the sugar and the cigarettes when they got home
dad and his friends would ask me what i’d found
in cooper’s trash i was the neighborhood hero of
world war ii when i brought stuff home
but they were not so happy when i didn’t
sometimes i’d find rings and watches even money
while picking through people’s trash in cooper’s alley
ususally on tuesdays and fridays but i wouldn’t take people’s
soda bottles and cash them in at the grocery store
one day i even found a broach in our trash
that’s the day mom fired the cleaning lady
College Days
(From a cover letter submission to a literary review, dated Dec. 3, 2002)
After a hiatus of 33 years, stretching from my divorce in 1969 to six years post the death of my second wife in 1996, I’ve begun writing poetry again, initially to express my grief. However, beyond that initial burst, I went over the small number of eraly poems I’d written that had not been edited out of existence by a family of field mice which invaded the storage box they had been in. In the process, I discovered four poems each written in a different year of my college experience from 1956 to 1961. Although they may not hold together stylistically, they do share the same author and they do take one from the raging hormones of freshman year, through the cynicism of the sophomore, the conservatism of the junior, the arrogance of the senior and to the panic of the just-graduated. I’ve grouped the four poems under one mantle, College Years, and hope you feel, as do I, that there is a compelling reason for them to be published together.
Hopefully, you will be seeing more work of mine over time, since I’ve been going non-stop since ending the very long dry spell.
[It is to be noted, that my father wrote this letter about one year after being first diagnosed with prostate cancer, several months I believe after it became clear his was hormone-resistant. It is also to be pointed out that the letter is not entirely accurate. He was not divorced in 1969, but rather in 1971 or 1972 as I recall. Further, while "dry spell" may be an accurate description, he did write some during that period.]
College Days
(freshman year) [see so much beauty, she]
Oh God but I was troubled
And she was so much beauty,
Dressed all in blue on Registration day.
No Irish colleen she,
A Russian Jew from Baltimore
And I, oh God, but I was troubled.
So much beauty she, eyes green, hair straw.
Is it any wonder that I, oh God, being troubled
And so much beauty she, sought her eyes
And finding, spoke, expecting no more than
Putoff glare, downturned mouth, upturned nose
And quickened pace?
Believe, oh God, it was hard, so much beauty she,
Not to speak. How could I, oh God, being troubled,
Expect that she could see beauty in me. Soft touch of
lips brushing lips, part of my soul, oh God, part of her,
Part of hers, oh God, fleshing me.
Let tomorrow be, oh God, and she.
(sophomore year)
it was a shallow time of cigarettes in dirty dishes
smoldering and coughing their way into gems of conversation
dragging like the fire-eating beasts talking by the flagonsfull
of beards and bards and baes-in-arms of first and last
and what transpired and nothing it was a hollow time
of talking time and space and sweaters and beds
and blacks and reds
we crossword people catchword people puzzling out the posits
of our faith far from finding force flew forth on farce and fled
for fear to face the feast of our familiar flesh and oh
how heaven hailed our hest and hoisted high the hull
we culled from cold and called our christ
it was a wasted time of monuments and ashes of gods and falls
and other clever things in our attempt to render conversation satiate
(junior year)
I wonder at a time of grave despair
If such despair is of the type which molds,
Heroic figures, gracious gods now pare
My consciousness and stir cerebric folds.
But herein comes the rub with twice its itch,
For lives of mighty men with trammels fraught
Reveal decisions all of separate stitch
And all in all I find no lesson taught,
No readymade and tailored argument;
Polonius and Hamlet now devine
Alike, although of somewhat different bent,
And see in future no concrete signs.
Thus I, an unfrocked student of the past
Now finds myself decidedly aghast.
(senior year) [see night walker’s song]
this kinetic night curls whirls the spring of me its october
keening burns my fingerprints upon its churning and i feel
the pockets that my fingers enter in this glove of night
ideas from other times invade my consciousness
like great gray hounds who taut the muscles of my hair
as they fright from me along the lonely road and
swivelnecked turn and stare
i have created my own universe from this corpse i found
have forged the imprint of me upon the hearts of generations
stirring before me unresting unrestful generations stirring
before me who shall lend their embers to create me anew them
i walk through graves of thought sensing barrenness and
lack of fit flesh to spread upon this rack of me
sensing formless flab unsinewed by time
treestumps become dog’s heads and howl at the bled moon
sureness fades and even i fade brittle hard thin bone
in this glove of night
(to mary lou)
my soul has been injured love
my lips crave the sweet taste of yours
my heart does not murmur love
it is cold it is gnarled and taut
i stare at the swirling of leaves
in the wind and i watch
while they wither and crisp and die
and i cry like a child
