The Jewish Journaling Book: How to Use Jewish Tradition to Write Your Life & Explore Your Soul (Jewish Lights, 2004) Click here to sample this book.
Janet Ruth Falon delves into the practical aspects of keeping a journal as well as how you can use your journal to nurture Jewish values and concerns. Using examples from her own writing, she demonstrates how journaling can unleash your creativity and reveal aspects of yourself that you may not have thought about before. She also includes 52 journaling tools that teach specific techniques to help you create and maintain a vital, living journal, from a Jewish perspective.
To buy this book: $24.99 includes Shipping & Handling. Click Here to Buy the Jewish Journaling Book. Use your Back browser button to return to Janet's website.
Kissed The Girls and Made Them Cry: Teaching Gender Respect to Children; Helping Children Understand Sexism in our Society (Childswork/Childsplay, 1998)
A valuable tool for counselors, therapists, teachers, or parents-to-be that helps children learn about respecting other people, this book encourages counselors, therapists, teachers, or parents to evaluate their gender views and biases. It also includes a story for adults to read with children to foster communication on sexism.
The Gender Respect Workbook (Childswork/Childsplay, 1998)
Using group activities, this books helps teach non-sexist behavior to children.
EDITORS: To contact Janet about an assignment, call
215-635-1698 or click here.
Janet’s articles have appeared in publications nationwide. Click on a link to read Janet’s work.
| The New York Times | Christian Science Monitor |
| The Washington Post | USA Today |
| The Philadelphia Inquirer | Phildelphia City Paper |
| The Boston Globe | Philadelphia Magazine |
| The Miami Herald | The San Diego Union |
| Creative Classroom | The Bergen Record |
| The Chicago Tribune | The Jewish Exponent |
| Philadelphia Daily News | Travel Weekly |
| The Wilmington News-Journal | Country Magazine |
| The Boston Herald American | Entree |
| Inside Magazine | The United States Investor |
| Delaware Today | The Baltimore Jewish Times |
| The Burlington County Times | Nutrition Action |
| The Doylestown Intelligencer | Foundation News |
| The Detroit Jewish News | Pennsylvania Traveler |
| The Boston Phoenix | Aware Magazine |
| The Sunday Herald Examiner, Boston | Equal Times, Boston |
| Ladies' Home Journal | The Lynn Sunday Post, Lynn, Ma. |
| The Massachusetts Teacher | American Square Dance Magazine |
| The Real Paper, Cambridge, Ma. | Children Magazine |
| Common-Wealth Magazine, Boston | Men's Health Magazine |
| Girl Talk Magazine | |
| The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, Lawrence, Ma. | |
| The Cambridge Chronicle, Cambridge, Ma. | |
| Writer's Guide to Creativity (a publication of Writers Digest) | |
| Penn Review Literary Magazine |
EDITORS: To contact Janet about an anthology, call
215-635-1698 or click here.
Janet’s essays and poetry often explore the power of relationships, memory, tradition, spirituality, loss, and love. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines nationwide, as well as in these literary anthologies.
"Father: Famous Writers Celebrate the Bond Between Father and Child," edited by Claudia O'Keefe, Pocket Books, 2000; Click Here for "Heavy When It’s Empty"
"All the Women Followed Her: A Collection of Writings on Miriam the Prophet and the Women of Exodus," edited by Rebecca Schwartz, Rikudei Miriam Press, 2001; Click Here for "Miriam The Speechwriter"
"A Christmas Collection," edited by Mary Ann Eichelberger and Gay Baines, July Literary Press, 2001; Click Here for "Women, Too"
Click Here for "The Rising of the Dough"
Click Here for "Doing Nothing"
Click here for "Standing Ovations"
After winning Theater Ariel’s Playwriting Contest, Janet had two plays produced by Theater Ariel, Pennsylvania’s only professional theater dedicated to illuminating the rich heritage of the Jewish people. To inquire about bookings, click here.
Burnt Offering (1995)
Wherever You Go (1996)
Janet’s scripts for WHYY-TV public television include…
Refuseniks: A Family Divided (Winner, Regional Emmy award)
Sixty Second Sequel (Bill Moyers project)
The Joys of Hanukah
Curricula
Janet often writes about youth-development issues. In books, workbooks, and classroom curriculum materials, she addresses sexism, gender issues, self-esteem, and parenting with insight and activities to help raise emotionally healthy children.
Preparing Children for Parenting: A Curriculum Approach(“LIFE SKILLS 101”, Creative Classroom Magazine, Children’s Television Workshop; January/February 1996). Click here to see a sample.
Creative Content
Janet welcomes your inquiries about writing and developing creative content for large and
small projects. Previous projects include museum exhibit labels, speeches, audio-visual
presentations, newsletters, mission statements, proposals, reports, press releases and letters
for clients including…
To contact Janet about a creative development project, call 215-635-1698 or click here.
READY-TO- USE PARENTING ACTIVITIES & LESSONS TO USE WITH CHILDREN & TEENS
Teaching elementary-school students how to be good parents may sound premature or even inappropriate. After all, children need large doses of parenting themselves. But the skills involved in good parenting -- shaping values, negotiating conflict, communicating, knowing right from wrong, responsibility, patience, and teamwork -- make for successful friends, students, siblings, colleagues, and spouses. A caring human being does not equal a good parent. But learning and practicing these life skills helps to create effective, productive, nurturing, and accountable human beings who will have the tools for good parenting.
Educating Children for Parenting, a Philadelphia-based national program that trains teachers in a caring and nurturing curriculum for their students, teaches that parenting skills will serve students well not only now but throughout their lives. The goal is for nurturing children to become nurturing parents.
"Parenting is not an instinct," says director Jacquelynn Puriefoy-Brinkley." You have to learn the skills of parenting." The curriculum, which includes monthly visits of a parent and his or her baby to the classroom, filters into various educational disciplines.
If you can't arrange for a real baby to come to your classroom or prefer a less intrusive teaching tool, try a high-tech solution. Video Baby is a 30-minute videotape that shows two infants doing what they do best -- crawling, playing and creating havoc! It's a lighthearted, fun video that is effective in making clear the responsibilities of parenting.
SCIENCE
Children often turn to their parents to fix the boo-boos, minor cuts and bruises that don't hurt so much after consolation and a comforting kiss from Mom or Dad. But some injuries do need a little more than TLC. This is a good time to teach the basics of first aid, such as cleaning and bandaging minor injuries, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and how to assist someone who is choking. Students should also know how to contact their family doctor. They should know the doctor's name and how to reach the doctor or her answering service.
Nurturing pets
The idea of people needing a baby to love also holds true for people needing a young pet to love. Ask a veterinarian or a representative from you r local humane society to visit your classroom to discuss the number of kittens and puppies adopted versus the number of adult animals. If any of your students have pets, they may already understand that there are certain responsibilities that go along with pet ownership -- feeding, walking, changing litter boxes and cages, bathing.
Have your students prepare a set of questions to ask the animal expert about basic pet care. They can ask: How many times a day do I need to feed my pet? How often must he get medical checkups? Why does my cat sleep so much? Why do I have to keep my pet on a leash when I walk him? Do all dogs like the same food? How often must I bathe my pet? Do pets have emotions -- happiness, sadness, depression?
Correlate this discussion with the responsibilities of caring for a baby. Students will see that the questions they asked the veterinarian, such as those about feeding and sleep schedules, are also concerns when caring for a baby.
Carry the animal experience a step further: Put the names of various animals in a fishbowl and have each student choose one. Then have children work individually or in groups to research the parenting techniques of the animal. The students can later present a short report to the class. Have the class make a chart of all the animals' parenting skills and techniques, then compare each skill to human parenting skills. What are the similarities and the differences?
Nutritious meals
Providing food for your children is one of the most basic parenting skills. To introduce lessons about nutrition, collect a series of school-lunch menus. Ask students which meals they think are the most nutritious and why. Then explain to them the basic nutrition guidelines set by the FDA, such as eating four servings of fruits and vegetables each day. Explain that their parents put thought into preparing nutritious meals for the family, being sure to include fruits, vegetables, protein, and vitamins in their diet. Students will understand that planning and preparing meals is more than just choosing their favorite foods.
Facing challenges
Until they acquire language skills, babies learn about their world from their senses. Those with special needs rely more heavily on their senses. For example, a child who is deaf will rely more heavily on his sight and sense of touch, more so than a child who is not challenged by deafness. For older or advanced students, introduce the topic of basic genetics, focusing on heredity, the appearance of dominant or secondary traits, mutations, and birth defects. Also, explain the effects drugs, alcohol, and nicotine can have on an unborn child. Follow with an open discussion about the challenges to parents of a physically or mentally challenged child.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Parenting raises all sorts of gender issues: Is diapering, for instance, a mother or father's job? Should Mom or Dad teach a child how to throw a softball? And should girls as well as boys learn how to throw that softball?
Ask students to think of different gender-related family conflicts that can be debated in the classroom. Students may even suggest conflicts they've worked through at home, such as who takes out the garbage, who mows the lawn, who prepares the meals, who does the cleaning. Then have your students role-play the conflict to bring it to resolution. Older students can write editorials arguing for or against a particular stance. If the matter of who takes out the garbage is still unsettled, students can take home ideas discussed in class (teamwork and conflict resolution are parenting skills applied here).
Alternative family groups
In addition to the traditional mother-father-children family unit, there are many different types of families: single-parent families (since the 1950s, the share of American children living in mother-only families has quadrupled from 6 percent to 24 percent), blended families, multigenerational families, families with adopted and/or foster children, and families headed by gay or lesbian couples. Keep in mind that there are many other kinds of family units.
Some of these family units may at first seem difficult or awkward to explain, but nontraditional families are growing in number and should be acknowledged. Children will probably have questions and comments about families without you prompting them. And most likely there are students in your class who are part of alternative families. Just be sure to present the information in a way that young minds can process I. (Tough to Teach, also in this issue.)
Discuss different aspects of various family units. For example, a positive of multigenerational families might be having your grandparents close by or always having someone to talk to or play with. A con can be waiting in line for the bathroom or someone getting that last piece of cake before you do! Invite into your classroom representative speakers from different types of families to talk about the difficulties and rewards of their family units.
Divide your class into small groups. Have them write lists of the challenges their parents face and how the students help out. Send older students OT the library to research and then report on various family units in other cultures, such as kibbutzim in Israel, where children live in groups apart from their parents. To encourage deeper thought, have students personalize their reports by including comments on how they'd feel if they lived in these different family units.
Some students may feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about discussing their own family units, so make participation in these activities voluntary. But help all students feel comfortable by stressing that all family units are special. Your "family" is who you care for and care about.
MATH
Parenting is an expensive proposition. Have students determine the basic costs of caring for a baby. They can refer to ads in local newspapers or track the costs of a baby at home. Ask students: How much do diapers cost? Are disposable or cloth diapers more economical? How many diapers will you need for a week? And what will that cost? How much does a jar of baby food cost? How many jars will you need to feed a baby for a month and what will be the cost?
Have the class discuss less costly alternatives, such as home cooking as opposed to dining out. Set up a basic weekly budget for taking care of a baby. Entries should include food, clothing, and day-care and baby-sitting costs.
ART
Visit a local art museum or borrow reproductions of paintings and drawings from a library or other resource center. Choose works that feature babies, small children, or scenes of family life. Use these as a starting point to inspire discussions about parenting. Conversation topics are unlimited, but creative triggers might include: Does this child look like he is being well cared for? How? How is this child/family similar to or different from you/your family? What activity might be going on outside of the action depicted here?
Ideally, the works you use will feature a spectrum of family configurations and cultures. After these discussions, explain the most accepted interpretation of the piece. Then teach your students about the artists' lives and what inspired their work. Finally, explain the techniques and media the artists used. Artists whose works depict children and family life include Varnette Honeywood, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Leroy Campbell, and Pierre Bonnard.
Collage of family love
Have each child create a poster-size collage that depicts family love. They can use old newspapers, magazines, and advertisements. Remind students that parental love is not limited to expressing affection. It also includes a variety of tasks and responsibilities, such as setting limits, disciplining, teaching, and listening.
Mount the collages on cardboard and frame with designs made of construction paper. They make terrific gifts for Mother's Day or Father's Day.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Parents need to be ready for just about anything, including medical emergencies. Students can role-play 911 emergency situations. Some students can play the role of the injured party; others can play the role of the one who seeks help. Act out the various situations to illustrate the range of emergencies that can occur.
Get the victim to be as specific as possible about his injuries. Explain vocabulary such as dull, sharp, throbbing, palpitating, faint, dizzy, and queasy. A precise description helps the doctor or technician make the most appropriate medical decisions.
Stress the importance of remaining calm and of speaking slowly and clearly to the 911 operator. Explain that the smoothness of this exchange will get help to the victim more quickly. Also address the importance of following directions. Discuss how crucial this is when being instructed on how to assist the victim until help arrives. Better yet, have a 911 emergency operator assist you in this exercise.
Fairy-tale lives
Use students' favorite stories and fairy tales to introduce a discussion of how fictitious parents behave. For example, you might use Charlotte's Web to talk about whether Mr. and Mrs. Arable were right or wrong in insisting that Fern sell Wilbur to her relatives on a farm. Have the children imagine how the story might have unfolded had the parents acted differently. Rewrite part of the story based on that change. Children can do this activity with "Cinderella" and other stories that include parents and families. They can also write this as a scene in a play and act it out.
Activities for young children who are just learning the ABC's include alphabetizing a baby's typical needs or writing a lullaby for a child who needs comforting. Children can also learn a lullaby from a foreign country.
Parents on parenting
Ask students to interview their parents about parenting. Students can ask: Did you feel prepared for parenting? What's your greatest challenge as a parent? What did you learn about parenting from your own parents? What do you as parents expect from your children?
Based on their interview notes, students can write a parenting profile. Then ask children to pair up and interview each other about the ups and downs of being children, and to describe their partner's responses in a short essay.
When children play house they often envision themselves with adorable, even-tempered infants, not realizing that infants can grow into demanding, complex, and sometimes difficult children who present parents with a tremendous number of challenges. (In fact, many teenage mothers, when asked why they became mothers, report some variation of "I need a baby to love me." Unfortunately, they don't realize much love and attention is required in return.?
The direct goal of a parenting-skills curriculum for elementary school students is not to prevent teen pregnancy or child abuse though it may have that effect. If a young child truly comprehends the enormous difficulties and responsibilities of parenting, he may be better able to rethink what might otherwise be impulsive, uninformed responses.
As you teach these skills, be sure to remind students that becoming a parent -- even for mature, responsible adults - isn't easy and isn't for everyone. Stress that some people make personal, individual decisions not to have children or to limit the size of their family. They have a right to make that choice. The values and tools children learning your classroom will serve them well in their dealings with all people -- and may even make them especially good teachers!
MORE ON THE SUBJECT
* Video Baby, produced by Quality Video of Minneapolis. For more information, write: 7399 Bush Lake Rd., Minneapolis, MN 55439; 612-893-0903.
* Childbirth Graphicsprovides tools and props for teaching parenting. Write: PO Box 21207, Waco, TX 76702-1207; 1-800-299-3366.
* The American Red Cross offers a baby-sitting course that teaches children how to care for other children. For information, contact your local chapter.
* Safe Sitter understands that children who may be too young for the responsibilities of baby-sitting end up doing just that with younger siblings. Classes, based at hospitals, include accident prevention and benign discipline. Call 1-800-255-4089.
FICTION
· Oh, Boy! Babies!by Alison Cragin Herzig and Jane Lawrence Malin (Little, Brown), is about 10 boys in an infant-care class who learn how to comfort and are for babies in order to become baby-sitters.
· Shadow and the Ready Time, by Patty Sheehan and Maeno (Advocacy Press), teaches lessons of parenting and family through he adventures of a wolf pup returned from captivity tot he wild.
· The Mommy Exchange, by Amy Hest (Four Winds), is a tale of two home-swapping friends (one an only child, the other with twin siblings) curious about the other's home life.
“Car Naming”
New York Times, Sept. 27, 2002
Esther Jantzen of Los Angeles has had a terrific 14-year relationship with Alice, with whom she’s spent long stretches of time, often just the two of them. She takes meticulous care of Alice, and frequently tells Alice how much she appreciates her.
Even Ms. Jantzen’s friends acknowledge Alice’s worth. “Often I give rides to an 83-year-old woman who lives in my building, and every now and then she gives me 10 bucks,” says Ms. Jantzen. “I protest. Then she says, ‘Don’t be silly. It’s not for you, it’s for Alice.’ In that case, I happily take it.”
Ms. Jantzen spends the gift money on high-octane purchases – not jewelry or designer clothes, but gas. Or oil. Or a professional cleaning, all of which would be appropriate indulgences for Alice, a 1988 Mazda 323.
“I named her Alice when she was brand new and exquisitely blue because I felt she would carry me into Wonderland -- and she has,” says Ms. Jantzen, who drove Alice when she relocated from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. “I’ve spent more time with her in the last 14 years than with any human being.
“And I always name my cars because they’re faithful companions, like pets.”
For many people, car-naming is routine, as integral to co-existing with their vehicles as deciding if their new puppy is Fido or Max. “We have a relationship with these hunks of hardware,” says Bill Johnson of Lexington, Kentucky, president of The Veteran Motor Car Club of America, who droves a Chevy Suburban named The Brute. “Even though they’re just steel and plastic, cars are extensions of ourselves, and our individual freedoms.”
In addition, naming something adds intimacy to the relationship, especially when what’s being named is inanimate. “We name our cars because we’re trying to connect in an isolated world,” says Dr. Armond Aserinsky, a psychologist in North Wales, Pennsylvania. “But people also name the automatic vacuums in their pools that run randomly over the water, and they’re dumb as a post. It’s a holdover from early childhood, when life is attributed to anything that moves.”
So you get Marilyn Root of Somerville, Massachusetts, author of “Women at the Wheel,” who had Barney Beetle, Dennis Datsun, and now drives Sophie Saturn. “Sometimes I talk about it like a person and expect it to walk in the room,” she says.
There’s Deb Harmon of Delray Beach, Florida, who had to part with Extee – a 1988 Subaru XT – last November. “I was crazy about it, and cried when they told me it was dead,” she says.
And Lonnie Weiss of Philadelphia recalls with great fondness when in the mid 1970s the engine of Goldie, her beloved Dodge Dart, was extracted from a wrecked body and placed into the shell of a more intact Dart to create Heart of Goldie. “Years later, I’d drive down the street I’d lived on then and hear a-thump, a-thump, a-thump, and I knew it was Goldie,” she says.
Although women are considered more relationship oriented and thus more inclined to car naming, men, too, take part in this ritual – and they are increasingly less likely to think of their cars as female, says Dr. Aserinsky. Women, however, may be more willing to admit that they name their cars, or talk to their cars or, like Ms. Harmon, take photos of them.
Both men and women seem to talk to their cars in stressful situations, such as “Come on, Mary Lou, get me up this icy hill,” or, “Biscuit, you really don’t need gas right now, do you?” “People have an ancient history in the collective unconscious of finding life in inanimate objects,” says Dr. Marilyn Metzl, a psychologist-psychoanalyst in Kansas City, Missouri, and current driver of Suby the Subaru. “Before monotheism we saw God in rocks, and trees, and even now, in times of stress, we revert to the ancient gods.”
Even well-known personalities indulge in car naming. Elvis and Jay Leno, both avid car collectors, didn’t, but Liberace, who owned 38 cars during his lifetime, did: Volksroyce, a 1971 Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible upgraded with Rolls Royce fenders, lights, grill, and hood ornament, according to Brian Paco Alvarez, collections manager at the Liberace Center for the Arts in Las Vegas. Volksroyce has a pink silk roof, and also sports Liberace’s name spelled in rhinestones.
Car naming has also been validated in celluloid. Think Batmobile. Think Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine. Think Herbie, the Volkswagen Beetle in Disney’s Love Bug.
Some people just name parts of their cars, like Ann Bialy of Laguna Hills, California, whose navigational system in her Acura TL is named Gracie. “It’s after Gracie Allen, who pretended to be stupid but was really very smart,” explains Ms. Bialy. “She sometimes tells me to go a longer distance than I need to, but if you’re lost, that’s okay.
“I didn’t have a name for my last car, but I told her, ‘if you don’t behave, I’ll get rid of you,’ and I did.”
Some car names are puns, such as the unreliable Oy Vega driven by Stuart Zalka in Brooklyn in the late 1970s, or Philip, the gas-thirsty 1975 Plymouth Valiant owned by Barry and Donna Brian of Dresher, Pennsylvania.
Other car names are based on the traits that the owner hopes the car will have; Lyn D’Urso, of Guelph, Ontario, called her old Volvo sedan Bob, a name that resonates with a dependable, no-nonsense persona.
The license plate can dictate a car’s name, like Ian, a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle with a license plate of 613-IAN that was owned by Gay Healer of Portland, Oregon.
And the age and worldly experience of the person who picks the name is a factor. When Dr. Dana Brotman, a psychologist in Falls Church, Virginia, allowed her four-year-old daughter to name their 1993 Honda Accord, Anna chose Misty, after her babysitter’s cat.
When Dr. Brotman was a teenager, she called her 1969 Pontiac LeMans convertible Caspar because it was white. “Also, I got into a lot of mischief with that car,” she recalls. “It was my partner in crime.”
Then there’s the Betsy phenomenon. For some reason, lots of people name their cars Betsy (or, to a lesser degree, Betty). The late Sidney Sheiman of Brooklyn used to name all his cars Betsy until he started buying Volvos, recalls his daughter, Naomi Atkins; as a child, Ms. Atkins thought the name came from the folksong “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” and that “Pike” referred to “turnpike.”
“I named my first car Betty, after my mother,” says Denise Larrabee of Philadelphia. “It seemed natural, and when I yelled at it for not starting or some other offense, I believed I could also release some deeply buried frustrations with my mother at the same time – sort of a cross between role-playing and primal-scream therapy.”
An important decision, which might set into motion a lifetime of car naming, is what people name their first car. Sixteen-year-old Julia Soffa of Philadelphia is already tooling around in her red Mercury Grand Marquis with 100,000 miles, but she hasn’t named it yet. “Choosing a name for her will come from an experience,” she says. “I won’t look through a list of names like naming a child; my car’s name will come to me out of the blue. A friend may say to me, ‘Julia, let’s take The Bomber to the movies,’ and the name will stick. It’s going to be an emotional process that may take a while. After all, she is my first car, my first baby, and I have to get a feel for her before I can choose a proper name.”
If Ms. Soffa’s car turns out to be a lemon, perhaps the most pertinent question is one posed by Ron Geizer of Cleveland: “Is calling your car names the equivalent of naming your car? Somehow I think not.”
“Fairmount Park”
Washington Post, April 6, 1986
Philadelphia's Fairmount Park is the largest urban park in the world, its 4,077 contiguous acres snaking out from Center City along either side of the Schuylkill (pronounced "SKOO-kill") River. The Park, in fact, is the "skewer" around which the northwestern section of the city is built, and provides easy-access escapes from the urban life, with its lush foliage and secret trysting spots, winding creeks and a covered bridge, bike paths and even some classic examples of turn-of-the-century arthitecture in restored buildings and early homes of wealthy Philadelphians.
But the real highlight is the bounty of sculptures that dot the Park, setting up a contrast between the art of nature and the nature of Art; you can even think of the Park in its entirety as a backdrop for these varied works, a flexible, al fresco sculpture museum in which the pieces must adapt to a setting that changes every day, and every season.
Although some works are hidden in the recesses of the Park and usually are stumbled upon by unsuspecting meanderers, a fairly comprehensive route for viewing many of the major pieces is to start at the Swann Memorial Fountain at Logan Circle in Center City (officially a part of Fairmount Park), head up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and passing the Rodin Museum to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. From there, continue up along the Schuylkill River on Kelly Drive (formerly the East River Drive) to the Falls Bridge, and then back down along the other side of the Schuylkill on the West River Drive with optional detours to see the sculpture at the Philadelphia Zoo and Memorial Hall. This whole tour is no more than 15 miles and, because you won't always find parking near all the works you might want to see, it makes for an ideal bike ride. On a nice day you'll have to share the path with joggers and other outdoorsy types who might, for example, be working out on the Parcours exercise course on the West River Drive, but it's worth it -- and Philadelphia novices should be sure to drive the West River Drive at night for a view of the illuminated boat houses along Boat House Row on Kelly Drive, a lovely display.
This sculpture tour also is enhanced by the seasonal changes in foliage that form the stage on which you're viewing the works, and by the presence of university sculling teams that practice on the Schuylkill.
For pedestrians, many of the sculptures are within the easy walk from Logan Square to the Art Museum and just beyond. These include the "Shakespeare Memorial" by Alexander Stirling Calder at Logan Circle, with Hamlet and the jester Touchstone; the "Aero Memorial" by Paul Manship, also at Logan Circle, a celestial sphere that's a memorial to the aviators who died in World War II; Jacques Lipchitz's powerful "Prometheus Strangling the Vulture," at the east courtyard of the Art Museum; and the gilded bronze "Joan of Arc" by Emmanuel Fremiet, striking in its noble stance and golden resonance, located where Kelly Drive begins at the Art Museum.
Although most of the works are labeled, for more in-depth appreciation, either before or after your trip, you might arm yourself with "Philadelphia's Treasures in Bronze and Stone," compiled by the Fairmount Park Art Association and published by Walker, available in many Philadelphia bookstores. A new guidebook to the total collection of public art in the city, also by the Association, will be ready sometime next year.
Although cities such as Baltimore, Chicago and New York also are graced by a wealth of public, or outdoor art, Philadelphia's fine collection -- in the city as a whole, as well as in Fairmount Park -- has its roots in a highly cultivated public concern for the arts that dates back for centuries, according to Penny Balkin Bach, executive director of the Fairmount Park Art Association, a private agency that commissions, purchases and places sculpture in the city in coordination with developments in urban planning. Even the formation of the Association in 1872, at the same time the city was buying parkland areas, was considered quite foreward-thinking, in that the two founders (one the son of a former mayor) were operating with the quintessentially Romantic notion of making Philadelphia a humane place.
This commitment to public art in Philadelphia also is evident in the ordinances that mandate a certain amount be spent on it, as well as many corporation-commissioned works and the fine collections of outdoor sculpture on the city's university campuses.
And the development of the overall collection continues; this spring, for instance, Judy Pinto's "Fingernail Span," a sculpture/bridge spanning the Wissahickon Creek in the Park, will debut.
Unfortunately, Philadelphia is plagued by severe acid rain, and bronze is quickly deteriorated by sulfuric acid. The Fairmount Park Art Association already has treated 40 sculptures to arrest the deterioration. Another solution, being attempted with two William Rush works, "Schuylkill Freed" and "Schuylkill Chained," is to cast the originals (wood, in this case) in the more durable fiberglass and to display the casts outdoors.
Without doubt, the most popular sculpture in the Park is Frederic Remington's "Cowboy," the artist's first -- and last -- large-size bronze work, installed in 1908, a year before he died. Perched on a rocky crag right along the busy Kelly Drive, the sculpture is a romantic "stop action" study of a rough-and-tough cowboy astride a horse that apparently has just halted at the edge of a precipice after galloping at top speed. The sense of suddenly stopped motion is captured in the horse's outflung foreleg and windswept tail, the latter a source of controversy because it undelicately revealed accurate anatomy underneath; the sculpture, in general, was a highly expressionistic piece, a break from the traditional equestrian poses of the past.
The model for the cowboy was Remington's friend, Charlie Trego, a native Pennsylvanian who, appropriately, later became manager of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
A common complaint about this much-loved sculpture is that it is inaccessible, both visually to the commuters who whiz by it on their way in and out of Center City, and to any pedestrian who risks an accident crossing Kelly Drive to get to it. But because Remington chose the location -- at that time, Kelly Drive was just a dirt path with little traffic -- there's little chance the sculpture will ever be moved.
Another favorite is Alexander Stirling Calder's "Swann Memorial Fountain," in the center of Logan Circle, 19th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway (the Parkway is a visual gem itself, having been modeled after the Champs Elysees). Allegorical figures, including Leda and a nude Indian, represent the three rivers -- the Schuylkill, Delaware and Wissahickon Creek -- that surround Philadelphia, and the Fountain was so named not for the swans that are part of the sculpture but because it is a tribute to a Dr. Wilson Cary Swann.
This work, too, was initially criticized because it was felt that the average "Joe" wouldn't understand the symbolism of the allegorical figures. Still, when it was dedicated in 1924, 10,000 people danced the tango to the music of the police band.
Philadelphia, by the way, has been home to three Calders: Alexander Milne Calder, who created the beloved 27-ton statue of William Penn that stands atop City Hall (traditionally, no building in Philadelphia was to be built higher but, after heated controversy, a Rouse Corporation office complex will soon break that rule); Alexander Stirling Calder; and Sandy Calder, whose "Ghost" is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A favorite Philadelphia joke is referring to this impressive triumverate as 'The Father, Son and Holy Ghost."
Not far from the Swann fountain is Auguste Rodin's tremendously popular "The Thinker." Pondering his fate, head in hand, right in front of the delightful Rodin Museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, "The Thinker" also was frowned upon when it debuted in 1880. It was regarded as only a larger version of the sculpture that dominates the tympanum of Rodin's "The Gates of Hell," a bronze cast of which also stands at the entrance to the museum.
"Public art doesn't inspire unanimity of taste," the Association's Bach says. "It doesn't quietly and comfortably get to where it is, and is often very controversial in the beginning." But Philadelphians sooner or later "come around," and their favorite works now are those that have long been highly regarded in the art world.
Yet this is a city that also takes chances, and displayed Claus Oldenberg's "Clothespin," Robert Indiana's "Love" sculpture (made famous on a U.S. postage stamp) and only last year, Isamu Noguchi's "Bolt of Lightning," a work on which the jury is still out. (Despite Sylvester Stallone's refusal to leave his "Rocky" character, a tacky statue of the victorious athlete was removed from its sentimental location at the top of the Art Museum steps and relegated to the entrance of the Spectrum sports arena.)
But then there are the sculptures that are well-known because they aren't well liked. Probably one of the least popular is "The Young Mehert," by Khoren Der Harootian, prominently displayed at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, next to the entrance to Kelly Drive. A gift of Philadelphia's Armenian community, the sculpture depicts a soldier holding a sword that apparently is aimed at himself.
"Everyone thinks it must be really important because of where it is, but they want to know, 'Why is this man killing himself in front of the museum?' " says Bach.
Her own favorite is "Stone Age in America," by John J. Boyle, installed in 1887. A small work that is impressive in its sensitivity and strength rather than in any splashy presentation, it shows an Indian mother determinedly defending her children from an anticipated charge of a bear, a hatchet in her right arm, her baby in her left. A dead cougar lies at her feet, its head falling over the base of the sculpture.
"Stone Age in America" recently was spruced up after having been vandalized and moved from Sweetbriar Mansion, deeper in the Park, to a more prominent spot near the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial on Kelly Drive. The Samuel Memorial, a short stretch along Kelly Drive, consists of the works of 16 sculptors whose pieces symbolize American history. They include the ensnarled power of "Spirit of Enterprise," by Jacques Lipchitz; the more traditionally inspiring "Weclcoming to Freedom," by Maurice Sterne; and Henry Rosen's "Quaker" and "Puritan," representing the forces of stateman and soldier which, together, formed America.
"The Washington Monument" by Rudolf Siemering, in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is another favorite -- thankfully so, since it took more than 80 years to take this work from idea to fruition (16 of them devoted just to casting the bronze figures on it). The monument, completed in 1897, is divided into three levels: Washington, the hero, on a horse, on the top level; Washington's times, in the middle; and at the bottom, his country, represented by animals indigenous to North America.
Other sculptures in Fairmount Park aren't imbued with any more meaning than the inherent joy of the works themselves. Carl Milles' delightful trio of "Playing Angels" sits on high concrete bases along Kelly Drive, and is visible for miles. These agile musicians are second casts from a group of five originals at Millesgarden, the outdoor sculpture garden in Stockholm.
The Philadelphia Zoo in Fairmount Park also features some wonderful works, including Edward Kemeys' visceral "Hudson Bay Wolves." Completed in 1872, the bronze -- depicting the moment at which wolves begin to fight for the deer they have just killed -- was the first work commissioned by the Fairmount Park Art Commission. A masterpiece of musculature and illustration of "the moment," it stands adjacent to the Zoo's Wolf Woods.
Both Albert Laessle's playful "Penguins," at the entrance to the Bird House, and the highly strokable "Bear and Cub" by Joseph J. Greenberg, Jr., near Bear Pits, are similarly well placed. Both are solid, dense works, the total opposite of the airy Impalla Fountain by Henry Mitchell, in which a dozen skeletal animals leap gracefully over water.
Placement of works changes in the Zoo, as well as outside. The ferocious "Lioness Carrying to Her Young a Wild Boar," by Auguste Cain, used to terrify approaching horses, and so was moved from the River Drive to the Zoo (where it no doubt terrifies young children).
But just inside the main gate of the Zoo is the sweetly maternal "Cow Elephant and Calf," a favorite spot to snap a picture of the kiddies. When it was completed by Heinz Warneke in 1962, the 37-ton work at that time was the largest freestanding sculpture in the United States carved from a single piece of solid granite.
The family theme is continued, with a major variation in mood, at the main entrance to the Zoo, with Wilhelm Franz Alexander Friedrich Wolff's moving "The Dying Lioness," showing a lioness in the throes of death surrounded by her hungry, uncomprehending cubs and, above her, the grieving lion. The work, completed in 1873, was first exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Memorial Hall, at 42nd Street and Parkside Avenue -- not far from the Zoo -- is the only major building remaining from that exhibition, and is the general location of several noteworthy sculptures. The two Pegasus sculptures in front of Memorial Hall were originally created by German artist Vincenz Pilz for the Vienna Opera House, but the Austrian government believed they were out of scale and returned them to the foundry for melting, where they were rescued by Philadelphian Robert H. Gratz.
Nearby is Alexander Milne Calder's 1887 equestrian sculpture of Major General George Gordon Meade, who was one of the first commissioners of Fairmount Park. Calder knew Meade, a Union general who turned back Confederate forces at Gettysburg. It took nearly 10 years for Philadelphians to raise the money for this sculpture, and creative fund-raising methods included "Meade Memorial Matinees" at the Walnut Street Theater.
Also near Memorial Hall is J. Otto Schweizer's 1934 piece, "All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors." It is one of a few sculptures in the Park either created by a black artist, or portraying black characters. In fact, a recent, and controversial proposal to create a separate black history sculpture garden at the Belmont Plateau section of Fairmount Park is now being debated.
Other noteworthy public art in Fairmount Park includes the Art Deco facade of the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company, done by Lee Lawrie, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Art Museum; "Atmosphere & Environment, XII" by Louise Nevelson, a vertical steel work at the west entrance of the Art Museum, right near Jacob Epstein's "Social Consciousness"; "Abraham Lincoln" by Randolph Rogers, which shows a seated Lincoln because the President would have sat to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, regarded by Rogers as Lincoln's most important act, elevated at the beginning of Kelly Drive; "Thorfinn Karlsefni" by Einar Jonsson, a bronze of the 11th-century Icelandic explorer, at Boat House Row on Kelly Drive; and "General Ulysses S. Grant" by Daniel Chester French and Edward C. Potter, considered a great equestrian statue, located further up Kelly Drive.
And while you're scouting out sculpture in Philadelphia, you might expand your search to other locations in the city, especially those known for unusual works: Penn's Landing, with its sculpture of the sacred bull Nandi, the largest Nandi outside of India; the Grand Stair Hall in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with its sculpture of the goddess Diana, originally on the tower of the old Madison Square Garden in New York City; City Hall, with its 250 figurative sculptures on the building's interior and exterior, and also that much loved 27-ton statue of "Billy" Penn (for which a special foundry -- the Tacony Iron & Metal Works of Philadelphia -- was built to cast it).
“Traveling Light,”
appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on June 23, 1995
I've left old toothbrushes -- their bristles splayed like the legs of a newborn giraffe -- in Kansas City, Prague, and a castle in Barbados. On my honeymoon in Boston six winter's ago, I abandoned, in our room at the Ritz, a pair of mid-calf vinyl boots that was capricious about keeping my feet dry. I bequeathed well-worn, faithful Nikes to a trash can in Mabel Dodge Luhan's house in Taos, and have discarded underpants in Cologne, Laguna Beach, Evanston, a bed-and-breakfast in the Poconos, and an overpriced hotel in Manhattan where I saw a mouse scoot across the floor just as Willard Scott was predicting thunderstorms for New England.
It's not that I'm unlucky, and things just sort of fall apart while I'm away from home; not at all. And it's not that I'm a scatterbrained or careless packer who's always rushing to check out before I'm charged for another day; au contraire, I'm a bordering-on-compulsive packer, who examines the drawers, closets and bathroom and sifts through the unmade bed at least three times before bidding a hotel room goodbye.
No, these are planned desertions, carefully timed and anticipated. When I go away, I purposefully pack the bathing suit with the stretched-out, nearly sheer derriere, the tube of toothpaste with approximately the right number of squooshes left, the umbrella with broken ribs, and whatever sections of the Sunday newspaper I haven't gotten to from the previous five weeks, knowing I'll use these items on the trip, and leave them behind before I return home. It's the same satisfaction that comes with using up a tenacious jar of ketchup that's had several addresses, or throwing out a calendar on December 31: A sense of cleansing, of creating space, of starting afresh and, frankly, sheer delight in my own idiosyncrasies.
And if I'm ever bored, I imagine the reactions of the various hotel housekeepers who've discovered my dispossessed posessions when they tidy up the room. I entertain myself by postulating what they say to their co-workers, and to their families when they go home at night, something that always begins, "You wouldn't believe . . . " For instance, because those honeymoon boots were in relatively good shape, I left a Post-It note attached to them that read "These boots will keep you warm, but not dry. Help yourself. Size nine, narrow." Also, I told the hotel cashier that I'd left behind the boots on purpose, and they shouldn't put them in the lost-and-found, or track me down at home. Anyhow, I figured it was a fair exchange, because we'd absconded with the sewing kit and several day's of shampoo and French-milled soap.
Let me say that all this is not about packing light; it's about packing in anticipation of the unbearable lightness of being able to shed -- if not your entire skin, then at least the dry or callused patches. You leave behind, in cities and countries that may never see you again, the droppings of your existence -- the three-dimensional counterpart of graffiti such as "Kilroy was here" or "John was as cute as Paul" on the wall in front of the Abbey Road recording studio in London. My husband laughs at how long it takes me to pack, but he doesn't realize that I'm planning with more than the weather and matching colors in mind; I'm organizing my suitcase around my designated flotsam and jetsam.
This quirk is also not about parting with stuff to clear adequate suitcase space for souvenirs (although I do collect snowglobes from around the world but, even if they've been shrouded in bubble wrap, snowglobes still don't take up much space). And I always travel with a collapsible tote that folds into itself and takes up about the same space as a pocket-sized packet of Kleenex.
No, I have a hunch that this is about something primal, like identity. I scatter my Hansel-and-Gretel breadcrumbs around the world, but I don't need them to find my way home; in fact, I like feeding the birds. And I get home, intact, without having to retrace my steps; I just go forward, lighter, having left my mark -- sometimes as insignificant as an empty shampoo bottle -- on faraway places. It's like my favorite T-shirt -- which, by the way, I'll never willingly leave behind in a hotel -- printed with a message that sings to me: "Wherever you go, there you are." It's my travel mantra.
I figure I've left small hunks of myself around the world for more than 20 years, having begun when I got my first apartment with my own belongings, the disposition of which I monitored on my own. I, alone, decided when a lipstick was sufficiently stubby to toss, or a sweater sufficiently pilled to be donated to the Salvation Army. (There were clashes before that, especially during the transitional time when I was in college, such as when my parents threatened to ditch me in Stockholm unless I'd get rid of the outfit I'd worn almost every day in Oslo and Helsinki: A purple Bette Midler T-shirt and a pair of painter's paints stained yellow with photographic chemicals.)
Even since then, my tendency to get rid of objects along the way has been questioned by various friends who are sufficiently intimate to challenge me. "Why did you buy that new jacket if you're not going to bring it to London?," someone will ask, having heard me describe the last-legs jettison jacket I'm packing, instead. But I don't want to risk losing that new jacket in London, just as I never bring my favorite earrings on a trip, or books that I'll want to keep in my home library. This is the flip side of getting-rid-of -- the holding on.
I realized, a few years ago, that the anxiety I'd always felt on the day before I'd leave on a trip was rooted in the self-perception that my identity relied on external cues. Here was the skewed logic: I have a cat. I am a cat owner. But I don't have my cat with me when I'm away from home, so who am I? Replace the word "cat" with anything else -- "computer," "bicycle," "my house," anything -- and you can see how leave-taking was so terrifying: If I didn't shlep along all my stuff, I was leaving my self at home. I recall a particularly acute identity crisis that welled up while I poked around the ruins of the Glastonbury Abbey in the British countryside, where none of the externals -- the religion, the age of the place, people's accents, the indigenous wildflowers, the types of pastries in the bake shops -- had any specific relevance with my life, and I longed to click my feet together three times and do a Dorothy, transporting myself back to home where I could touch and see things that reminded me I was me.
Obviously, my possession-scattering doesn't always mean something, like when I leave behind a pair of pantyhose that sprang an inopportune run. And sometimes I'd love to discard something -- such as the below-the-knees denim skirt I wore throughout a singles tour of Eastern Europe because we'd been instructed to dress modestly, but all the other women had brought shorts and short skirts -- but I can't, because there's no ready replacement.
But I'm convinced that leaving stuff behind is, in great part, my way of proving to myself not only that I've left my mark some place, but that I can discard that part of myself without threatening the identity I've stitched together. I've become my own Ariadne, unwinding a spool of thread behind me as I travel throughout various Labyrinths, but no longer needing to re-collect the strands to find my way home.
“Grandpa's Shears”
by Janet Ruth Falon
Jewish Exponent, Sept. 26, 1996
I have a photograph of my maternal grandfather, Sam Frankel, sitting in the New York City sweatshop where he earned his subsistence living. He looks rakish, wearing a cap and looking right at the camera, and even jaunty, not like the sour, beaten-down, shuffling old man I knew whose only pleasure was a Hershey bar.
But I never really knew my grandfather; he was deaf, and Yiddish speaking, and he kept to himself, wrapped in an offputting cloak of bitterness and disappointment.
He only gave me one thing when I was a little girl, an inexpensive cut-glass pendant shaped like a heart. I value it, even though its sparkle and clarity seem like the exception to our relationship.
But I own a piece of my grandfather that's even more important, which my mother passed on to me after his death more than 20 years ago; his shears, the heavy, enormous scissors that he used to cut through thick layers of fabric in the sweatshop, seem a more appropriate souvenir of Sam Frankel.
These are scissors with serious intentions, scissors that would identify themselves as a tool, work implements in an entirely different class than the blunted scissors I used to cut out outfits for my paper dolls. They're meant to persevere, and to survive.
The blades are sharp, still, and the scissors are heavy, to be used by an adult who who meant business. As different from kiddie scissors as oil paints are from crayons, it's clear that the goal of these scissors is to divide things, to separate them. It would be someone else's job to join things. That fits.
Someone -- maybe my grandfather, maybe his wife -- wrapped both looped handles of the scissors with fabric tape, wound round and round to create a cushion that might soften the irritation of repeated use. Without it the scissors would undoubtedly have caused blisters or, with time and persistence, calluses, those physical manifestations of surrender.
I never saw him use these scissors; instead, it was the women in his family who I associate with sewing and creating. My grandmother used her treadle-pedal sewing machine, which was sold at her death when my mother was too grief-stricken to know she'd regret its loss; she also knitted, and made sweaters for my dolls from leftover wool, which I still own.
My aunts were both in the millinery field, crafting hats from all sorts of materials in the era when women seriously wore hats; I have some of these, too.
And my mother has dabbled in needlepoint, rug-hooking, mosaics and knitting. To this day, she has never used a sewing machine; she sews everything by hand -- even, equal stitches that hold together.
I've never liked sewing. I had to take a sewing class in junior high school, and I wasn't good at it. I didn't like it, neither the precision it required nor the fact that I had to follow a pattern.
But the easiest part was cutting out the fabric. I used my grandfather's shears.
“Doing Nothing”
by Janet Ruth Falon
When most people report that they’ve had a good weekend, they’ll tell you where they went, and who they spent time with, and what they ate and bought and accomplished.
But you’ll know I’ve had a good weekend if, when you ask me what I did, I’ll say, “nothing much. I don’t really remember.”
I love doing nothing. In this era of multi-tasking, zillion-hour workweeks, time-management professionals, and even scheduled playdates for kids, I enjoy taking a break from getting anything done and downshifting from revved-up fifth gear to purring in neutral. I try to sneak in a chunk of it every weekend – if not for an entire day, then at least a few delicious hours.
Doing nothing, for me, is when afterwards, I can’t cross anything off my to-do list. It’s when I’m not making any changes to my environment, or being productive in any way. It’s when what I did doesn’t add up to anything tangible.
So watching Antiques Roadshow is doing nothing, while baking muffins is not. Going window shopping is doing nothing, while hunting for a new pair of running shoes isn’t. Re-reading old letters, yes; mowing the lawn, no. It makes perfect sense.
Given these parameters, I have several favorite doing-nothing activities that weekends give me the time to indulge in, such as listening to music. Not knitting at the same time, or sorting supermarket coupons – but just sitting someplace and receiving the music (especially satisfying if I’m listening to vinyl gems from my youth such as Carole King’s “Tapestry,” or any Lovin’ Spoonful album).
Other do-nothings? Hanging out with one of my two cats. It’s not when I allow one of the fuzzies to curl himself into a little placemat on my lap while I’m on the phone, checking out flight information for a trip to Oregon, but it’s when we’re just coexisting, ideally with a lot of body contact. In a peak do-nothing session, my girl cat will nestle in my armpit and simulate nursing.
Lying on the couch a la Dagwood Bumstead – a favorite activity of mine from many couches ago – is a fabulous do-nothing. Reading – not an “ought-to” like a newspaper, but a “want” like an easy-to-digest “Bridget Jones” type of novel – is a do-nothing. Walking – a ramble instead of a 5 mph power-walk – is a do-nothing for me, as is chipping away at a crossword puzzle with my husband.
But here’s the catch: Once I combine two do-nothings, the result is a doing-something. In other words, if I’m working on a jigsaw puzzle at the same time that I’m catching up on the last two weeks of “Frasier,” both do-nothing activities cancel out each other and now I’m doing something. It’s very mathematical. Very Zen, really.
To be precise, if you’re alive, you’re always doing something: Breathing, for instance. But that’s involuntary. So doing nothing is really doing something by choice – but one thing only, not multi-tasking.
It’s possible to do nothing with another person, but it’s a challenge, I think, and easy to cross the line into doing-somethingness. When my husband and I sit on our deck to watch the sun go down, that’s doing nothing. But if we start to discuss our schedules for the next week, and who needs the car when, we’ve blown it.
As for group doing-nothingness, it’s almost impossible (unless it’s your meditation class’s annual weekend retreat). When I was a kid, many of my family’s weekends used to include getting together with relatives or friends on, say, Sunday afternoon; we were either “having” company or “being” company. But you have to “do” something whether you’re the host or the guest, be it or trying to be amusing – or amused -- and doing nothing is absolutely allergic to goals and intentions.
And I’m convinced that you just can’t have a doing-nothing experience – even something yummy like getting a massage – if you’re paying for it. Once you shell out money, you awaken expectations that get in the way of simply being present.
As I age, and my career stabilizes, I no longer feel guilty about the work I could be doing on weekends. Unfortu- nately, my guilt has been replaced by a more cosmic anxiety about time slipping away, so it still takes some effort to resist doing things just so I can check them off some vast “to do” list. But usually, if I catch myself in time, I can turn off the “shoulds,” even “shoulds” that could be fun.
So if you called me, just as I was settling onto the couch with a cat in my armpit and asked me to join you, right now, for the new blockbuster movie or a spin through a museum, would I trade doing nothing for your offer?
Nothing doing.
“The Rising of the Dough”
by Janet Ruth Falon
I’m in Cheryl’s kitchen. It’s fitting. In the nearly 17 years we’ve lived no more than a mile from each other, she’s been in my kitchen only a handful of times because she’s allergic to my cats. She gets miserable, and quickly, and symptomatic in a big, wet, unhinged kind of way. So I’m in Cheryl’s kitchen, again.
I know this kitchen well. Each summer since we’ve lived so close, I’ve taken care of her house when Cheryl and her husband and two sons go away for two months, to a Jewish camp in the Poconos where she’s director. Every day for those nine or 10 weeks I take in and sort their mail, flush all the toilets, feed the goldfish, check to make sure there are no mice camped out in the laundry room, water the plants, and generally make sure things are up and running. Every summer, on the day she leaves, Cheryl gives me whatever food is left in their refrigerator; usually it’s some lettuce and green peppers, and an open quart of Lactaid milk, maybe some leftover tuna salad, and a few eggs. Sometimes some whitefish salad or cream-cheese spread. No one ever told me I should go ahead and eat the ice cream in their freezer, but I started doing that, too, at least a decade ago – I figured they’d just throw out any ice cream with freezer burn when they returned – and I didn’t admit to my clandestine snacking until Cary, my husband, unintentionally “outed” me just a few years ago. That was the same year the Magens had just gotten one of those trendy wall clocks that chirps a different bird song every hour; in mid-June, on my first ice-cream stealth attack that summer, a cardinal started shrieking as I was eating some Chunky Monkey straight from the container, and I panicked, thinking someone had found me out.
But now it’s the other side of summer, and Cheryl has been home from camp for about a month. It’s a couple of days before Rosh Hashanah, and I’m back in the kitchen; after having let myself in with my own key all summer, it’s always odd to have to knock, again, when I visit. Each autumn, in the week before Rosh Hashanah, I go to Cheryl’s kitchen and we bake challah together. To be precise, she leads me through the process, step by step, while making four or six of her own loaves at the same time. This has been going on since I moved into the neighborhood in 1988, two years after Cheryl and her family. In fact, I used to live so close to them that I could efficiently walk home and get some work done between risings of the dough.
You’d think that after doing this together for 17 years that I’d have learned how to make challah on my own. I’m sure I could have picked it up, but early on I made a conscious effort not to: If I knew how to make challah on my own there’d be no need for me to do it with Cheryl, and I like the ritual. I play dumb, and it works. I like knowing that I can count on Cheryl, that this is something I share with her and no one else. I like to depend on her for this (even though I assert a tiny bit of my own culinary independence by making my challahs with one-third whole-wheat flour).
I always forget to bring an ingredient, too: Salt, maybe, or raisins, or egg yolks for the shine, any of which she lends me. Cheryl has huge, industrial-sized vats of poppy seeds, which she shares, and she’s the only person I know who owns, let alone uses, baking parchment (which, after it’s been in the oven, and the edges are browned, always looks like it was meant to be written on in Hebrew).
For as long as Cheryl has had sons, first Jonathan and then Ari has been part of our challah baking. Whichever boy was old enough – but young enough -- to want to help his mother and her friend bake challah would stand on a stool on the other side of the kitchen workstation, and help measure ingredients, or pour them in, or mix. He would receive his own clump of dough to play with and, as we did with the real challahs, separate off a tiny portion and burn it according to tradition, an attempt to replicate a sacrifice that makes baking holy. The first time Cheryl let each son knead the clumps of dough that would be used for the actual challahs has been a rite of passage, like the first time you play Candyland with a child without holding yourself back so you don’t win.
So we measure. We mix. When the dough becomes too difficult to mix with a spoon, we use our hands, getting in up beyond our wrists, and the smell of liberated yeast hangs over us like a cloud in a beer garden. We let it rise. We punch it down, and we knead it. Kneading is a funny business, I think; we give the dough mixed messages: We abuse it, beating it down with our fists, and we coddle it, encouraging it to open up like a flower, to unfold and reproduce itself. We give it time to breathe, and in spite of its apprehension that we’ll beat it down again, we ask it to rise.
We flour the countertops so the dough won’t stick when we roll it out. And then we braid it. To this day, I have not gotten the hang of rolling out three long dough “snakes,” then weaving them together in a motion that feels like when you turn the ropes in double Dutch, and finally tucking the ends securely underneath.
“Show me how to do it again,” I tell Cheryl.
“You mean you forgot from last year?” she says. “Ari, you remember how to do this from last year, don’t you?” She teases me. She shames me. We do this every year; it’s as predictable as my commenting that the poppyseeds look like ants. Cheryl makes a face I’ve seen many times, a sort of lip pursing that might make you think she was disapproving. By the time I met her mother, Bea, and saw her make that precise look, I had figured out that it was a disguise, a one-style-fits-all crusty cover to keep back the tenderness. Neither Cheryl nor her mother exude tenderness like other people you’d automatically peg as “sweet”; if you were in a room full of people you didn’t know, and you were hurting badly, they probably wouldn’t be the first ones you’d think to turn to for comfort. But you’d have made a mistake.
“Come on, just show me,” I say, and she does, demonstrating how she takes three strands of my dough and braids them evenly, and I remember the motion from when my mother used to do that to my hair when it was so long I could sit on it. Cheryl does this deftly, and the dough responds to her touch, knowing it had better or else. Then she starts to unbraid my challah, so I can do it myself, and I stop her.
“Just leave it,” I say. “I’ll do the other loaves myself.”
“Sure you will,” she says, knowing as well as I that in the end, she’ll rescue me. Cheryl will do whatever has to be done to help me turn out challahs that will impress my family and friends, challahs that have beautifully browned crusts and are soft and sweet inside, perfect for spreading with honey and wishing a “sweet new year” to everyone around my holiday table.
There’s something soul-satisfying about serving food which, like my challah, has a history, and it’s something that speaks deeply to me about crossing boundaries and identity. I have a looseleaf filled with recipes recorded in the handwriting of a variety of people who, somehow or another, bumped into my life. I have a recipe for meatloaf from a friend who told me she decided she wanted to make my acquaintance because I was wearing red overalls when we met. I have a recipe for tofu lasagne from the sister of a man I dated for five years, and for Indian pudding that cooks for about six hours from a colleague from my first job. I also have a recipe for black beans and rice written down by my friend Elena’s father, who lived for many years in Peru and Panama, and whose eight children and wife massaged his arms and legs, and played “The Buena Vista Social Club” CD as he passed from this life on. When I visited Elena recently, she showed me the modest box that holds his ashes, and I asked to see them. I’d never seen anyone’s ashes before; they were grey and chunkier than I’d expected, and I felt honored and almost overwhelmed by this intimacy. I felt the urge to talk to the ashes, and I almost did, telling Papa Aldrete not to forget that I have his black- beans-and-rice recipe, and that his daughter’s artwork is really coming along.
I usually save one of the loaves of challah I bake with Cheryl for my parents, who are effusive recipients. “How did you learn how to bake challah?” my mother always asks, adding that her own mother is probably “kvelling,” or taking great pride, up in heaven. “I didn’t teach you, did I?” As far as I know, my mother never baked challah from scratch, although she does bake frozen challahs from the supermarket that are most authentic in their smell. Baking challah smells like what a vat of liquid gold would if it had an odor, or the aroma of fireplace combined with late-afternoon sun.
Bea didn’t bake challah, either. Challah is something Cheryl learned on her own. Challah is something she is offering to me, but I refuse to accept it and make it my own, and I joke with her and tell her she’s not allowed to die, ever – but especially not right before the Holidays.
***
The first few times I met Bea, I wasn’t sure she liked me. I was predisposed to liking her, however, not only because I was already a close friend of her daughter – but because of her name. Bea, for Beatrice. Her husband – as sweet as the honey on High Holiday challah, but without a crust -- is called Iz, for Israel. “Be” and “Is,” my ears always translated to my brain; Be and Is, the existential couple. The state-of-being couple. The twosome who, if only by their names, must have learned to live in the present. I love to imagine other couples with similar names: Arlene and Amram, for instance, otherwise known as “Are” and “Am.”
I remember, a few times after we’d met, that Bea asked me how I was. I reported about a vacation I’d taken, maybe, and about some development in my work life. “So when are you going to get married and have babies?” she asked -- and I felt erased. And even though I knew that Bea’s lip-pursing look was just veneer, I never felt altogether accepted until I got married.
And then – I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it’s true -- I expected a wedding present. I’d remembered being at Cheryl’s – in the kitchen, in fact -- when Bea gave a wedding present to one of Cheryl’s old friends, someone who, like me, was well into his 30s when he got married. God knows I didn’t need another set of salad spoons or a serving tray, but still, I wanted something from her.
To be fair, I already had something – something tangible -- from her. Cheryl had given me a pair of gold earrings that had been a gift from her mother, which she no longer wore. Cheryl and I do that from time to time, trading jewelry that we’re sick of; my Lucy and Desi earrings were hers, originally, as were the triangular red-and-blue titanium earrings that look like naval flags.
Handing me the gold pair, she’d said, “Don’t ever wear them if you think you might see my mother.” And I obeyed.
But I wore them on the day of Bea’s funeral, a brutally hot day in late June. I thought Bea would have gotten a kick out of seeing them on my ears that day. By then I knew her sense of humor. By then I’d worn, many times, the pair of earrings she’d bought expressly for me – silver hearts with bow-shooting Cupids. “My mother loves you,” Cheryl told me the day before Bea’s death, while we were sitting in the kitchen of her parents’ home before I took her out (to do some errands, ostensibly, but really because she needed a break from the deathwatch).
“She loves you with Cary. And she loves you with me.”
“Do me a favor,” I told Cheryl. For weeks, since it was clear that Bea was fading, I’d been feeling badly that I’d hadn’t stopped by at Cheryl’s for what turned out to be Bea’s last visit, even though Cheryl had invited me. I hadn’t realized how sick she was, not even months before, when Bea wasn’t well enough to attend Jonathan’s Bar Mitzvah. Cheryl never said, in so many words, that her mother was dying. That’s not her way.
“Please,” I said. “While she’s still here, tell her that Cary and I are adopting a baby. Tell her. Please.”
Bea died the next day, the ovarian cancer having triumphed in a devastating battle that lasted less than a year. But before she died, in her last weeks – she knew -- Bea had done what most of us call “putting our affairs in order.” She’d said an individual goodbye to each of her five beloved grandchildren, all of whom had gotten used to seeing her without her hair -- hair which, until she couldn’t get around anymore, was always “done.” (That was Bea; although she wasn’t always “farpitzed,” or all decked out, she was invariably “put together,” her nails lacquered, her purse and shoes matching, that kind of thing.) She’d read all the Harry Potter books. She’d told Cheryl who should get which pieces of jewelry, and she urged Cheryl to wear some of the dozens of bras she’d be leaving behind. Cheryl and Bea, both large women, have a softness and enveloping quality to their bodies -- the kind of body which, if only because of its volume and folds of warmth, can be counted on for comfort.
So I wear the gold earrings to the funeral, an oven-hot day, a day when anybody who’s usually put together can’t possibly stay together, a day when you feel big and wet and unhinged. Cheryl speaks at the graveside service, drawing upon God-knows-from-where reserves of strength that seemed to rise like dough from somewhere self-feeding and deep. In what I imagine is an attempt to flesh out her mother, to show that Bea related to lots of different people in a variety of ways, she talks about both “my mother” and to “Bea.”
It’s only after she’s spoken, and she’s ready to get back into the limo, that Cheryl finally lets go, weeping from that same place of strength, deflating, and, it seems to me, getting smaller.
“No more Bea,” I think. “Was.”
***
I’m back in Cheryl’s kitchen, but it’s a Sunday in December, the fourth night of Chanukah, just over six months since Bea died, and we’re going to make latkes, the traditional holiday potato pancakes. My mother, who has made latkes for as long as I can remember, always used to joke that the secret ingredient of good latkes was “knuckle meat,” those little shavings of skin that fell into the batter after being scraped off your fingers as you grated the potatoes; the prevalence of food processors, and their quick, safe, grating ways, has made knuckle meat moot.
Cheryl has never made latkes before; Bea always did it. I’ve made latkes every year since I had my first apartment, and I consider myself a master. Other friends’ latkes never measure up. One friend, whose husband made the accompanying applesauce from apples they’d picked at a local orchard – manually grinding them down into sauce in a Foley Food Mill he’d inherited from his late mother -- had us over for her first batch, but the latkes were too small for my taste, not much bigger than a half-dollar. Another friend, who grew up Unitarian but who’s married to a Jew –- who, incidentally, spent many summers at the camp where Cheryl is director -- has decided to take a stand and bake her latkes instead of frying them. It’s a smart and healthful development, but I feel cheated of a familiar and evocative sensation: Latkes are supposed to lay heavy in your stomach after you eat them, and you’re supposed to feel like you could wring out oil from your pores. Healthful latkes are oxymoronic. Not that things aren’t supposed to change; several years ago I started adding sweet potatoes to my latkes, about one-third sweet potato to one-third white potato. I also grate both types of potato more coarsely than most people do. I like the texture it creates, and the color, and the fact that I’ve made the latkes my own.
So I bring my “Jewish Cookery” by Leah W. Leonard book with me – the one with the red cover, the same one my mother uses – and I bring my mother, in spirit, and I bring Cary, who pronounces that Cheryl’s kitchen, recently upgraded with fancy new appliances, all of which are black, looks like Darth Vader’s kitchen. Jonathan and Ari are both home; just as he was three months ago, with the challah, Ari is still young enough to want to help us. Barry, Cheryl’s husband, is in Florida, on business, but he’s left behind eight presents for Cheryl, one for each night, which Bea used to do. After many years of being scolded for not celebrating birthdays and other gift-giving occasions with sufficient exuberance, Barry has learned well.
I’ve purposely chosen to wear a particular necklace. A few months after Bea’s death, September’s challah already a memory, Cheryl gave me three things that belonged to her mother; I guess she was continuing what her mother started, putting Bea’s affairs in order. Cheryl gave me a pleated black velvet skirt that I wore just a few weeks later to a Bar Mitzvah, the Bar Mitzvah of a boy whose mother makes the oxymoronic latkes. She gave me a long black sweater-coat, which I can barely fit around me, and I wonder when was the last time that Bea wore it. She also gave me a necklace with a glass pendant that’s shaped like a pocketwatch, and it’s what I’m wearing tonight. There are tiny actual figurines in the pendant, three men and three women, who are drinking and socializing in a verdant outdoor setting on a hot summer day. When Cheryl gave it to me, one of the figurines had become unglued. Stuck in a sitting position, his legs crossed, he bobbed around inside the pendant, unmoored. I liked the necklace well enough to wear it as it was, but the fancy jeweler I know two towns up was able to fix it, and the man, back in position, chats with the lady in black across the table. Everyone’s in place, transfixed in time. The tableau is perfect, the way it was for Bea.
Cary and I bring our Cuisinart, and a five-pound bag of potatoes, two eggs, an onion, flour, and oil. Cheryl and Ari are ready, their ingredients the mirror image of ours. The Cuisinart grates. We squeeze out the liquid from the potatoes. We add. We stir. We mix. We pour goodly amounts of canola oil into heavy frying pans that are faithful old soldiers in our kitchens, and I’m having a good old time, directing the action, for once, teaching Cheryl how to cook right in her own kitchen. “Use less batter for each latke,” I order, and Cheryl gives me a look that’s a cousin to the lip-pursing look, and I laugh.
“Don’t let them burn,” I command. I’m having a terrific time turning the tables, if you will. “Flip them over as soon as the edges brown.”
Cheryl looks. I laugh, and the sizzly frying noise is so loud that I barely hear the bird clock chirping the time. Cheryl’s kitchen is starting to smell like my mother’s kitchen at Chanukah, and my own and, maybe, Bea’s. Cary, who understands what’s going on, suggests we say the Shehechiyanu prayer, the prayer you recite when you do something for the first time ever, or for the first time that season, and we do.
It all works out well. The latkes are delicious, and even though Cheryl actually made them, it’s obvious that they’re mine. Cary and I teach them how to dress a latke in sour cream and brown sugar, something we learned from other friends, and it’s a success. Each of us eats too many, as you’re supposed to, and when we leave I tell Cheryl how good everything was, how proud I am of her, and how I felt Bea was with us in spirit.
But I don’t tell Cheryl that I noticed she didn’t write down the recipe.
“Heavy When It's Empty”
by Janet Ruth Falon
I'm waiting for my father.
My mother and I are sitting in the Metropolitan Opera House, watching and listening to "Tosca," and waiting for my father to make his entrance on stage. We're on the fourth ring, up about the fourth row, the second and third seats in from the aisle, and my mother smells of tea-rose perfume, which she's worn for nearly three decades. She's wearing clothes the colors of The Garden State Expressway in mid-October, her year-round palette, tones that match the gold leaf in the auditorium. The empty seat on the aisle is on my right, and if he can change his clothes in time, my father will join us for the second and third acts.
My father is a supernumerary, a non-singing extra, a role commonly referred to as a "spear carrier." This is not his day job. He has no day job. The day job he had for more years than my mother has worn tea-rose perfume was as an elementary-school principal in the New York City school system. He looked the part: He's six-foot-three, has a fringe of grey hair wrapped around his head like Julius Caesar's crown of laurels, and bushy grey eyebrows that reach toward each other when he's displeased. "Distinguished" is how people have always described him. When he was working he'd sometimes run into kids from his school in the supermarket; they always were startled to see him, and surprised that he actually had to eat.
My father worked hard, and he had to; it was a demanding job, and the demands became weightier as the city grew more complicated. But underneath the severe exterior he wore to school like a superhero's insignia, my father entertained an ambition. He wanted to be on the stage: The opera, to be precise, with its grand themes and exaggerated emotional expression and elaborate stories that his own immigrant parents -- if they ever went to the opera, which they didn't -- might have called bubbe-mysers. Literally, "grandma stories." Preposterous plots and outlandish goings-on.
It's almost the end of the First Act, and we're still waiting. On stage, below the spangly, starbursty chandeliers of the Met auditorium, news of Napoleon's defeat has arrived. Preparations are made for a special service in the church of Saint'Andrea della Valle. The services begin. My mother elbows me to be on alert, that this is it, and I should watch out for my father. A great procession enters the church, row after row of solemn Christians shuffling in to the Te Deum. And there's my father, dressed as a priest, wearing a purple robe and matching skullcap, carrying a banner, looking as solemn and priestly as an aging Jewish man with a wonderfully Jewish nose can look, and I elbow back my mother, we look at each other -- and we lose it. We laugh, and we try to muffle our laughter, but we go on for so long that we get shushed by the people around us. We can't look at each other because we'll trip each other off. It's one of those laughs you never forget, and always carry with you.
The act ends, and the people around us note who we are, then disperse for candy or a smoke. "Your father loves this," my mother tells me. "His feet don't touch the ground for hours after a show. He just floats."
My father the priest joins us about 15 minutes into the first intermission. He's changed back to street clothes: grey wool slacks, a striped shirt, and a tweedy grey blazer. He looks distinguished. He doesn't look especially Christian. His hair is a little fuzzy, and he's flushed, partly from having scrubbed off his makeup. He kisses the two women in his life he knows best, and when he kisses me, I smell that comforting waxy smell that bald men often get after they've perspired under a hat.
"That was great," I tell him, and his face widens and glows. When we tell him about laughing, he laughs his "hm-hm-hm" almost-silent laugh. Each of his eyebrows is relaxed and keeps to its own side.
"Benjamin, your wife and daughter were hysterical," my mother says, proprietarily patting his hair into place, and we all keep giggling and playing off each other and stretching the moment into a memory.
"So tell me what's going to happen in Act Two," I ask, and we take our seats, and my father tells me.
My mother sewed a little purse for my father to wear around his neck, under his costumes, in which he keeps his keys and wallet. This, and a few other necessities -- an extra pair of shoes, maybe, or a sandwich and can of V-8 -- my father carries to the Met in a canvas Channel 13 tote bag. It's on the floor now, underneath his seat, and my father, sitting next to me, waits for the curtain to rise on the next act.
* * *
I would wait for my father to come home from his school when I was a little girl. I'd look out the living-room window of our second-floor garden apartment in Queens, watching for the bus that might disgorge my fatherlike Jonah from the whale. I was younger than eight, because that's how old I was when we moved.
The living-room window looked out on Springfield Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare with enough hubbub to entertain me when I was sick with a cold, or home from school with chicken pox. I could see Shoe King Sam, the shoe-repair store that I loved to visit because of the little private stalls you'd get to sit in while waiting for your shoes, and the musky smell of leather. I could see the gas station where we'd take our big blue Ford to be fixed by Harold, the mechanic my father trusted (as much as anyone trusts a mechanic), which sat on a triangular plot that divided Springfield Boulevard into two roadways like an island in a river. I could see White Tower, the fast-food restaurant where my mother would treat my brother and me for lunch before taking us to our father's school for a visit each spring; I'd have a hamburger, vanilla milkshake, and a Devil Dog every time. From the window I could see the bus stop, too. My father wouldn't look up to our window as he came closer, but I could see him, and he was always carrying his briefcase.
My father's briefcase was a rusty-brown briefcase made of a bumpy leather, and it had accordion pleats on the bottom and a flap that flipped over the top of the briefcase where it met the other half of a brass clasp. It could hold a heavy load. The bottom of the briefcase was wearing out -- and, at the end of a day, so was he.
Education was my father's career choice for a variety of reasons. One was the security of the profession; having been scarred by want in the Depression, he wanted to be in a field with staying power. My father didn't need to -- and wouldn't -- make a lot of money, but schools, he figured, would always be in business. Another big reason he chose education was that he -- and my mother, who was a school librarian -- would have their summers off. The trade-off was worth it: You give your heart, soul, guts, and various other components for 10 months in exchange for two free months. For two months, you don't have to deal with the passions of parents and teachers and children. For two months, you're not the center of attention, and any burdens that you carry seem lighter.
I'd hear the key in the door. "Ben?," my mother would ask, stretching his name into a length that might merit several syllables. "Honey?"
"Yes," he'd answer, and walk up the stairs. Each step was distinct and had its own tired sound. The stairs ended on a small landing that led into the living room or dining room. My father's desk -- almost the same color as the briefcase -- was in the far corner of the living room, next to the big window, and that's where he'd drop his briefcase, right by the space into which he'd pull the desk chair.
"Hi, Daddy," I'd say, especially if I'd been sitting by the window, waiting, and he would come to me and kiss me. Not infrequently, his breath was sour, and his face was often drawn, the lines whittled deep. He'd kiss my mother, too, and for a few short moments we'd have the how-was-your-day kind of dialogue that's always funnied up for sitcoms.
"Dinner will be ready in 10 minutes," my mother would say; even though my father's school closed at three, he rarely left right away, and then he had an hour-and-a-half commute on New York City subways and a bus. "Why don't you change your clothes and make yourself comfortable?"
And we would eat. And my brother and I would do our homework and watch whatever TV we were allowed. And my father emptied his briefcase, sorted through important papers and did what he had to do. The apartment felt full, the way it was supposed to, and I could go to sleep. And then it was always the next day, and the same, and my father would return the papers to his briefcase and leave.
It was only in the summer, when my father left his briefcase at home and we went to a bungalow colony in the Adirondacks, that his face fully relaxed. He and I would go on early-morning walks to pick enormous blackberries, which would pop and burst as the pancake batter he'd put them in would fry on the griddle (the brand name of which was Happy Day). We'd go fishing out on Schroon River in a dumpy green rowboat with splintery oars, and we'd catch sunnies and throw them back in. My father would sing, too, songs like "Summertime" and "Go Down, Moses." He would put on his canvas rucksack with its drawstring closing -- so much cruder than today's high-tech microfiber packs from L.L. Bean -- and we'd hike in the morning, on the mountains, finding rocks with veins of shiny mica and pine cones sticky with their own juices, all of which we'd carry home in the rucksack to our bungalow and line up on a windowsill of the screened-in porch. As the day unfolded, the air smelled the sweetness of warm spruce. The nights were illuminated by fireflies that never let themselves get caught and carried around in glass jars.
One autumn, nearly two decades after our last Adirondack summer -- the year my father's eyebrows finally decided to declare themselves more grey than black -- my mother bought him a gift: A new briefcase. It was one of those rectangular Samsonite attache cases with hard sides and angles, and it was the color of a perfectly toasted marshmallow. It looked less lawyerly than the other one, and more modern. It looked like it would last for the rest of a 57-year-old man's career. The handle seemed like it would be easier to carry, too.
One night, when I was speaking to my father on the phone from my new home in a Philadelphia suburb, he told me about the gift. I immediately asked for his old briefcase. "You can have it if you want it," he said. "But it's in lousy shape. And it's heavy, even when it's empty."
"I know, and I don't care," I replied. "I just want it."
"What would you want it for?" my father asked, his voice one that I know goes along with mild irritation. "And it's all rubbed out, especially on the bottom."
"I'm not going to actually use it," I assured him.
"Fine," he said. "Done. If you want it, it's yours."
That was the year I was living alone for the first time. Not only had I
moved to a new city, but I was gambling on a new job as a reporter, something I'd trained for in college but never actually done. I was living in an apartment complex, in a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor, with a living room window that looked down onto the parking lot. I didn't have a lot of furniture yet, not even a real desk. I told myself I could keep stuff in my father's briefcase; I could hang on to things I didn't know what to do with but that I didn't want to throw away.
* * *
"Tosca" is nothing if not passionate, bloody, and thunderous. Although the final act begins peacefully, with the shepherd's morning song heard offstage, events build onstage and the music swells accordingly. There's the heartbreakingly sweet aria "E lucevan le stelle" -- "the stars were shining brightly" -- sung by Cavaradossi, the words those of the farewell letter he writes to his beloved Tosca before his execution. The lovers sing a passionate duet. Cavaradossi is shot dead, and the grief-stricken Tosca climbs high on the parapet of the Castle of Sant'Angelo and flings herself to her death.
And everyone in the audience exhales, then stomps and whistles and cheers and claps as the lovers rise from the dead for their standing ovations. My mother and my father and I nudge each other and nod in approval to each other. "It was great," I say to my father, as the din continues.
"Wasn't it great?" he responds.
"Did you enjoy it, Jan?," my mother asks. And we all nod some more. It's one of those in-sync times when we're all on the same wavelength, like when my parents and I were in Paris together in 1973, and we all got a little tipsy at dinner and walked, arm in arm, over the Pont Alexandre III singing show tunes. Then, and now, we've temporarily left behind the irritations and disappointments between all parents and all children that can weigh them down like a suitcase full of stones. And not only is my father in on this Memorable Moment, but it's because of him that we're having it.
"It was really great," I tell my father, again, as we gather our coats and purses and his Channel 13 canvas tote bag and wait to join the lines of people leaving the auditorium. My father turns to look back at me, and his face is unlined and soft, fully fleshed out, like he used to look in mid-summer in the Adirondacks, only older.
"Benjamin, you look like you're on cloud nine," my mother says, and we go home, to the small house they bought after leaving Springfield Boulevard.
The next day I come back to Philadelphia, to my latest home, a third-floor apartment where I live alone with my cat, and houseplants that are too stubborn to wither in spite of my lack of knowledge of their needs. When I look out my living room window I can see a train station; fathers and mothers take this train to work, and so do I, my red nylon backpack filled with important papers so I can do what I have to do.
I find my father's briefcase in the closet. The bottom is rubbed out, like he said, but not so much that you can't trust it. I unburden it of its contents, and tell myself that tomorrow I'll file or discard whatever papers I've stored in there. The familiar smell of old leather rises up to greet me, and I put the empty briefcase, ready to be employed, by the door.
“Dad in Las Vegas”
Penn Review Literary Magazine
Spring, 2003
I hadn't invited along my father when my husband and I visited Las Vegas for our first time this past March.
But there he was, following us around with the quirky predictability of a shadow, popping up like bread that wants out of the toaster.
I saw him beckoning us into the pint-sized branch of the Hermitage Museum that's a highbrow oasis right off the noisy-flashy casino in The Venetian. He harumphed at the price of admission, and nodded his approval when the cashier cut us a break with a student discount. And when Cary and I stood in front of The Green Violinist by Chagall - who, like my father's parents, was from Vitebsk, and who was about the same age as them - there was Daddy, sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, wearing his size 13 saddle shoes, watching us watch.
All of which is strange and wonderful, being that my father died the previous August after a three-year battle with a degenerative lung disease that forced him to swallow increasingly smaller gulps of life. But that didn't keep him from accompanying Cary and me on our trip, and making his presence known whenever he felt like it. I'm not talking about supernatural beings, you understand - but never having lost an important person before, I couldn't know that when you love someone and he dies, he can slip into your suitcase and hitch a ride, no matter where you're going. And while you can choose to leave most of your stuff in your hotel room while you're out sightseeing each day, the lost beloved refuses to stay behind, and clings to you with the tenacity of too much dinner the night before.
I mean, I couldn't have anticipated that I'd spot my father in Smith's supermarket where Cary and I were buying bananas to snack on at Hoover Dam. But there he was, chiding me for not caring about the price per pound (and reminding me of the Alan Ginsberg Poem, "A Supermarket in California," with the line, "Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?")
There was my father, strolling alongside me and approving of my stride, as I crossed the "Brooklyn Bridge" - the Las Vegas version, in front of the New York--New York Hotel & Casino - and reminding me that I never walked over the George Washington Bridge with him, as he'd wanted. (If he'd asked, I wouldn't have walked over the Dam with him, either, thanks to my just-below-the-surface acrophobia.)
And my father showed up at the Paris-Las Vegas Casino Resort when Cary and I stood in the middle of the casino, at the base of the Eiffel Tower - half the size of the real one -- on my birthday. There he was, reminding me how the only time he and my mother and I got tipsy together was during our visit to Paris in 1973, after my first year of college; he and I each had a warm beer at Pizza Pino, my mother had wine, and we all linked arms and walked across the Pont Alexandre Troisieme, singing show tunes.
After a day or two in Las Vegas, I started to "get" it, that I was going to keep running into my father no matter what I might try to do to keep him locked away. After all, if he was sneaky enough to make it to Las Vegas with us in the first place, he'd be sufficiently wily to slip through the keyhole and keep company with the room key in my pocket. His appearances - which, like the number of early-morning gamblers and women with apparently augmented breasts -- had shocked me at first, started to comfort and even delight me.
My father met me by the rhinestone-studded Lucite grand piano in the Liberace Museum and, cultural snob that he became in his old age, shook his head in derision. "Junk," he said.
"I think it's a blast," I retorted, standing my ground. My father never understood why I never fell in love with opera, his post-retirement passion, and why I preferred '60s girl groups, rhythm-and-blues, and zydeco.
As the vacation unfolded, themes emerged for my father's visits. For instance, in addition to his highbrow hoity-toityism, my father made his presence known a lot when Cary and I left glitzy Las Vegas behind in search of more natural attractions. He came along when we hiked in Red Rock Canyon, wearing Polar Fleece jackets from Land's End like one I'd bought him the year before. My father nodded in agreement when I said one species of cactus looked like antlers, and he, too, loved the poetry in the description of the hills as "ancient petrified sand dunes." And when Cary and I looked and looked and couldn't find the petroglyph that was supposed to be the highlight of one trail my father, too, soured with disappointment and turned up his collar against the grey wind.
My father, who held on tightly to his hard-earned money, was almost as much a constant presence in Las Vegas as Wayne Newton; after all, it's a city of temptation that offers zillions of ways to lighten your wallet. Daddy appeared the one time I gambled, tsk-tsking me for spending $2 worth of nickels in a slot machine. He tightened his face in disapproval - a face I know well -- when we spent $99 per ticket to see our only Vegas show, a Cirque de Soleil extravaganza. He wagged his finger at us when we spent $13 for a fabulously expansive breakfast buffet - a Vegas must-do -- and when we gushed about the food he checked it out and wrote it off with one of his favorite lines: "It's no great shakes." (He and my mother only stayed at a bed-and-breakfast once, in part because he didn't want to pay for elaborate breakfasts when all he wanted was some cold cereal.) And my father laughed along with Cary and me when we parked in our hotel's distant lot because we hadn't realized that the valet parking at our hotel, The Bellagio, was free -- and we damn well weren't going to pay for it. Just call me Daddy's little girl.
My father surfaced every time I took a photograph. He catalogued his vacations with photographs of places and things, with an occasional person to soften the scene. One of the things I've learned as an adult is that I prefer photographs of people who oh-by-the-way may be in interesting places. And each time we opted for picking up picnic fixings instead of going to a restaurant for a meal, I felt my father's presence, his face softened with approval while chiding me, still, for not buying the store-brand yogurt.
He showed up on the last day of the vacation, while Cary and I were packing, trying to make room for the fuzzy dice, Elvis paraphernalia, and our other deliciously shlocky souvenirs -- and the radio was playing "Summertime," the song I always associate with my father, especially the lines, "your daddy's rich, and your mama's good looking . . . "
I don't know why his appearances in Las Vegas surprised me. After all, since his death, my father has visited me dozens of times when I'm at home: When I wear the red corduroy shirt he wore on his last birthday, when I find a quarter in a parking lot, when I eat Perugina nougat candy, and every morning when I put on the Bulova his mother gave him when he graduated from Brooklyn College. He's with me when the grape hyacinths pop up from under, and whenever I hear Pete Seeger, and each time I find a new eyebrow hair that's gone grey.
And then I remember the four telltale words that my mother and I decided should accompany his name and birth-and-death dates on his gravestone: Husband. Father. Teacher. And Traveler.
“Beatles”
Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 22, 1997
Some people can pinpoint the moment they fell in love. Others can isolate the day when they really got it that they would die eventually, or when they finally decided that God does, or doesn't, exist. But I can identify the hour I grew up -- or knew that I had to, and would -- just over 33 years ago.
February 9, 1964 was a Sunday night and, like most Sunday nights, I would watch the Ed Sullivan show from 8-9 and then go straight to bed, my schoolnight bedtime. I would bring my pajamas into the living room and, sometime while my parents and older brother and I watched TV, I would change into my nightclothes; this way, I wouldn't miss a second of what we jokingly referred to as Ed Sullivan's "really big shoe". I was almost nine years old then; in 1964, unlike now, that meant I was still an innocent child. I was in the third grade, in a new school, in a Queens neighborhood we'd moved to only six months before. I had my own tiny bedroom, painted pink, and new Formica furniture with enough open shelves to house my plush animals -- most of whom I named Fuzzy -- and there was a laundry chute that led from the bathroom into the basement that fascinated me.
For the first time, I could walk to school, and loved coming home for lunch. But the two blocks had seemed endless just two-and-a-half months earlier, on November 22, the day President Kennedy was assasinated. I remember how my crusty old teacher returned to the classroom after an unusually long break, during which time I, as that month's class president, was supposed to maintain order. Mrs. Sykes wept as she conveyed the news, and told us school was closing early and we should go home. I ran those two endless blocks scared, feeling the presence of something ominous in the la