by Ralph Maltese | Feb 19, 2017 | Uncategorized
“Perchance to Dream”
Hamlet
Polley and I grew up on an interesting cusp of American history. Born in the late 1940’s, we were raised by parents who survived the Great Depression and World War II, and who ingrained in us the work ethic. Polley’s father usually responded to his children’s trivial (and not-so-trivial) complaints with “Stop your bellyaching!” I once told my father I was bored. He found work for me to alleviate my boredom. I never expressed that feeling again. Respect for authority and God and country were not simply taught but silently expected. And then we grew into the sixties, a culture which challenged all conventions, especially blind loyalty. We learned to think critically.
Years later, reading about the time period I grew up in, I gained some insight into the struggles that earlier generation had in making sense of it all. One post-war strategy was to drag out Sigmund Freud to explain how a European civilization, Germany, a nation known for Goethe and Durer, Beethoven and Bach, could also become a dictatorship which history identifies with systematically throwing babies into ovens. Freud’s Id became a favorite culprit. Everyone has the potential for evil if the conditions are right for the “beast” to surface. Imagine you are a teenager who enters the high school cafeteria. Your Id, representing your primordial drive to survive (and thinking in monosyllabic logic) says, “Me hungry. Me want to scoop up mashed potatoes with hands and stuff mouth.” Meanwhile, your Superego, always in conflict with the Id, argues, “I know you are hungry, but if you scarf up those mashed potatoes with your paws, you will never be elected class president.” The Ego tries to balance both the Id and the Superego. I am certain there are more sophisticated and artsy works that illustrate this theme (the movie Pressure Point with Bobby Darin, and the novel, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, are two), but my favorite is Forbidden Planet, a 1956 film starring Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis. Of course, when I first watched this film in the theater when I was ten, I knew nothing about Freud and the Id, especially my Id, and the most interesting character to me was Robbie the Robot. After the movie came out, all of us wanted the Robbie the Robot toy, but my parents were not going to shell out around $8 on a toy. My friend Walter had one and we watched it blink lights and move around the floor and make scratchy techno noises which was about all it did (you can purchase an original Robbie the Robot toy now for around $11,000). Still, he was my favorite movie character.
Robbie aside, Forbidden Planet had a theme. Commander Adams from Earth lands on Altair IV and meets Morbius, a scientist who has uncovered the vast, technologically advanced machinery created by an ancient and now defunct civilization, the Krell. The Krell created devices which transformed one’s thoughts into material actions—the Krell did not have to leave the recliner to throw another log on the fire—they simply had to imagine it, and it was done. Why the Krell disappeared is, at first, a mystery. Morbius has a beautiful daughter who makes the visiting earthmen (who have been in space a few light years) drool. At night, (this stuff always happens at night), a monster visits Adams’ spaceship and rips apart one of the crew. The epiphany, of course, comes at the climax of the movie, when Morbius realizes that the nightly monster is generated by his own Id. Fearful that the visiting earthmen will take his precious daughter away, Morbius’ dreams become reality and the beast attacks the supposed threat. Robbie the Robot cannot fight the beast because he has been programmed to not harm his creator, Morbius, and, well, the beast arises from Morbius’ id. The Krell, like all human life forms, absorbed in petty feuds with their neighbors, could control their conscious behavior, but they could not control their dreams—-or their Ids which materialized and wreaked havoc on each other to the point of obliterating their civilization. Theme 1: we can control our conscious behavior, but we cannot control our dreams. Theme 2: The Id is the driving force that helps us survive, but, unchecked, the Id has the potential for incredible harm. One of the scary lessons arising from the holocaust was the realization that all humans have the potential to behave badly.
This concerns me because, like many other Parkinson’s people, I experience nightmares that are vivid and scary and violent. Polley and I call them Parkinson’s dreams, dreams in which my Id surfaces in the form of nasty animals and aberrant humans.
In one dream I am in a cottage in a lovely rustic setting when I hear a commotion at the back door. I open it and, standing on its hind legs, baring its fangs, is a monstrous tiger who swipes at me with its huge paw. I furiously struggle to fend it off. In another Parkinson’s dream I hear a scratching at the cellar door. I open the door to investigate, and I am facing an oversized gray/black wolf, mouth open and teeth dripping with drool as it tries to engulf my head. I punch and flail in defense. In another dream I push and shove a brown/gray grizzly away from my tent flap. In the latest Parkinson’s dream my nemesis is a group of enormous-headed boys who bear a striking resemblance to some of the elementary school blockhead bullies I faced in the Bronx. I strike out with my fists. I am a big fan of most animals, so that is why my Parkinson’s dreams are not chock full of attacks by bared teeth chipmunks or overbite squirrels.
Not only are these particular nightmares extremely vivid, but they make me physically lash out in defense while I am sleeping. The ultimate victim of all this fending off and punching and flailing and pushing and shoving and striking in my defense is Polley who bears the brunt of my defensive counter punches. If this keeps up, she will have to wear a suit of armor to bed…..or pack heat in the form of a stun gun. And these Parkinson’s dreams know where to hit me where it hurts the most—my insecurities, failed relationships, fracturing disappointments, my weaknesses as son, brother, husband and father, all surface with the Id. These Parkinson’s dreams draw from the deepest recesses of my fears. I won’t share these.
“Most of us are temporarily paralyzed in the dreaming phase of sleep, so we don’t act out our dreams. However, people with RBD [Rapid Eye Movement Behavior Disorder] do act them out.
Studies estimate anywhere between 15 and 85 per cent of Parkinson’s patients also suffer from the condition.
Prashanth Reddy, consultant in movement disorders at King’s College Hospital in London, explains: ‘A normal sleep cycle lasts between 90 minutes and two hours.
At the end of each cycle, you enter a phase of sleep where you dream, which lasts between 15 minutes and one hour.
In most people in that state, muscle tone is lost and there’s a biological switch that disconnects the brain from the body so we don’t act out our dreams.
But in people with RBD, the switch malfunctions, and they tend to act out their dreams.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2782719/Parkinson-s-The-bad-dreams-warning-sign.html
And you know what, for me, is the scariest thing about all this? As I imagine is also true for other neurological disorders, the worse aspect of Parkinson’s is that I have lost trust in my brain. All human brains deceive us some of the time. We see water on the hot surface of a summer highway when no water is there because our brain tries to make sense of something it does not recognize. For years I thought my brain and I had a good relationship. Of course we argued about decisions, oscillating between what was best for me in the long run and what I wanted to do at the moment. Aside from trivial tiffs, I thought we were on the same page. That has changed. I cannot trust my gray matter to NOT conjure up threatening dreams when I am most vulnerable—when I am asleep.
Each night I go to bed wondering if the beast will surface….and knowing there will be no Robbie the Robot to keep me safe from myself…or keep Polley safe.
Sleep tight….and don’t let the beasties bite.
by Ralph Maltese | Feb 12, 2017 | Uncategorized
“I Slept Like Firewood”
Rene Auberjonois in the Bob Newhart Show
In memory of Sheldon
and For Ronak
Perhaps it was the fond memories of camping with my dad in the Adirondacks feeding logs into a fire in front of our lean-to. Or perhaps it was one memory, my good friend Sheldon and I gazing into the flames licking the walls of his fireplace, and the two of us simply enjoying the primeval warmth and security a wood fire brings to friends. In any case, several years after we purchased our home, we decided to add a fireplace to the abode. We hired a well-recommended fireplace builder, Mr. Angotini, who showed up one cold late autumn day along with his three sons to begin construction.
“Is it bad to lay bricks in the cold?”
“Cold does not bother us. Can’t lay bricks in the rain though.”
And so Polley, I, and our four year old Christie watched Mr. Angotini and sons lay brick after brick. At their lunch break, Christie turned on the television, chose PBS, and squatted in front of the tv with her peanut butter and jelly sandwich to watch Oscar and his devious exploits on Sesame Street. Mr. Angotini and sons munched on ham sandwiches and watched as well. It was only until forty minutes had passed that we all realized Christie had disappeared to her bedroom to play with her dolls and that we six adults were still engrossed in the reformation of Cowboy X and Grover.
Two days later, our fireplace, built from recycled bricks that once were the faces of buildings in Philadelphia, was finished. Now the firewood frenzy commenced. For a fireplace to work, firewood needs to be procured. As an economically strapped teacher with four children, I found myself becoming an opportunist, wishing, literally, for windfalls, cruising the neighborhood for downed branches. March is a great month. After weeks of collecting, sorting, and stacking, I became an expert at firewood selection: kindling, little sticks, big sticks, logs. Another credit to my college education.
Eventually I had to face the fact that scavenging for neighborhood blowdowns was not going to provide me with sufficient fuel to warm us during the winter months. Years ago I watched a reality show focusing on nine families pretending to be 19th century pioneers in the Oregon backwoods. Each family spent considerable time chopping wood in preparation for the cold northwest winters. Experts at the end of the show evaluated each family’s wood supply. They agreed that the “team” who had cut down and stacked four cords of wood would not make it through November. Four cords is a lot of hard fibrous material!!
So I bit the bullet, saved up, and researched the suppliers of fireplace fuel. The first I chose was a father and son business from central Pennsylvania who unloaded the cord of wood and dumped it on my front lawn. My neighbors suspected I intended to initiate a bonfire which might engulf their homes, so I unearthed my children’s little red wagon from the mound of toys in the garage, and after a hundred or so trips from the front yard to the back yard, I had a nicely stacked cord of wood in the outer limits of my property. “Nicely stacked” does not mean the same as “solidly stacked,” and one March day, during one of those windfalls I once so eagerly awaited, the stacked cord of wood became, once again, a piled cord of wood. At least it was good exercise.
After several winters I needed to order another cord of wood. I found a supplier online that charged only fifteen dollars to stack the wood it delivered. We arranged a day for delivery so I could show them where I wanted the stack. I came home from work one day to find a cord of wood piled in my driveway with a note: “Was able to deliver early—subtracting stack fee.”
Out came the little red wagon.
That cord lasted a few more winters until I ordered again from the same supplier. I came home from work one day to find the cord stacked against my house—an optimum location for termites, and a note: “Did not know where to stack, so stacked here. Thanks for your purchase.”
I was very happy not to have discarded the little red wagon.
Keeping the fireplace fed is not the only skill a fire builder needs to develop. There is the actual construction of the fire that needs to be mastered. The very first subskill—–and this is an extremely important one—-is to NOT trust your memory. No matter that your brain is absolutely convinced that you had opened the damper for the flue—check to make certain that the flue is open. On several occasions, ignoring this subskill, our family room and kitchen resembled the last moments of the Poseidon Adventure, replete with clanging smoke alarms and smoke stung eyes.
While camping, my father challenged me to make different kinds of fires using his terminology: tripod fires, Indian pole fires, log cabin fires. The greatest challenge involved making a fire when it rained and the forest was soaked. I hunted the woods for white birch bark to use as a starter. Sometimes it is also challenging to build a fire in the fireplace. Forget those movies, especially those from the forties and fifties, in which Rock Hudson, while seducing Doris Day, applies a small paper match to a log and has instant flaming logs. I tried that and it does not work. A fire has to be constructed just so, newspaper, kindling, sticks, logs. A fire also has to be watched. We have experienced some interesting moments when a log has crashed through the fireplace screen, spewing sparks.
Since our fireplace has become an integral part of our winter home, I notice hearths in movies. There is a scene in Citizen Kane, shot in Orson Welles’ stylized depth of field, when Kane stands next to his fireplace while addressing his wife who is working on a jigsaw puzzle apparently fifty yards away in the same room! The fireplace is so large that Kane could walk into it and still have yards of headroom, and the “logs” stacked in the hearth represent the culling of an entire forest. The mantle could be used as a cobblestone NASCAR raceway. I would have to spend my entire waking days scouring the state in order to provide the fuel to feed that monster.
Still, it is my favorite cinematic fireplace. And despite the extra tasks involving in maintaining an indoor fire, (including those damp spring days when the collected ashes become mildewed and eye stinging), I enjoy the huddling around the hearth. There are those moments, logs ablazing, when I believe I share a common joy with Neanderthal Man (besides sharing an IQ), basking in the warmth and security of a fire, a primeval feeling of well-being. Sometimes the simplest and oldest of traditions bring us the greatest comfort. Throw another log on the fire.
by Ralph Maltese | Feb 5, 2017 | Uncategorized
Breakfast With Andre
I was invited, along with other spouses, to Polley’s bimonthly breakfast with elementary school colleagues, people who specialized in helping other people’s children succeed in the learning process.
As one grows older, the friendships and relationships one maintains in his twenties, college chums and new co-workers, are added to by the society one’s children enters. In fact, the children’s culture pretty much dictates whom we share a pizza with on Friday nights and what bleacher buddies we develop on Saturday afternoons. We see and interact with the same parents at Honor Society meetings, band practice, soccer games, Scout meetings, etc. What we all had in common was an enlightened vision of the future for our kids. Or so I thought.
Andre is not one person, but a composite of gentlemen I have had the honor of breaking bread with…ham omelet here, soccer tournament hot dog there, soggy hamburger at a basketball tournament there. Numerous conversations during time outs, between games/performances, waiting at pre-recitals all while scarfing down fast food lunches and dinners. Active parents know what I am talking about—-you put two thousand miles on the family van in a week, and you haven’t left town. Most of the sharers of on-the-run repasts all shared Andre’s perspective; the only true difference is in their individual expressions of the same idea.
Andre: So how have you been? Long time, no see.
Me: Last time we saw each other our kids were at high school graduation. Wow! That went fast. Kids okay?
Andre: Married and out of the coop. Olivia is working for the Scandanavian Whaling Museum in New York. Yours?
Like all men, we engage in Can You Top This!, our retelling of our children’s success stories in the same way as kids we would choose sides in baseball by alternating the hand over hand grips on Louisville sluggers to see who would be on top and have first pick. Satisfied that we are both World Series Winners, we move on.
Me: Still working?
Andre: Me? No. I gave up the construction business two years ago. You?
Me: Retired from teaching, then worked for the state department of education for a few years. Got a view of education in the state from another level.
Andre: How was it?
Me: The view? Not always pretty. Watched a lot of educators working hard and efficiently, but when it comes to what is best educationally for the kids and what is best politically for the policy makers, guess which wins out?
Andre: Such is politics. By the way—have you noticed our local taxes are going up?
I sensed a tone which I had heard before.
Me: Uh huh. Of course, compared with neighboring school districts, our school taxes are low.
Andre: Yeah, but I don’t have any kids in school any more.
I took a forkful of omelet.
Me: Yeah, I know what you mean. A lot of my federal taxes went to support the armed forces, and I haven’t called in an air strike on my neighbors. So what am I paying those taxes for?
Andre stared at me. Andre: Are you serious? At least that money goes for our country, you know…..our defense….the common good?
I put the forkful in my mouth. Me: Oh, I thought education was also the common good. I have a poster on my wall—a quote from Mark Twain—“Out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation.”
Andre cut a slice of ham. Andre: I’m just saying….I know you were a teacher, but teacher salaries are out of control, you gotta admit.
Me: No, I don’t “gotta admit.” Be specific.
Andre: C’mon. A second grade teacher making 100 grand? I don’t get it.
Me: That’s after 25 years working in the trenches.
Andre: Doesn’t matter. I mean, second grade?
I put down my fork. Me: So, how about a CEO of a company that makes whoopy cushions?
Andre: Whoopie cushions? Okay, if he is CEO, he deserves 100 grand.
Me: So it doesn’t matter how important a contribution is to society? As long as he/she has a title 100 grand it is. But if you help raise other people’s children, that is not worth 100 grand?
Andre: Being a CEO requires a lot of decisions. I know. I ran my business. And I did not have the summers off. [that was a dagger thrust]
Me: Neither did I. I usually got a second job in the summer or worked every day in July and August on my next year’s learning units. I worked by contract 186 days per year. Subtract weekends and vacations and holidays, how many days did you work?
Andre: Okay, I get the point.
Me: So which is it?
Andre: Which is what?
Me: Am I a salaried professional or an hourly worker?
Andre: Let’s say an hourly worker.
Me: Okay. Then I charge extra for marking papers, grading tests, writing college recommendations…..
Andre: That is part of your professional duties.
Me: Then I am a salaried professional.
Andre: Okay. You are a salaried professional.
Me: So why don’t I get paid like other professionals—engineers, doctors, lawyers?
Andre shrugged his shoulders.
Me: You know why? Two reasons: 1) we think any job involving care-giving is not product producing so we don’t think helping people is worthy of paying a good salary, no matter how important the job, and 2) most care givers are females. We don’t like to pay for “woman’s work” no matter how much it helps our society. Think teachers, nurses, social workers.
Andre was becoming slightly flushed. Andre: Can we be honest?
Me: Business honest or real world honest? [that was a shot fired across the bow.]
Andre: Honest honest.
Me: Sure.
Andre: Basically you work with kids all day and go in and just tell them stuff.
I pushed back from the table slightly. Me: Honest?
Andre: Sure.
Me: You haven’t got a clue as to what teaching is about. We get kids, often kids that are reluctant to engage in the learning process, and we help them develop life-long learning skills. And in public schools we accept everybody—-the last bastion of true democracy. So your kids are in good spots right now?
Andre: Yes. Very good.
Me: Did their education in the public schools have anything to do with it? The school taxes you paid, and are paying, including the 100 grand for a second grade teacher, were they, are they, worth it to have your kids where they are?
Andre looked down at his half-eaten plate of ham and eggs. The waitress came over. “More coffee?” We both nodded.
Andre: Are you running for school board?
Me: No. There is an opening on the Administration Board of Parsippany Hospital.
Andre: No offense, but how can you serve on a hospital board when you are not a doctor—or even involved in medicine?
Me: How can I serve on a school board if I know nothing about education?
Andre: That is different. All of us went to school.
I unbuttoned the top two buttons of my shirt. Me: So what? See that scar? I had a bypass. Being operated on does not make me a surgeon. A student in school has tunnel vision, and basically worries about oneself. It does not mean that every graduate of school is an expert on learning.
I saw that Polley and her friends were getting up to leave.
Andre: Still….a hundred grand for a second grade teacher.
I stood up. Me: As opposed to a businessman who makes products we don’t need? I like the bumper sticker—“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Enjoy your children.
by Ralph Maltese | Jan 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
Power Play
On a late spring day I walked out of my school hefting a folder filled with eighty essays that had to be graded. As I walked to the faculty parking lot, I was joined by Matilda, a senior in one of my English classes. Matilda was not fond of reading Huxley or Dickens or Shakespeare, but she was pleasant and quiet….one of those students who silently glides through the system on good behavior and a modicum of effort. We acknowledged each other’s presence as we entered the faculty lot. Students were not allowed to park their cars here, but parents often found it easier to pick up their children in the smaller faculty parking lot than try to negotiate the perpetual traffic jam that plagued the student parking lot.
I was almost to my car when a rust splotched pale blue Chevy pulled up. The driver, a woman in her late forties, looked up at me. Matilda walked over and, in typical adolescent awkwardness, tried to perform the formalities. “Mom, this is my teacher, my English teacher, Mr. Maltese…..this is my mom.”
I nodded, smiled, and, I believe, even bowed slightly. I watched as Matilda’s mom put out her cigarette in the car’s stuffed ashtray. “Mrs. Jones,” I acknowledged.
Matilda’s mom rolled down her window even more, and this small gesture demanded some comment, some interjection that would explode the bubble of awkward silence. I did not think…the words just rolled out like a Bronx serpent’s tongue, words prepackaged to fit almost any situation that required gentility. I simply blurted out what time and experience and good manners dictated.
“Mrs. Jones, Matilda is a very nice young lady, [true enough] and I am very happy that she is in my class.” [somewhat true—-I counted on her invisibility and docileness in class so I could deal with her classmates, some of whom wore ankle collars].
What happened next haunts me to this day.
Mrs. Jones put the Chevy in park, struggled to open her door, got out, stood up, and promptly dissolved in tears. Of course, I ran through the possible offences I may have committed and retraced my words. What had I said or done wrong?!
When Mrs. Jones finally regained control, she looked up at me, her eyes still swimming. Matilda stood silently next to her.
“Mr. Maltese, I have five children go through this school district, five kids, and this is the first time a teacher has said anything good about one of my kids.”
In all fairness to my colleagues, all my fellow teachers in the schools attended by Mrs. Jones’ children, the Jones’ family, save Matilda, was not unknown to the high school disciplinarian or the local police.
Still, Mrs. Jones, continued to cry and put her arm around Matilda, hugging her with pride. Matilda started to cry. Then I started to cry. I know not why except maybe it was the right thing to do at the time.
Here is the level 1 lesson I learned at that Matilda moment. Teachers have enormous power. I learned to use that power as a motivational tool in the classroom. To me, grades were ONLY motivators. I might give a very good essay a “B” to encourage the owner to expand his skills into other areas, and I might give an “A” to a decent essay to encourage the novice to keep writing. As a teacher, I never knew the difference between an essay graded a 94 and one graded a 95. I guess my evaluative skills were not honed. More importantly I learned how and when to dispense praise.
I am not referring to gratuitous praise. I am referencing the power to restore a person’s self-image by an encouraging word. I am also certain I abused that power—or, to state more accurately, not used that power when I should have. My only defense is that it takes a few years to become a teacher and to realize the tools at your disposal.
Here is the level 2 lesson I learned in that Matilda moment. As everyday human beings we all have the power to enrich other lives, just by simply recognizing the truth. Praising a cashier for efficiently packaging our groceries, to thanking our physician’s receptionist for scheduling an early appointment, to recognizing a mailman’s willingness to go the extra mile—-all are testimonies to the power we have to make someone’s day.
Here is the level 3 lesson I learned at that Matilda moment. Collectively we “mere” everyday beings have enormous power to change the world. I believe it was noted zoologist Jane Goodall who said something like “imagine if every single human being believed that he or she was important—that every action he or she took was significant….that the drop of water each person saved was important, that the rolled up gum wrapper that we did NOT throw out the car window was important, that the ounce of air we did NOT pollute was important…..what a different world it would be.”
The few power brokers who believe they are in charge only have the power we release to them. They take great pains to make us believe that we are powerless, that only they are the avenues to greatness and change. They are wrong. Search for and embrace the power that you already have, and flex those muscles accordingly. A kind word might dissolve a mother in tears, but it will also bring her joy, pride, and hope for her child’s future. Such is real power.
by Ralph Maltese | Jan 22, 2017 | Uncategorized
Remote Choices
My dad was an electrician, a very good one. As he mastered the intricacies of alternating and direct current, he developed certain beliefs that he held with an almost religious conviction. One of these strongly held tenets postulated that it was sinful to pay over $150 for a black and white television when a good electrician can restore a slightly damaged device for peanuts. Growing up I watched Texaco Star Theater and Howdy Doody on a variety of television sets in various states of repair. I might be listening to a show using the Cenfonix set (voice, no picture) while watching the same show on the Admiral (picture, no voice). While neighbors enjoyed watching the Philco Television Playhouse or Ramar of the Jungle on their color RCA televisions (the hedonists!), I turned the dial on the Philco or Teletone set and struggled to bring into focus Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (the fifties version of American Idol). Sometimes this involved attaching a wire to the antenna and stretching it out the window of our apartment in the Bronx, often adding one of my mother’s gravy pans to the terminus to get an adequate picture.
All of my children, and their spouses, were raised in an entirely different video culture. When six, my daughter Christie asked me, “Did you have cable when you were a kid?” It is difficult to explain to an on-demand society that we actually had to wait for those exact moments when entertainment was delivered. If we missed Gillette’s Calvacade of Sports, well, the experience was lost to the ages. I once tried to explain this mindset to one of my classes. “Imagine Mozart is your favorite musician. The only time you could hear his music in the late 1700’s was if you went to a live concert. The rest of the time you were music-less.” I paused for effect. Finally a female voice from the back of the room chimed in, apparently expressing what most of her classmates were thinking. “They must have been stupid back then.”
Modern television watching has its own hiccoughs. When I got home from the hospital, normalcy, some form of it, was the prime directive. What better return to the familiar than the resumption of a tv series we had been following before my hospital stay? We settled on continuing Narcos, the drama about the Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. How is the warfare between Pablo’s minions and the gang of Los Pepes going? So we fire up the Hudson River Popstick, click on Narcos (somehow it remembers the last episode we watched) and sit back to watch the Machiavellian machinations. Five minutes go by. They are speaking Spanish….naturally, they are in Columbia. But the last time we watched they provided subtitles in English. Not this time.
There is about ten minutes of very important exposition between the sexy female correspondent and Pablo, none of which Polley or I are understanding. This is serious, my return to normalcy hitting an unexpected roadbump. I search the Hudson River Popstick to find a button that will turn on captions.
Oops. Not this button which returns me to the Hudson River Popstick main menu. I have to work my way through several menus to choose Narcos again, only this time it brings me to the first season which we already saw. We are somewhere in the second season…..we try episode five. Ooops. Ten minutes in, with no English subtitles, we discover we have already viewed this episode. We try episode six. Five minutes in we recognize the gunfight in the hotel. Ooops. I press the home button again. Back to the main menu. There is an array of viewing choices on my screen. Prime Television, Prime Movies, Netflix, Hudson River Original Showings, Hulu, Starz…..I suffer a brain freeze. What was Narcos on? Oh yeah, Hudson River Original Showings. Work my way down through the nested menu to second season, episode seven. This looks right. Music cued in, credits, snapshots of dollar bills and cocaine bundles. Then a conversation between Pablo and Quica. They are planning a big operation, but Polley and I have no idea what they are planning. We regret not taking Spanish in high school. My studies of Pascal and Montaigne and Rabelais in their original tongue, I find relatively useless now. So is Polley’s study of German. I find a button that takes me to “subtitles.” There is suddenly hope. I press the subtitles button, and I am given more choices. “Captions Off,” (which they are), English subtitles, French subtitles, German subtitles, and I think there was an option for Serbo-Croatian subtitles, but I am not certain.
I click on “Captions Off,” hoping to toggle the “Captions On” feature. Nope. Still just Spanish. Quica and Pablo stuff revolvers in the back of their pants and walk out to meet destiny…or they are going out for ice cream. We have no idea. We are lost. Back to subtitles menu, “Captions Off” is still on, scroll down and click on English subtitles. Nope, the president of Columbia is conducting a high level strategy meeting in his native tongue, and I am trying to read lips which is rather stupid since I know no Spanish. I inadvertently press the “Back” button which brings me to the main nested menu. Twenty minutes later I am back on episode seven of Narcos, second season. Nothing I press under subtitles gives me the English captions I so desperately need. I scroll down some more and find an option, “English subtitles with description.” I click on that option.
My entire viewing experience is changed. I now have subtitles for Spanish and English plus a woman in a steady, pleasant voice describing what I am seeing.
Woman’s Voice Over:“Pablo and Verencia meet and shake hands. They sit down, Verencia first.”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Pablo—‘How have you been?’”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Verencia—‘I am worried about you.’”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Verencia stands up. She is wearing a sexy tight knee high skirt with a matching maroon jacket. ‘I cannot stay long. What message do you want me to give your wife Tata?’”
Woman’s Voice Over:”The scene switches to the two American DEA agents.”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Murphy and Pena are seated at their office desk. [I see that] Murphy—‘We are closing in on Pablo.’”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Pena—-‘Only a matter of time.’ “ [I find myself reading the subtitles even though I am fairly proficient in understanding English.]
This description feature rather spoils one. Worse, I am becoming addicted to it. I envision myself watching an old Law and Order episode.
Woman’s Voice Over: “Green—-‘Lennie, the victim is a twenty year old shop lifter.’
Lennie bends down over the blanketed corpse. He is wearing a frayed sport jacket and a tie with a mustard stain from a half-eaten Sabrett’s hot dog. He lifts a corner of the blanket and studies the girl’s face. ‘Well, she won’t be doing any heavy lifting soon.’”
Do I really need this option? Telling me what I am seeing? Polley and I return the next night to watch episode 8. I twist and fondle the Hudson River Popstick, trying to summon the courage to try once again to turn off the description and just have subtitles for the dialogue in Spanish. Twenty minutes later I surrender. The Woman’s Voice Over continues to describe what I am already seeing.
I admit that my ability to choose what I wish to watch has improved dramatically since my childhood when I tried to dial in Kukla, Fran and Ollie on one of my father’s restorative projects. I have more choices, but having more choices means more decisions to master. I also have to master control of the three remotes perched on my end table, each of which is governed by its own internal logic, each of which has to be turned on in a certain sequence, and each of which requires an investment of time to master.
Woman’s Voice Over: “Ralph typing last sentence of blog, moves mouse to save document and close program. ‘I think I will go downstairs, turn on the tv, and try to find reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.’”
by Ralph Maltese | Jan 16, 2017 | Uncategorized
Hour of the Wolf
As Polley, my guest blogger, wrote last week, I was in the hospital for a serious condition(my gratitude to her for writing a superb blog—-okay, I am prejudiced). Every night I went to sleep around 11 PM and awoke at 1 AM and stayed awake. I spent some of the dark hours reading my history book or watching dubbed movies about the collapse of ancient Rome featuring scantily clad young women who could not make it in commercials for laxatives and buff young men whose prime acting ruse was to look perpetually puzzled, or watching reruns of Chopped. But I spent most of my time thinking. Herewith some of those late hour thoughts:
As a philosopher observed, we go about the everyday mundane things in life because if we constantly spent time considering the profound and metaphysical we would go crazy. In the wee hours of the morning, what director Ingmar Bergman referred to as “the hour of the wolf,” there is plenty of thinking about the meaning of existence, my personal role, if any, in the scheme of things, and, thus, ample time to reflect and go crazy. I mean, if you cannot contemplate such things when you are on the brink, when do you contemplate them? So I considered and I thought and I summoned up everything I have ever read or studied or experienced and came up empty. Still it filled the time.
Which leads to another thought. 2:04 AM. Six hours to breakfast. Let’s see. How to make the time go faster. I relive my camping and fishing experiences with my father, fondly recall my courting of Polley in graduate school, smile broadly at remembrances of Christmas mornings as our children descended the stairs to see what Santa brought. I summon up the Bronx and my not-so-pleasant elementary school experiences, then flip through almost four decades of teaching high school English. I am almost exhausted from running through my rolodex of memories, and I look at the wall clock to see how much time has expired. 2:06 AM.
Which leads to another thought. A moaning patient down the hall keeps on crying out, “Angela!!!…..Angela!!!!!…..Angela!!!!!!” I know the nursing staff is in control—beautifully so—-but I am tempted to struggle out of bed and walk to the woman’s room and pretend I am Angela…anything to help her calm down. I like to consider mini-universes. Like most people when I drive past a hospital, I simply see a lifeless building of concrete and mortar, but inside the hospital is a hive of human activity operating according to its own organic rhythms and heartbeats. It possesses its own sense of time and purpose and protocol….especially protocol. I imagine other institutions are like that. I know schools are. Einstein was right when he replied to a question, “What is time?” His reply, “Time is whatever clock says it is.” I knew I had to adjust to the hospital clock. Daytime hospital is a sequence of routines so routine that I learned to listen to the distinctive sounds of the hospital carts—blood sugar cart sounded sleek and stealthy, vital signs cart clangy and clumsy, breakfast cart creaky and heavy on the linoleum. The people and the machines enter and leave the room on schedule. What seems like hundreds of doctors in various stages of becoming doctors, from gray haired institutions to medical students, visit me daily to ask questions and apply their stethoscopes to my body. There are other visits: nurses, nurse’s aides, the newspaper guy, the housekeeper, the trash emptier, the volunteers, the food bringers. The hospital day is filled with activity. My mind depends on and anticipates the routine. But hospital night is something else.
Hospital night is bereft of all the daytime visitors save for a nurse and nurse’s assistant. The darkness of night blankets the window and unable to get to sleep, I think. The IV in one arm, tubes sticking out of my neck, the only possible position is to lie down facing the ceiling which is not as interesting at 2 AM as one might think. I shimmy down some so that my gaze takes in the top half of the far wall. I believe I am the most boring man in the world…having spent the last three days observing my room’s ceiling…I have nothing to offer…then, again, compared to the seriousness of my medical condition, the blustering and bellowing of the world, especially its “leaders,” seem pretty trivial to me. And then those hour of the wolf thoughts come creeping into my mind. The nerve-gnawing thinking comes like a ground-hugging fog in the late hours, along the floor of the room and up through the bed and into my soul. Existence, non-existence, fulfillment, unfulfillment, ego and non-ego, every haunting question that has tormented every human being since the first of us realized his or her mortality. Dawn seems a long way off.
Which leads to another thought. How amazing is technology?! The book I am reading on the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair recalls the agony of many adults over toothaches. Some even die from dental infections. How far have we come since then? Several times a day someone comes into my room to check my vital signs. A cuff is place on my arm. Blood pressure checked. A device wipes my forehead. Temperature taken. A clip is placed on my forefinger. Oxygen level checked. A pin prick, a drop of blood placed in a handheld device, and blood sugar measured. Then there is the dialysis machine which filters my blood and removes unnecessary fluid. How do all these devices know what to do? I know I will suffer the human weakness of taking all this stuff for granted, but in the hour of the wolf I marvel at the technology. However, science has its limits. I gave my students this analogy: “Science gives us a temporary model of how the universe operates as best it can. The humanities tells us how to operate in that universe.” The important questions of meaning and responsibility are not addressed by science. That is not its domain. Such truths are revealed to us obliquely, through the arts.
Which leads to another thought. Upon admission to the hospital the staff works fast to find out why my levels of bad stuff in my kidneys are high. There could be several reasons, some of them not very good at all. There is this moment of knowing and not knowing, of certainty and non-certainty that is interesting. I remember a story about a Japanese war lord who sends his eldest son into battle to determine the fate of his kingdom. After a time a soldier returns to the war lord carrying a box. In the box is one of two things: the head of the rival war lord or the head of his son. At that one moment, before opening the box, two possibilities exist. The war lord waits. As long as he does not open the box, there is hope.
While awaiting the diagnosis I shared the war lord’s feelings. Yes, knowledge is power, but, sometimes, in uncertainty, there is hope. I hung onto the uncertainty. When the news came that my condition was serious but reversible, I was relieved, even happy, but the anxiety takes a toll, and I will never be the same person in totality again. Maybe that is a good thing.
Which leads to another thought. One does not go to a hospital to rest. There is no rest. One goes to a modern hospital to get well, and the getting well part requires energy and effort, not to mention patience. A patient must be patient. See? So I struggle to get out of bed, take a walking tour of my floor, IV drip in tow, to get those muscles going. I’ll rest and recover my sleep when I get home. Most of all, I try to summon the energy to not be a victim.
Which leads to another thought. This experience reinforces what I have already learned. In this age of specialization you have to be your own health care advocate. Ask your doctor how this newest drug will affect your system. Every single prescribed pill you put into your body may potentially affect your renal or liver system or cardiac system or all of them. Remember the commercials for various drugs—-“Ask your doctor if Xocoytin is right for you. The potential side effects include abdominal pain, vomiting, drop in blood pressure, paralysis, diabetes, suicidal tendencies, and possible death.” This should scare the hell out of us. You must be the overseer of your own health. Ask, ask, ask!!!
Last night, in my bed at home, I slept through the night, dreaming past the hour of the wolf. No calls for Angela. Enough thoughts. Time for some serious thoughtlessness—-how about them Cowboys!!??
by Ralph Maltese | Jan 8, 2017 | Uncategorized
GUEST BLOG ENTRY January 8, 2017
Another Whack-A-Mole
Ralph has generously yielded this space to me since he has been a bit indisposed this week…to say the least. A sudden pesky little bout of kidney failure has him sitting in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of his neck, wiggling to get comfortable around the injection site from his kidney biopsy. The tubes lead to a port for temporary dialysis. And temporary is the word on which we are focusing, just as we latch onto every bit of hope in the words of each doctor who stands at the end of Ralph’s bed: reversal, healing, letting the kidneys rest, you get the idea. Ralph has the supreme challenge of enduring each assault on his body with grace and humor; most of the time he meets that challenge spectacularly. I loved the way he and the guy pushing his gurney, James, alternated lines from The Four Tops, singing their way down the hall toward the surgery where Ralph would have his biopsy. I love the way he scrawled a message on the whiteboard under the heading, TODAY’S GOAL: Olympic gold medal, synchronized swimming. While this revelry is occurring, I am waiting and worrying and thinking about all kinds of things like when I’ll ever take down the Christmas decorations or how long my Blue Apron ingredients will last. But mostly I am thinking about courage, the quiet courage I witness all around me in this surreal world called “the hospital.”
With apologies to one of my favorite holiday movies, courage is all around you. Consider:
The tone of voice of the nurse in the adjoining room as she soothes a frightened woman who is in pain and confused by surroundings so different from her nursing home;
The gentle touch of the nursing assistant who takes Ralph’s blood while chatting lightly about nothing…or everything;
The steady hand of the surgeon as she inserts a needle into delicate kidney tissue to extract a sample;
The pride of the cleaner who scoops up soiled linen and leaves the room spotless so that Ralph returns from dialysis to a neatly made bed and welcoming pillows;
The patience of a busy doctor who cautiously delivers frightening news and then smiles softly, touching my arm because he is able to be more positive in his diagnosis;
The strength of the transport “driver” who uses his powerful muscles to support a shaky Ralph and guide him carefully back to bed;
The blank stare on the face of a woman in a waiting room as she gazes at a television screen and waits and continues to wait;
The pain behind Ralph’s stoic expression as I re-enter the room after a team has just inserted the temporary port in his neck.
Courage and compassion and sheer stubborn determination are everywhere in this hospital. I am in awe, and I am grateful. Ralph has had a traumatic experience, a sudden kidney failure that test results indicate is reversible. With several weeks of dialysis, his kidneys should now begin healing, but we are both humbled as we ponder what could have happened, and what in fact does happen to many brave families every day. So hug somebody and congratulate yourself on your own courage for facing life’s risks one scary day at a time.
by Ralph Maltese | Jan 1, 2017 | Uncategorized
“Mangia!!! C’mon, Eat Something!”
My mother had a saying, “His eyes are bigger than his stomach.” This was directed at people who loaded their plates but left the dish full, a criticism usually aimed at ravenous politicians as well as gluttonous diners. When I mentally return to my boyhood holidays, my nostalgia is often “bigger than my stomach.” Or so I think. When I become objective again, I realize that Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s Day and any other celebratory event at the Maltese household was always accompanied by enough food to satisfy a hungry army on the march.
My mother and her sister, my kind and loving Aunt Marge, would collaborate on planning the table. Today some people complain that guests for dinner are finicky about their diet, and hosts have to take into account what their guests want to eat. “Matilda is a tuber vegetarian, only eats turnips. And Maurice is on a Jurassic diet, only eats swamp weed and dinosaur eggs.” What is new about that? Mom and Aunt Marge….
“So, Marge, for Christmas dinner who makes what?”
“Bobby likes the mushrooms fried in olive oil and garlic. I’ll make that.”
“Should we have lasagna or pasta?”
“Jimmy likes lasagna with ricotta and sausage.”
“And Ray likes pasta, with meatballs and maybe sausage.”
“Right. We’ll make both. I’ll do those dishes.”
And so the planning went. Every sitter at the table would have his or her dish available. Watching Mom and Aunt Marge cook was equivalent to watching an Indy 500 pit team collaborate. “Marge, I need the whattayacallit.” “Okay, Lee, I’ll go down the basement and get it.” Somehow my aunt knew what the whattayacallit was.
My younger brother Jimmy and I would be interrupted in our playing with our new Christmas toys and told to get dressed and help with the cleanup before our relatives arrived for the 2 PM repast. My aunts and uncles and cousins would shake the dusting of snow off their coats and before they sat down my mother would be asking them, “Want something to eat before dinner? Olives, salami, cheese? I can make you a quick sandwich.” Most would refuse, but there were one or two takers. “Maybe a small sandwich, prosciutto…and some provolone? A few pimentos on top? Thanks.”
While the adults chatted about the state of health and relationship difficulties of all relatives and friends not present, I shared my toys with my cousins or we just reenacted Dick Tracy, detective nonpareil, or Davy Crockett at the Alamo. In a short time, the Italian dinner bell sounded. “C’mon, everybody sit down. Time to eat. Mangia! Eat!”
A small digression. When my soon-to-be-engaged-to-me girlfriend Polley came to my house (and our dinner table) for the first time, it was Midwestern Anglo-Saxon face to face with Eastern Italian. She, of course, wanted to make a good impression on my parents. My father started her off with a tumbler of Italian red poured from a jug. My mother then slid a five inch by five inch slab of thick layered lasagna on her plate. Now what Polley did NOT know was that the ten pound hunk of lasagna that filled her up was an Italian hors d’oeuvre. She was shocked to realize that the main meal was still to come. In front of her appeared stuffed roast beef, baked potato, sausage with onions, steamed broccoli drizzled with olive oil, roasted chicken, salad, and, for this special occasion, cannolis and bubba rum pastries. As Polley worked her way through each dish, my father replenished her tumbler with vino red. A short while later I looked at her flushed face as she asked, “I am really sleepy. Mind if I lie down for a few minutes?”
As Polley recovered lying down on our living room couch, I asked my parents what they thought of her. My mother smiled, no words necessary. My father nodded his head, a good sign, then paused, shrugged and said, “But, girl can’t hold her liquor.”
So as the guests sat down at our holiday dinner, they all started off with lasagna or linguini with meatballs and from there they had to make choices: baked chicken with roasted potatoes, roast beef stuffed with garlic and parsley, eggplant parmesan, cauliflower with oregano, ham with scalloped potatoes, mushrooms sautéed in butter and garlic, sausage and onions, minestrone soup with little meatballs, braciole sitting atop rigatoni, mashed potatoes with gravy, sauteed broccoli rabe, all followed by a big bowl of ensalad (Italian dressing—oil and vinegar). And whatever they chose to eat was washed down with Hearty Burgundy. Dishes just kept on coming out. My mother and Aunt Marge who sit down for a total two minutes, are admonishing everyone to “Mangia. Eat. You are skin and bones. Have some more pasta…No? How about more roast beef? No? Sausage and Onions?” We are all yelling back, “Sit down. Eat. We have enough food. Come on. Sit down! You have to eat, too.” This dialogue is the only conversation for the entire two hour meal.
When the serving plates are half empty, the men sit back, unbuckle their belts, and stare at the ceiling. My Uncle Ray tilts his head back until it touches the chair rest. “I ate too much.” My father grips his chair’s armrest and adds, “Me, too. Should have saved some room for dessert.”
Uncle Ray would tease my mother. “Eh, Sister-in-Law, why did you make so much food? Jesus fed thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish.” My mother retorted, “Yes, but did everyone have enough? And what! No pasta?” If my mother and Aunt Marge were there, the five thousand faithful would have feasted on a great deal more than a few rolls and a couple of pieces of baccala.
In an hour or so, the snoozers have aroused from their digestive mini-naps, dishes have been put away, leftovers stored in saved empty Polly-O ricotta containers, the table cleared for dessert. Rather, desserts. Once again the tablecloth is hidden by plates now filled with cannolis, babba rum cakes, sfogliatelles, pizzelles and panatone, almond cookies, spumoni ice cream, and zeppoles—-all accompanied by demitasse coffee spiked with anisette. The young ones eat their desserts with White Rock Cream Soda. This is the time for true conversation concerning politics, the state of the world, the local athletic teams, and, most importantly, what dishes should be served at the next holiday event.
After dessert, most guests leave, citing the long ride home to Long Island or the Bronx or middle New Jersey, the trip inhibited by stomachs rubbing the steering wheel and night vision hampered by one cannoli too many.
After dessert cleanup the holiday celebrators have shrunk to my Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray, perhaps their sons Vicky, Artie, and Bobby, and my brother Jimmy and me. Time for a few games of Pokeno!!! When the joy of Pokeno dims, and the winner pockets forty cents, the adults reach into their pockets while the kids break out their stockings filled with pennies. Poker hands are dealt and played. In a few hours the losing player is down 86 cents. Usually it is the winning player, ahead 52 cents, who asks, “Any of that sausage and onions left?” This is the signal for leftovers to be reheated, new dishes made, and the poker table becomes crowded with fried mushrooms, pulpo salad (octopus), sausage and onions, and almond cookies—along with leftover ham, roast beef and chicken.
Not too long after midnight the stomachs of the poker players/diners have drugged their owners into calling it a night so their bodies could spend the next week digesting the food. The leftovers will be consumed over time.
After Polley and I married, a visit to my mother’s ended with her stuffing brown shopping bags with steaks and chickens and roast beefs and “gravy” (pasta sauce) and whatever else she thought we would like. “Mom,” I would protest to no avail, “we have a small refrigerator in the apartment. We can’t fit all that stuff!” The packing of bags continued. At first Polley took this action as a slight, as some lack of confidence in her ability to stock the larder.
What we both learned was a common cultural concept typical of Italian American families but one that other cultures share as well. When I taught The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, one of the major themes I hoped my students would grasp was “The less people have, the more willing they are to share, while the extremely wealthy (the owners of the farms) are less likely to share, to form a bond with humanity.” In my family, food was one of the currencies of love. When my mother created a couple of gallons of fabulous spaghetti sauce, she would sing to it. “Son, it must be made from love…otherwise, it won’t come good.”
When Aunt Marge and my mother planned and cooked a feast, they were not only providing delicious nourishment. They were giving of themselves. As we all sit down at the table this holiday season, it might be wise, and just plain nice, to duly recognize those gifts.
by Ralph Maltese | Dec 25, 2016 | Uncategorized
Christmas Day 201
I am spending the day with my oldest daughter, Christie, my son-in-law Ted, and my wonderful grandchildren, Sofia and Daniel. I hope you are enjoying your family as well. Have a very Merry Christmas! Ralph
by Ralph Maltese | Dec 18, 2016 | Uncategorized
A Christmas Moment
Tis the season. As my mind thumbs through an old rolodex of holidays past, it always stops at one very special and unique moment in time. If other civilizations in other galaxies are ever capable of capturing our singular most crystalline events in our human lives, this personal moment would be a highlight of mine.
It had been a week of dismal failures and self-deprecation which, surprisingly, had started optimistically, so I was totally surprised by subsequent events. The week before Christmas, my father, following tradition, took his family across the George Washington Bridge to midtown Manhattan to see the city lights, the skaters at Rockefeller Plaza, and the majestic Christmas tree in that same plaza. I looked forward to mashing my nose up against the Macy’s department store window to watch the awe-inspiring train display. Every year I would receive one toy, and that toy was a train car or an accessory to my Lionel train set. I would jostle my way through the crowd to see the half dozen or so locomotives haul their freight around the complex layout, and I would fantasize about which accouterment would be under the tree this year. Would it be the cattle car, the milk car, the lumber station, or the snazzy freight car that carried a gray American submarine which a young lad could place in the bathtub and watch it glide through the water propelled by a wound rubber band?
My brother Jimmy, four years my junior, had little use for trains. His amusements of choice fell into the area of potential destruction—big Tonka dump trucks that he would ram into my locomotive or a large metal cannon that fired foam shells that would knock my train cars off the track, or a sleek bomber that he would fly over my Plasticville buildings and bomb using my father’s fishing sinkers. Over the years pounds of glue held my Plasticville town together.He also liked to annoy me with the repetitive playing of the same record on his toy phonograph.
“Heckle and Jeckle, we look the same
Scootily doo
Heckle and Jeckle we act the same
Scootily doo
The impossible–that’s our game
What ho, Tally ho, let’s go!”
Played and replayed for what seemed millennia.
All the battles in our ongoing fraternal war were settled by my mother’s admonishment which became a refrain. “Ralph, you are four years older. You should understand.” I understood that once Jimmy entered elementary school, he might incur a shiner or two from classmates who were neither understanding nor accommodating.
After the oogling at the Macy’s department store window, the days before Christmas were increasingly darkened by misadventures. The leaden gray December skies seemed to sink lower and lower until they hovered just above my head. My elementary school teacher, Mr. Fox, in the midst of a grammar lesson, broke us up into pairs. One of the twosome was to be a student experienced in diagramming sentences, the other less experienced. The former was supposed to help the latter. I could not believe my good luck when I was assigned to help Tina, a girl with long auburn hair and sparkling blue eyes whom I had noticed since we first moved to the wilds of suburban New Jersey. When we were paired to work together, I mapped out my wooing strategy. I would dazzle her with my expertise in straight and slanting lines indicating modifiers, my recognition of predicate nominatives and direct objects, my savoir faire in identifying prepositions and subordinating conjunctions. I opened up my three punch notebook and copied the first of Mr. Fox’s challenges and waited for Tina to diagram. She placed her head in the crook of her arm planted on the table, yawned, and shrugged. Okay. Time to shine. I dove into the sentence. When I looked up from my masterpiece, Tina was sitting next to Frank Norstrum, recently back from a school suspension and working alone because of disciplinary reasons. At least he was alone until Tina sat next to him, smiling, tilting her head and somehow sparkling her eyes. I self-inspected. I had showered the day before, my fingernails were clean, as were my clothes. What was wrong with me?
Later in the week I went to confession. On the previous Tuesday in a sandlot football game, I was tackled and jammed my thumb, the pain igniting a string of epithets which I was afraid to confess to Father Simon Legree who had warned me about this before. “You should never use the Lord’s name in vain. It is a bad habit. It makes you bad in the eyes of God. Suppose you are hit by a truck after you have cursed. You know where bad people go when they die?” I spent the next half hour after confession performing my penance.
I was deep into mea culpaing for the rest of the week, but Christmas was still on the horizon and Alvin and the Chipmunks and Perry Como and Nat King Cole were on the radio belting out the Christmas oldies. Expectations were high.
I suspected something was wrong on the morning of Christmas Eve. We had yet to get a tree. There were no decorations outside or inside the house. But what unnerved me most was the silence. My parents were not talking—to me, to Jimmy telling him to turn off Heckle and Jeckle, but most importantly not to each other. By afternoon the silence had erupted into argumentation and then shouting. The causes are meaningless to a kid, though I recognized the rough outline—–monetary differences, inlaw differences, imagined and real affronts. A child does not know his parents as people until much later in life, if ever. To the young, parents are more roles than humans who are also struggling through the night. I need to relate some mitigating circumstances at this point. My parents were products of both the Depression and World War II. My mother was one of five daughters who lost their mother in the Great Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. My mother’s sisters were farmed out to an orphanage, while my mother was given over to an aunt who, ultimately, mistreated her. My aunts repeatedly claimed that my mother’s Cinderella plight was much worse than theirs in the orphanage. Her eventual prince was my father who spent his childhood helping his immigrant parents find food and earn money to survive the streets of New York. He “escaped” into World War II. My parents chose to forget their Christmases Past since the memories of those holidays were more fraught with pain and deprivation than joy. Their memories were tarnished by hard boiled neglect and unkept promises and unrealized dreams. Worse, their childhood experiences were robbed of that mystical joy that lights up children’s faces, that sense of awe and wonder that holds out infinite possibilities. They had to grow up fast without the security of a well-loved childhood.
Jimmy looked up at me as we sat on the steps leading to our bedroom. He whimpered, “Why are they fighting? It’s Christmas.” I just shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno.”
As Christmas Eve wore on the shouting match diminished, and the oppressive silence returned. The radio played on and seemed to mock Jimmy and me.
“Through the years we all will be together and
If the fates allow,
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now”
Well, the fates did not allow. No tree, no wreaths, no toys, no expectations. Around nine the radio was turned off and Jimmy and I retreated to our twin beds. I couldn’t get to sleep. I kept staring at the ceiling. After a while, I felt my little brother Jimmy crawl in beside me and bury his face in my chest. He was sobbing. I reached around with my right hand, grabbed his elbow and pulled him closer. Kids have an inflated sense of their power on the world at large, holding themselves responsible for all events. The Tina rejection, the denunciation by Father Simon Legree, and, most of all, my parents’ fight were all caused by me. I drifted off to an uneasy sleep wondering why I was so bad.
I really do not remember if it was the sunlight bouncing off the icy windows or my parents making noise downstairs that woke me up Christmas morning. Jimmy and I staggered out of bed, not saying a word, and then the remembrance of the day before settled on our souls like a wet, cold blanket. We dreaded going downstairs, but we heeded the call. “Ralph! Jimmy!”
We were halfway down the steps when we noticed the transformation. There WAS a tree, fully decorated with ornaments and lights and tinsel. And the ceiling and banister of the kitchen and dining room were festooned with multi-colored balloons. We could smell the turkey roasting in the oven. And there, standing at the foot of the stairs, were my mother and father, arm in arm, smiles broadening their faces. Somehow they had reconciled and gone out and purchased a tree and decorations. Jimmy and I looked at each other and back at the scene and back at each other, afraid to take another step lest the magic evaporate. To us it was a miracle.
The rest of that Christmas Day unfolded with great cheer and harmony. I setup my old Lionel train set, and Jimmy got his metal cannon out and dump truck. I heard Heckle and Jeckle five million times but didn’t mind. I even let him bounce a few foam shells off my forehead just to hear his squeals of joy. Every so often I looked up from my play to watch my parents to make certain the transformation was real. On two occasions I saw my father kiss my mother on the back of her neck as she stirred the gravy on the stove. Later that day my Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray came over and we ate and played Pokeno and Penny Poker—Jimmy and I kept our poker stakes in old socks.
I enjoy recounting memories of previous holidays, especially those Polley and I helped fashion for our own children. The looks of joy and wonder and appreciation that lit up their faces give me joy and wonder and appreciation still. I embrace with tears of joy those memories. I believe that the best gift a parent can give a child is what my parents gave us that one Christmas morning. That gift is very very expensive, even though it does not cost money.
If the universe does, indeed, track every moment, and the fates allow us to relive a chosen segment of time, I would choose that singularity when my little brother Jimmy and I stood on the stairs that Christmas morning. After we had taken in the full measure of the miracle, Jimmy yelled, “This is the most wonderfullest Christmas ever!” My kid brother’s grammar was not correct (double superlatives and all that), but it was perfect.
