The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Family

A Father’s Day Post

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Dad,

I don’t know if you’ll ever see this because I don’t share the blog with you or mom. You know about it and you have seen bits and pieces but you have never seen this. It is probably because this is as raw as I get. I open up here like no place else and that is just not how we are.

We share our thoughts and feelings. It is not like we don’t but we do it in a different way. We are close and I feel comfortable telling you about my life, but this is one of those places that is mine and I think that you understand it.

I think fondly of the moments I have shared sitting with you and grandpa and I smile when I think about the complaints we received about none of us speaking. I understand the silence, it is part of how the three of us communicate.

We three come from different places. Our childhoods were all different and I suppose that you and grandpa deserve congratulations because mine was better than both of yours. That is something to be proud of.

I am the only son and the only grandson. I am the keeper of the name and the time will come when I will be responsible for passing along certain stories and traditions. I take it very seriously and one day I look forward to sharing some of these with my own son.

I look at you and I am impressed with so many things. You are tougher and smarter than I am. You work harder and you have had so many good things come of it.

My sisters and mother frequently tell me that I sound like a clone of you and in many ways that is true. Sometimes when I am speaking with the children I hear your words but they are being said by my voice.

You taught me to look carefully at the world around me and not to let my admiration for a person blind me to their faults. And I took that to heart. That means that I am well aware of your own faults.

Those faults are a part of you and my recognition of them is part of my maturation. You aren’t superman anymore. You are fallible and you make mistakes as do we all but that is ok.

I think that part of our growing closer is my ability to really see you and to understand that you didn’t always have all of the answers, to recognize that we have had similar struggles.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense but what I am really trying to say is that I love and appreciate you. I respect you and I am thankful for all that you gave and continue to give to me.

Generations

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My mother remembers the Summer of ’69 for many reasons. During the day my father had a full time job and at night he worked to finish his masters. In between he spent as much time as possible with my mother and his newborn son (me).

A new mother has a lot on her plate and my own was none too happy when she learned about the murders that had taken place she was less than pleased to be home alone at nights with her baby boy. But time passed and she grew more comfortable as a mother and less concerned about the various bogeyman of the night.

In time the family grew larger, a younger sister and then twin sisters joined our brood. At the grand old age of 30 my mother had four children ranging in age from 5 years-old to a little less than a month. During that time frame I went from having four grandparents and three great grandparents to just three grandparents.

Within a year the numbers adjusted again as my sole surviving great-grandfather died and my grandfather remarried. The readjusted number left me with four grandparents and two great-grandmothers.

The advantage of being the oldest of my siblings is that I remember all of the grandparents, including my dad’s mom who passed away when I was just shy of three. Granted the memories I have of her are fuzzy, but they exist.

The hardest memory is trying to recall her voice. I am just not sure that I really remember it and suspect that I really don’t remember it at all.

I didn’t lose my great-grandmothers until I was a teenager as they lived to be about 95 and 96 respectively. It is possible that they were slightly older or younger as the recordkeeping when they were born was not as tight as it is now.

My father has a picture that was taken when I was about 11 months old. It is of my great-grandfather, grandfather, father and myself. Four generations of the men of my family.

Thirty years later my son had the privilege of being part of a similar picture as he is seated with myself, my father and grandfather. That picture is hung next to the older version. It means a lot to me and I hope that when he is older he will appreciate it.

I remember my great-grandfather but I am not old enough to have shared in the telling of stories of his youth in Lithuania. I know from his children stories of he and my great-grandmother hiding from the Cossacks. And I know the stories of his work in Chicago in helping to establish unions and tales of fist fights with the police. I wish that I could have heard them from him, but that was not to be.

For a while after my son’s birth he was privileged to have five great-grandparents. We have since lost a great-grandmother and now we are down to four great-grandparents. It is a joy and a blessing that is lost upon my children but he is only five and my daughter isn’t quite two so I cannot really fault them.

I do what I can to make sure that they see their great-grandparents as often as possible as I can see the sand in the hourglass running. One of my grandfathers lives with my parents now and that is an interesting situation. I watch and learn from my parents as they show what kabed et evecha veh et eemecha really means and at the same time I see the toll that it is taking upon them.

I am worried because my grandfather requires more and more assistance and taking care of him becomes less a labor of love and more like work. I do what I can to help and I try hard to ease the load for all of them.

I know that it is hard for all three of them. I cannot imagine being in a position in which my children have to care for me and it pains me sometimes to see it. It reminds me of the old saying that goes something like this:

“When a father helps a son to walk only the child cries but when a son helps a father to walk they both cry”

At the same time I am watching my mother’s parents age too. It is not such an easy thing but it is the price we happily pay to be able to have kept them around for so many years. I’d write more but I have lost my muse.

So instead of continuing I am going to provide links to other posts about my grandparents.

A Grandson’s Distraction

Married for More Than 70 Years

I Feel Your Pain And I Share My Own

Putting It All In Perspective

Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy but sometimes life can be challenging.

You Don’t Smell Like Daddy

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My niece fell asleep in my lap. For a short while I let her use me as a substitute for her mattress and then it became necessary to move her to her bed.

I carefully picked her up and moved her to her bed. I must have jostled her just a little because she woke up long enough to mutter in my ear “you don’t smell like daddy.”

It made me smile because for a moment I realized that I had the perfect opportunity to tell my brother-in-law that his daughter thinks he stinks. I was all set to hand him some deodorant and a towel and then I thought better of it.

In truth it was because my father happened to be close by and I realized that I could smell his cologne and it occurred to me that if I close my eyes for a moment I can smell him just as I can smell my grandparents and my mother.

Smell is an amazing sense. I am forever amazed by how a scent can trigger so many memories. I wonder what my children think I smell like.

My Reward

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This past August I wrote about Blessing My Children. It is something that I take quite seriously and derive much pleasure from.

Today I received what I consider to be a reward from this practice. My son hurt himself and came to me seeking comfort. I gave him a hug and kissed his head but he said that was not enough and asked me to give him his special blessing.

I couldn’t have been happier. I have worked hard to create a special moment in time, a sanctuary that he and his sister can rely upon and I am so very pleased to see that he recognizes it as such. I do this for them because they are so very important.

Life is good.

It is a race but you cannot See the Finish Line

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In the past I have written several times about my grandparents. I am one of the lucky people who has had them around for my entire life. As of May 9, I will be 36 years-old and my grandparents will all be 91.

Ninety-one years-old. It just blows my mind. They were born during World War I and lived through the Depression, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, The Moon Landing, Watergate, the rise and fall of communism, 911, two Gulf Wars and a boatload more.

Tonight at our seder I paid very close attention to all three of them. I watched and listened to everything they said and did because right now it feels like we are in a race that we know will end but we cannot see the finish line.

My grandmother is not doing real well. She has had a number of issues with her heart and the cardiologist has said that she expects that it will give out before the rest of her does. Sooner or later her card will be pulled and it will be time to say goodbye.

But life is funny in that you cannot really plan on too many things following a schedule. We don’t know when it will happen, we can only guess and I am not someone who lives my life in fear. It could be years or it could be minutes, but it is hard.

It is hard to know that my children will just never know my grandparents the way that I do, that they will always see them as being old people. I remember when they could run with me and when they would get down on the floor and play with us. I remember them in their 50s and 60s and in some ways it is hard to reconcile the reality that the elderly people I speak with are the same people who pulled me in my wagon and baked cookies with us.

So I sit here soaking it all up, trying to do nothing but enjoy the time we have because it will end and then the memories will be all I have. But it is hard when I see my grandmother like this, knowing that mentally she is all there but physically she is losing the fight. Inch by inch there are little pieces of her being taken away. I try to do what I can to give her strength and support, but this is not a video game, I cannot give her some of my life force.

But I do what I can and I smile when I see the joy on her face when she plays with my children. It really is a time to eat drink and be merry, because tomorrow is a mystery.

Married for More Than 70 Years

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Clearly I have made no secret of my distaste for Valentine’s Day. It is a day that causes chaos and creates hard feelings, by design or otherwise. It doesn’t matter much to me because the end result is often the same. But in spite of this I thought that it might be worth mentioning my grandparents here.

At just short of 36 I am lucky to have three grandparents. Some people would have written surviving but I don’t like it, it makes it sound like they beat the grim reaper out of a train wreck or airplane crash.

The three of them are very dear to me, all are turning 91 so I know that each day I have them for is another blessing. They have taught me about every aspect of life you can imagine, there is nothing that I can think of that does not have their imprint in some way or another.

One of my grandfathers is a former carnie and pool hustler turned insurance salesman. The other basically sold insurance during his working years, but he is also a very colorful character in his own way.

And now to the point of the post. My mother’s parents will be married a total of 71 years this coming July. Yes, seventy-one years, but they met a number of years before they got married.

They actually are childhood friends who met when they were 11 years-old. Neither of them really remember when they started dating and for that matter neither can remember what angered my grandfather so much that he stopped talking to my grandmother their entire sophmore year of high school. And neither can they remember any more why they started speaking again.

All they know is that they seem to have been made to love and live together. At this point the sad truth is that there is almost no one left who remembers them as two individuals and not a couple.

It would be easy for me to write a dozen or more posts about them and the lessons that I have learned from them and I may yet do so, but for now I want to continue to spend a few minutes on them as a couple.

During the past few years I have watched as they have gradually slowed down, time and age have affected their bodies, but not their minds. My grandmother developed coronary disease and during the early months of last year it looked very grave.

My relationship with the two of them has changed a little, they lean on me more, rely on my strength and I am happy to lend it to them. During my grandmother’s hospitalization I watched my grandfather try to be strong for my grandmother, but I was there when he walked out of the room, stricken with fear. And I held his hand and listened to him share his fears about the future.

As I listened to his stories, many of which I had heard before, I fought not to choke up. My grandfather spoke to me as a man in love and from somewhere in the past I could hear the voice of the boy who fell in love with my grandmother when they were both young.

He told me again about how his own grandmother had died the day of their wedding and shared many other stories. I looked him in the eye and promised that it would be ok and I realized that our places had really shifted. The man who looked out for me was still there, but now I had to look out for him.

My grandmother pulled through. She made it and the year moved on. It wasn’t much later that we had our scare with the baby and then my father’s heart attack and bypass upset the apple cart some more. I felt a little bit like I had been kicked in the teeth, but I did what I do and I kept moving because when things are rough you cannot just lie down.

And in the midst of all of the chaos my grandfather and grandmother both reached out to me, to offer their support. And though I knew that they couldn’t really lend it in the same way as when I was but 10, I was pleased. It gave me some peace-of-mind and strength. Together they helped to shore things up and for a brief moment I remember sunday brunches at their old home, movies, walks in the park, ice cream and so many other moments.

This weekend we’ll pack the kids up in the car and head back out to see them again. We’ll talk about our lives and my grandfather will listen to my stories about life at the office. But the best part will be watching them interact with my children.

My grandfather will tell some more jokes and use the same old coin tricks on my son as he did on my sisters and I. My grandmother will be there, a little quieter but still a strong and steady presence. And again I’ll watch and try to bottle the memories, store them where they will be protected and remain clear and unblemished forever.