At the Head of the Table

The best introduction to my dad is to use his own words. This is a sample from the Spring 1971 issue of the family newsletter he called, "Lost Causes."

SHOPPING WITH ERIK

A motor car is not a thing

That should be purchased lightly,

We do no buy one every day

Or even every nightly.

So when I go to buy a car,

I take along my grandson.

He spots a lemon every time

And will not let my buy one.

My grandson Erik ( he is receiving private tutoring in preparation for entering pre-nursery school) know cars. He himself has a Volkswagen, with psychedelic flowers on both sides, and he is very glib when reciting its statistics. The chassis length, he will tell you, is five inches, and he will add enthusiastically, "It has a man in it." The man inside is to run the car with assistance from Erik, who winds the motor. If the car does not go fast enough, Erik knows what to do He picks it up and throws it preferably at his older sister. With so much first-hand knowledge about the durability of cars (there are few things harder on a car than being thrown at a sister) Erik is the ideal counselor to take along when shopping for a new one. So when I decided to replace my four-year-old Valiant, I invited him along. Before I had finished the invitation, he was in the driveway waiting for me, attired hastily in his fancy pants and red sweater, but no shoes. If Erik had been born ten years ago he would have been the original flower child. Now he is just another member of the cop-out generation, a member who has, however, a base hankering for the finer thing of life, and who along with his unshorn hair, his unshod feet, and his scorn of material things, takes a morbid interest in Disneyland, MacDonald's, and breakfast at the Pancake House. My inspiration to take Erik automobile shopping came when I decided that something had to be done to get us out of the house. I had been seated on the sofa having my first cup of coffee when suddenly, as I was lifting the cup, a cloth puppy flew towards me and hit the cup in mid-air. Coffee spilled everywhere. Erik, it seems, knows how to throw cloth puppies as well as Volkswagens. While I was sopping up the mess from the sofa, Erik's mother was taking care of the disciplining. She had Erik in her arms and was kissing him over and over, telling him how much she loved him. It's the new child training: give the child plenty of love. It is probably an indication of something to say that Erik is undoubtedly the most loved child in southern California, as well as the most accurate with a cloth puppy from six feet. So Erik and I began looking at cars. In theory, he favored the BMW, with the Audi a close second. In practice it went something like this. With the whole day before us we sauntered into the showroom of every dealer along automobile row, getting the salesman's latest jazz on braking power, luggage capacity and centimeters of torque. In every showroom I dutifully followed the salesman's suggestion to get into the car, twist my spine to conform to the convolutions of the driver's seat, and test the ease with which I could reach the cigarette lighter. (I quit smoking in 1953 when the price of cigarettes soared to 15 cents a pack.) Then I would insist that Erik try out the car, giving me an unbiased opinion, His diagnostic procedure and his opinion were invariable. He would get into the driver's seat, twist the steering wheel, and, forgetting his preference for the BMW and Audi he would exclaim, "Let's take this one!" The lesson to be gleaned from all this is elementary: if one wishes to spend an incredibly enjoyable morning shopping for a new car, take along Erik. If one wishes to do some serious comparison shopping, induce Erik to stay home by telling him he has to wear shoes. I finally decided to end our pleasant morning when Erik, after testing the horn of a bright red Duster (successor to the Valiant--only the name and price have changed), said, "Let's take this one!" I had been making some hasty calculations on my mental slide rule and had decided that by using my charge card I could just about afford the repairs that would enable me to run my old Valiant another year. It was no problem to get Erik headed home. I invited him to the Pancake House where he ordered a child's half plate of pancakes and eggs. I ordered the same, worried only that it would be too much for me. It was; but I need not have worried. Erik ate all of his and was glad to share mine. Allowed that much of a handicap, I was able to break even with him. We returned home and parked in the driveway, Erik looking a bit glum. We had bought no bright-red Audi, not even a BMW in conservative shades of primrose and pale crimson. We still had our Valiant, with no twin-barrel carburetor, no torque, no rally stripe; just a four-year-old clunker that hardly does two hundred miles between periodic major overhauls. As I eased out of the driver's set I invited Erik to slide over under the steering wheel. He did. He sat immobile for about two second, then instinct took over. He twisted the wheel a couple of times and hit the horn a vigorous blast. He blasted it again, and he was sold. "Let's" he said enthusiastically, "keep this one."

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...may the blessings of cheerful helpers and concerned advisors be yours...

Of Stamps and Uncles and Poems, Oh Yes!

I have an unusual stamp collection. No, it's not all neatly set out in albums. It comes on postcards and letters starting when I was very young and my Uncle Henry, who worked on a railroad mail run, took it upon himself to send letters and postcards overseas. I didn't start answering those letters for decades. I don't know why he kept up his end of the bargain because it seemed he was "talking to a wall." My dad must have mentioned how much they meant to me. Uncle Henry decorated his messages with National Wildlife Federation stickers which I thought were the world's best art next to Arthur Rackham. One year, my dad sent for a set of Metropolitan Opera "stamps" I could paste in a scrapbook. That was the extent of my stamp collection. I never finished that project. It wasn't the same as receiving a stamp on a letter. However, I was hooked from the very first encounter of an Uncle Henry stamp and was delighted when he sent a packet of foreign stamps of birds. In the 1960's, he bought a farmhouse he named, "Cardinal Hollow." The National Wildlife Federation sent him a plaque for being a devoted "back yard" naturalist. In a letter:" WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT--I PLANTED OVER 2000 SHRUBS AND TREES ON THE 60 ACRES AT THE HOLLOW WITH THE AID OF AN INDIAN HELPER. I ALSO BOUGHT A TELESCOPE AND BECAME A WATCHER OF THE SKIES, PURCHASED A PAIR OF BINOCULARS AND BECAME A FAIR TO MIDDLING ORNITHOLOGIST FOR A COUNTRY BOY. MY IMMORTALITY WILL BE BACK THERE WHERE I MOSTLY PLANTED VARIETIES THAT WOULD REPRODUCE THEMSELVES FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND WHERE MY UNKNOWN, UNSEEN EPITAPH WILL LIE AT THE BASE OF A MIGHTY OAK." I was in my twenties when I began the dedication to commemoratives. I would buy a small batch and put them on my Christmas cards. Somehow, I thought the stamp and the enclosed poem was as Christmassy as I wanted to be. I wasn't a Santa person. Christmas was indeed about joy but a reverent, exhilarating inward kind of joy, a stately three kings kind of joy. I thought gifts should be only for children. After exploring on my first computer and discovering Photostamp.com, I felt I had found my medium. The first one I created had an Uncle Henry postcard in the background. My favorite, though, is of Barbara and her little brother, another Henry. It's a tip o' the hat to someone they never met but would have been overjoyed to know. Perhaps soon, I can write about the King of Postcards, my brother, who faithfully, also didn't mind talking to a wall. I hope I can include one or two photos at that time. Uncle Henry was the poetry reciter in the family, even better than his sister-in-law, my mother. He said once, "You need to learn long poems by heart in case you are ever in jail." I decided to reach in, eyes closed, to the Uncle Henry shoebox with the birdhouse design to see if there was a poem I could share with you. Statistically, it's almost impossible to pick a letter or card without a poem and sure enough, here is the one that found me. I've put it in Uncle Henry capitals style:
"GROW STRONG, MY COMRADE...

THAT YOU MAY STAND

UNSHAKEN WHEN I FALL; THAT I MAY KNOW

THE SHATTERED FRAGMENTS OF MY SONG WILL COME

AT LAST TO FINER MELODY IN YOU
THAT I MAY TELL MY HEART THAT YOU BEGIN
WHEN PASSING I LEAVE OFF,
AND FATHOM MORE."

Typically, there is no author cited. Uncle Henry expected me to know. Or find out.

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...may the blessings of old stamps, old poems to remind you of the best of old times be yours...

"Jerusalem the Golden, with Milk and Honey Blest"

Sometimes I get the dates mixed up. I know I was past five because that was the year I was in kindergarten in Tuckahoe, New York. It must have been very early in the following spring that my mother, brother, and I set out for the Azores to unite with my dad who was on a secret assignment there. It was the beginning of a dangerous time. Even the start of the journey with the ship sailing across a stormy Atlantic, with the possibility of u-boats stalking, was worrisome. My mother remembered jokingly that we had only been on the island a few months when I told the soldiers who visited how I was going to be "sick," meaning that I was going to be having my sixth birthday soon but already, there was something growing on my vocal chords and my voice was husky. I felt well and happy romping around with our cocker spaniel and exploring the old stone fort behind our house. However, the medic at the nearby army base who examined my throat flatly refused to operate. He said he was only equipped to patch up the wounded on the planes which refueled there. He did know of a fine surgeon in Jerusalem, a Russian Jew in hiding. Maybe we could locate him. Was there a possibility of going to Jerusalem? My poor mother! They didn't know about anti-anxiety pills in those days. She had only Camel cigarettes and vino. This story is so long, it would take a couple of months of blobs to tell you all the in's and out's, to cover the geography and the intrigues. I offer this nutshell version in order to show you why miracles are a given for me. Yes, during dangerous time, 1944-48, we took a troop plane which was downed in Casablanca and then a train to Cairo. We found the doctor in Jerusalem and met with him at regular intervals to practice the operation. He used a form of surgery which I can only call a symbiotic sort of hypnosis. I see it all so clearly even now: the little girl sitting on a stool, still as a statue (is this why I love statues?) no anesthesia, while her brother recites a poem and the doctor says a prayer in Hebrew. My voice was saved in the city I most wanted to see, the "holy city," because by then I was a believer in the Prince of Peace who once shared bread in an upper room off a dark alley. And I concluded that my voice was saved in order for me to sing and to tell stories. My mother, who couldn't bring herself to believe in God, believed in what she called, "Christine's miracles." She accompanied me to see all the places I longed to see: despite waiting for the clearing of landmines, we ventured to Bethlehem. Despite the barbed wire detours, she saw me playing the part of an angel in the parochial school pageant. She said of all the places she had traveled, Jerusalem was her favorite and clearly a miracle had gotten our family there. That was neither the first miracle nor the last; there was a procession of them. People question me, "Why don't you doubt? What is the source of your unshakable faith?" I can conjecture and tell of the missionary who comforted my mother during my difficult birthing by singing, "Jerusalem the golden with milk and honey blest." I can quote Scriptures. "Suffer the little children to come unto me." I can give other reasons but I think it simply comes down to the fact that I was a child and when I heard that message, I went on an expedition of discovery to find this child advocate who came into the world as a baby and changed it that very night. What happened next is the story of my life.

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...may you become as little children and find the miracles they find around every corner and beyond the stars...

On a Tuesday

My dad called Tuesdays, "Goodnewsday" after the Gershwin song with the line. "Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day." It must have been my favorite song when I was twelve as he took up the theme thereafter. He wrote letters to me on Tuesdays faithfully for decades. So what I remember about 9/11 is that it was a Tuesday. I was volunteering in the children's section of the Durham Public Library, Revere Road Branch. I liked thumbing through the books quickly as I put them on display or away. There is something magical about children's books--the freedom, the alternative worlds, the improbabilities, the magnificent art. The head librarian came over to me and asked, "Is your brother in New York by any chance?" Yes, for once my brother was in New York. Ordinarily, he could have been in Ireland or Spain, Italy or Germany. He led the life of a visionary artist. I relied on sibling telepathy to know where he was. Every year or so a fabulous postcard would drift in with gorgeous foreign stamps. She asked me if I'd like to go home. Hesitantly, she explained, "There has been..." She couldn't get the words out. A catastrophe in New York involving the Twin Towers. It was the time of the morning my brother would have been walking over there for a muffin from his studio on Duane Street. I said quietly that my brother would expect me to stay with my work and not worry about him. So I stayed, I didn't hear from him till the next day. Meanwhile, I had a message from my son in San Francisco. There had been rumors at Luxor Cab of terrorists around the Transamerica building. He told me a story which will stay with me always. He said there was a cabbie from Vietnam who wore some kind of good luck medal around his neck. On 9/12, he came to do his shift but didn't have his medal. Erik asked what had happened to it. The cabbie said, "I don't need it. I got you, Ewik." In times of trouble, there are those on whom we can depend to get us through. I depended on my faith, my angels, and trust that whatever the outcome, I should do what I was assigned to do and help would be on the way. That was 2001 and I can't enumerate the helpers I have had--so many! These days, my gentle brother thrives with an exhibit in Germany. My son rises through the ranks and keeps everyone's spirits up; he's a natural. And I? I continue with my thank-you's and my assignments and yes, sneak a few glimpses at children's books, my little affirmations.

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ANGELS GUARD

the mountains,

although we no longer give them credit.

Their fanning, lowing wings gently shift

the snow to higher elevations.

Their nodding sighing comments

on our customary pace stir the fat

pine cones to drop.

We gather them for decoration,

heedless of a better purpose.

In very quiet moments, still-hopeful angels

tap our shoulders in greeting.

"We're here

if only you will stop awhile to look.

Long before the dinosaur,

we knew of your coming.

We could tell you how the earth was made!"

It takes a fine-tuned adjustment to

our vision which we have scant time for,

not being inclined to believe,

to see the silver shadows.

Over eons they take up their vigils

at newly-formed crags and river forks.

They discuss metaphysics and cry a little

over the nature of Man.

Brave, good-hearted angels.

They await redemption

more heartily than we,

having known what Paradise was like

that time or two ago.

--CT

published in BRANCHES

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...may you find succor wherever you go and the path lead you

past the narrow places to wide plains...